Library Policies

Greetings!

Our topic this week is policies. It is quite important that you have some policies in place in the event a problem occurs. It may be that you are a very small school and feel that this is something only for larger schools. Not true. Smaller schools are just as likely to have library problems arise as larger schools. Here is what your policy should include.

1. Selection Policy - How do you or your school decide what books to place in the school library? What are the criteria for choosing?

2. Circulation Policy – How many books may students have out at a time? Is there a limit? When will books be due? Will there be a fine for late books or lost books? Will you allow community members such as church members or home school families use the school library?

3. Challenged Books Policy – What is the procedure to follow if a patron challenges a book and wants you to remove the book? I covered this in more detail in the March 2010 post. Check my blog for more information. Sdalibrarian.blogspot.com

4. Collection Maintenance – How will you maintain your collection? When will books be weeded out?

You can probably put all these parts in one general Library Policy and have different headings for each section. The most important of the above policies is the Selection and Challenged Books policies. How you choose books for the library will help in case a book is challenged.

If you have a policy in place, take a quick look to see if any parts need to be updated and mark the date that you reviewed and updated it. I just checked ours here at Rogers and was embarrassed to find that I had not checked or reviewed it since 2005! Needless to say, I am taking my own advice and checking and updating.

We have a number of community patrons here at our school and I have a separate form for them to fill out letting us know how we can be in touch with them. I give them a paper with the policies for the community patrons so they know how our library works and what we need from them.

If you don’t yet have a library policy in place, you can search online for other school’s library policies and adapt yours from theirs. If you would like a copy of the Library Policy from Rogers Adventist School, contact me and I will send ours to you for your review. Just give me a day or two to get it back in shape!
I hope you have a great week.
Audrey