HIT: Contemp. Author (second try!)

[Susan Freymiller <sfreymiller@YAHOO.COM>]

Hi there.  Not sure what happened with the first posting.  Will try
again - hopefully it will go through clearly this time.  Thanks again
SO MUCH to all those who contributed.  It's great working with you!

Sue

1)  I did move old series that were never used into classrooms. They
probably are not used there, either. They were left from the old high
school to our school when the high school closed.
Sometimes I move books to the back room and put "back room" or
"storage" on the catalog location.  Then the books need to go.  Sell or
give them away.  People who do home schooling love our old nonfiction
books.


2)  Just thought I would give you my 2 cents worth on Contemporary
Authors.  At one time our school had a number of volumes of Cont.
Authors and they did take up a lot of shelf space.  We found that the
students weren't using them to warrent the shelf space.  I gave the
volumes to the English Dept. and there they have resided since.  I also
do not add new volumes to the set.


3)  I cannot believe that your CA, CLC, NCLC, etc., collection has not
been used.  Do your English teachers even know what it is and that it
is available?  Do you keep it up to date?  It is quite expensive to do
so.  These are wonderful sets that give not only biographical
information on writers, but also critical analysis of the writers'
works.  I think these are very necessary sets and that when you talk to
your English department you will find that most of them probably do not
know what you have and what they can do with it.

I have them in my collection (except NCLC which I wish I had) and our
English teachers use them frequently.  Sometimes other teachers find
them useful, too.  Unfortunately, I have not been able to afford to
keep them up to date, since each set has 3 or 4 new volumes per year at
about $100
per book.  Your concern about space in your Reference collection is
valid. If you can do it, these are available on CD-ROM or the Internet.
 I am seriously considering the Internet option for my library.

4)  The CLC, CA, et al books are invaluable in our collection.  We do
lots of  research centering around authors.  Every English class uses
them in some way during the year.  They are very expensive so don't get
rid of them.  See if you can talk your English teachers into doing
literary research papers.

5)  If you don't want them, I know a school that will! In my school I,
too, have shelves of them, but we use ours.  The American Lit and
English Lit teachers have students do critical papers on authors and
works.  Due to budget constraints, however, I stopped trying to keep
up.  We find that most of the well-known, most often done authors are
in the first 30-40 volumes of CLC and TCLC.  I am now only keeping up
with Novels for Students, Short Stories for Students, and Poetry for
Students, all from Gale.  I can't get rid of mine, and who knows?
Maybe in a year or two new teachers will come along who will want you
to have them.  They are so expensive to replace. Anyway, if you decide
to weed them out, let me know!

6)  At the high school level these should be heavily used.  I would
tend to think something was really wrong if these were not being used.
Under no circumstances leave these go...they are very expensive...and
form the basis of what should be your heaviest use by your English
dept.

I am a h.s. school of about 600...I see almost 500 classes a year in my
library....at least which are 50% English classes...and 50% of these
English classes are probably authors and critical analysis studies.

There are only 2 reasons I can think of that these might not be used
because of that would make me understand what is going on...are they
very old...in other words, do you not have the lastest volumes?  Or do
you have so much Internet and CD_ROM coverage that these are not being
used?  I would doubt the 2nd...at any rate...under no circumstances let
them out of the library.

7)  Talk with English department, but you don't want to place the
titles outside the library!  Perhaps the previous media person didn't
realize how useful this kind of criticism can be or that it's a
tremendous  variety in a concise place. This is a perfect example of
info that is NOT available online for free.

8)  I have some of these in my middle school library and we use them
heavily each year.......since a 7th grade teacher began doing an author
research project with her team.  I would certainly recommend that you
keep these resources at least until you can gage for yourself the
potential use.

9)  I would definitely keep those valuable materials!!!  If they are
not being used perhaps you could show the students how touse them  The
students will definitely need to be familiar with them in college.  You
could make it part of your information literacy program under the part
about locating
and evaluating resources.  If you still decide to get rid of them,
could you send then to me and I
pay the cost of postage (if it is not prohibitively expensive).

10)  As with all other things, the usage will depend on the teachers
and what they assign. I find these references very valuable for the
assignments that our English teachers make. Even our freshmen are
required to get author information for their book reports. Seniors also
have to have literary criticism about authors when they do reports.

11)  Our volumes do get used. I suggest you promote them to the
department and students first. They may not be aware they are there or
how to utilize them best. You might find them used more after that.

12)  My advice is to ditch the Contemporary Authors and Contemporary
Literary Criticism unless your English Dept. wants them. We (English
Dept. & I) didn't want our students to use them when doing their 11th
or 12th grade author paper because the information is strictly
tertiary. The teachers won't let the kids use abstracts or excerpts of
criticism and require secondary sources
only.  So we started buying Gale's DLB series which are all authored
works and much better suited for high school.

13)  I chucked the volumes we had. Students never used them and there
are much better, more relevant ones on the market today. My students
like SOMETHING ABOUT THE ARTIST AND THE AUTHOR. For authors critiqued
in junior and senior classes I have bought individual books of
criticism on each author and these are the ones that students go to.

14)  We have just 3 shelves and we quit buying CA years ago because we
could see we could never keep up with revisions etc and all the various
sets– just too expensive and too much space. But, they have a fabulous
amount of information and with their indexes can be very helpful,
but I just don't see how a school library could handle the cost or
space.

15)  These are VERY heavily used items in our collection!  It has taken
some time on my part to train the English staff on what they are and
how to use them, but that time has paid huge dividends.  Now the staff
complains that we don't own every single volume!

16)  Both of these questions are good and pertinent.  If you had a CD
to replace or virtually replace CA series, I'd say pass them on to
poorer library. (I'm sure you know that current volumes are $110.00
plus.) We've recently stopped our standing order for this reference
series.

I have about the same problem, but ours are used, not a lot, but by
history students looking up historians and a little by English
classes.....the Internet and of course CD-ROM's are blowing CA away....

17)  Perhaps you just need to let your English teachers know what's in
your collection.  I can't imagine the teachers not wanting to use them
if they knew that they existed.  It takes $$ to keep Gale current, but
it's a fabulous resource.  If they were in my library, I'd use them to
get the English teachers into the facility, I wouldn't give them away.
However, if you find that you have no use for them because the
curriculum doesn't support them, maybe we could make a deal.  :-)



===
Susan Freymiller
Media Specialist
NorthWood High School
Nappanee, IN

"It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope 
of today and the reality of tomorrow." Robert H. Goddard (Pioneer of Modern Rocket 
Science)
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=
All postings to LM_NET are protected under copyright law.
 To quit LM_NET (or set-reset NOMAIL or DIGEST), send email to:
   listserv@listserv.syr.edu          In the message write EITHER:
    1) SIGNOFF LM_NET 2) SET LM_NET NOMAIL or 3) SET LM_NET DIGEST
 4) SET LM_NET MAIL  * Please allow for confirmation from Listserv
 For LM_NET Help & Archives see:  http://ericir.syr.edu/lm_net/
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=