Re: Library Stats

[Barbara Allen <BSAllen@AOL.COM>]

I'm pretty much the keeper of the library stats for our district so I couldn't
help jumping in on this one.  I think it a great mistake to compare library
usage in elementaries with library usage in middle and high schools.  Library
usage is MUCH lower in middle and high schools and this has very little to do
with scheduling.  In addition to seeing the library stats for all of our
schools, I also have two children that get grilled at regular intervals about
library usage.  One of my children is a big reader, one isn't.   In middle and
high school, my big reader read a great deal during summers and vacations,
both periods when the school libraries are closed.  During the active school
year, my big reader said he had no time to read anything except the material
for classes, much of which did not come from the school library.  This trend
has continued into college.  He has spent most of this Christmas vacation
reading, for fun, things that he did not have time to read during the college
quarter.  My other child, not a big reader, has a high school class for which
he has to read something for "fun" for a fixed amount of time every day.  He
mostly reads paperbacks from home.  They might have the same books in the
school library, but it's easier just to pull something off the shelf on the
way out the door.  Based on my two kids library usage, literacy is going to
hell in a handbasket, however, they're both pretty literate.  They had a good
foundation of library usage in elementary where they did have time to read
strictly for fun.  Some of my friends say that the middle and high school
libraries are less used for social reasons, it's not cool to go the the school
library, it's only cool to go to the public library.  I don't know the answer
but I do think that the usage of middle and high school libraries has to be
considered completely separately from elementary library usage which is mostly
high.  I think what we really need is a better way to measure the value of a
library in middle and high school.  I think library usage stats give a
misleading picture.
Some middle school librarians tell me they have very high in-library use of
books, which is something very tedious to measure so we've never felt we had
the time to do it.
The other thing that I have found is that when an elementary school switches
from scheduled library time to open library, library usage based on the number
of students who come to the library goes down.  Library usage based on the
number of books that circulate stays the same or goes up.  Some kids never
again go to the library.  Some go several times a day.

Barbara Allen
Program Analyst / Library Services
Tucson Unified School District
Tucson, AZ
bsallen@aol.com

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