Evaluating the School Library Media Center: Analysis Techniques and Research Practices » (1st Edition)

NANCY EVERHART is Assistant Professor, Division of Library and Information Science, St. John's University, Jamaica, New York. She has received numerous awards, including the ALISE award for "Outstanding Dissertation," the "Microcomputer in the Media Center Award," an award for "Outstanding Library Media Center," and first place in Apple Computer's Merit Competition.

Everhart provides practical guidelines and ready-to-use forms for evaluating a school library media center, as well as important results derived in other studies. She includes qualitative and quantitative techniques for the areas of curriculum, personnel, facilities, collections, usage, and technology. She also gives step-by-step instructions on how to create in-house surveys, conduct interviews, and use observation to gather useful data.

Conduct research, collect statistics, and evaluate your program with this useful resource. Everhart provides practical guidelines and ready-to-use forms for evaluating a school library media center, as well as important results derived in other studies. She includes qualitative and quantitative techniques for the areas of curriculum, personnel, facilities, collections, usage, and technology. She also gives step-by-step instructions on how to create in-house surveys, conduct interviews, and use observation to gather useful data. For example, there are directions on how to assess information literacy with rubrics. In addition, each chapter gives detailed references, a list of further readings, applicable Web sites, and dissertations. A quick and easy guide to justifying and supporting your SLMC operations and effectiveness, this book is invaluable to all school library media specialists. It will also be of interest to school library media supervisors and researchers.

VOYA

"School library media specialists are very busy people!" is the opening to Dr. Everhart's preface for this wonderful professional resource. Realizing that collecting data and analyzing it to both provide better services and advocate for better funding are tasks that many school library media specialists find daunting, Everhart has compiled a terrific range of survey techniques and tools for analysis that can be used with a minimum of fine-tuning. The book is divided into seven well-organized chapters on general evaluation, curriculum, collections, facilities, technology, personnel, and usage. These chapters open with an overview of the topic and include a variety of rubrics and checklists as well as bibliographies and Web site addresses to help school library media specialists make the most of their data. Particularly helpful are the rubrics included in the chapter on curriculum. The self-assessments at the beginning of this section will force many library media specialists to take a closer look at the way they manage their multiple roles on a daily basis. Under usage, Everhart covers student use, faculty use, circulation analysis, fill rate, in-house use, interlibrary loan, theft of materials, usage of magazines, and evaluation of the collection by checking students' bibliographies. An appendix includes brief references for twenty-five states that have media evaluation tools and the addresses to obtain these tools. Any school library media specialists looking to improve their library media center will find no better place to start than with the purchase of this book. Index. Charts. Biblio. Further Reading. Appendix.