Collection Development Policy
For the TeachingBooks.net Database
Mission Statement
TeachingBooks.net's mission is to generate enthusiasm for books and reading by bringing authors, illustrators, and engaging resources about books for children and teens to every school, library, and home.
The TeachingBooks database was built to bring greater access to educational resources about authors/illustrators and books—and to encourage the integration of multimedia materials into educational settings. By utilizing TeachingBooks' multimedia resources, educators will better understand the spirit and personality behind books and discover exciting ways to share these insights with children and teens.
Collection Definition
TeachingBooks considers the author, book, and literacy resources incorporated into its web-based database as the collection. This includes all TeachingBooks' originally produced author programs and author name pronunciation recordings, author programs made by others, book guides, book readings, booklists, book awards, and other links relevant to the mission.
Community Profile
TeachingBooks is designed primarily for educators. The database has resources for people in many roles throughout the PreK–12 educational system. TeachingBooks users include people in large public school districts, single private schools, teacher education institutions/universities, public libraries, and home-schooling environments.
In other words, the collection's primary audience includes anyone who uses books for/with children and teens. TeachingBooks develops the collection with this audience in mind, with the idea that they will share resources that they deem appropriate with their students.
Collection Goals
The primary goal of the collection is to help users think about books and authors/illustrators in new ways. This is done by providing easy access to online resources about the trade books that teachers and their students are reading in schools. TeachingBooks also offers resources about book creators as well as other literature-based issues and initiatives.
Taken as a whole, the TeachingBooks collection strives to:
- help integrate books throughout the PreK–12 school environment,
- encourage and support discussions about books in virtually all facets of PreK–12 school life,
- support the specific books and reading lists that are used in PreK–12 schools,
- appeal to educators working with students representing a wide range of interests and reading levels held by preschool, elementary, and secondary students.
TeachingBooks strives to be of interest to teachers in subjects across the curriculum. Many educators who teach language arts, visual arts, multicultural studies, history, Spanish, and technology have found TeachingBooks particularly useful and relevant, as have school nurses and social workers.
Selection Responsibility
The primary responsibility for selecting resources for the collection lies with the TeachingBooks Information Manager, who is supervised by the TeachingBooks Director. The Information Manager is trained in the philosophy and practices of librarianship, information studies, and intellectual freedom. Consultation with other TeachingBooks employees, colleagues in the field of Library and Information Studies (LIS), and customers regarding selection also occurs.
Selection Criteria
A. Scope of the Collection
The scope of the collection is broad to ensure that the collection is relevant to a variety of curricular areas and age/grade levels. The collection includes materials about authors, illustrators, recently published books, classics, and books for children and young adults that are most-used in school classrooms.
Resources are included in the collection based on their interest to and potential use by PreK–12 educators for their own information needs and/or for their use with students.
Resources selected for the collection are one or more of the following:
- About trade books (or their authors/illustrators) that are often used in classrooms, or are relevant to educational settings;
- About trade books (or their authors/illustrators) that are geared toward or relevant to the PreK–12 audience;
- Written and/or spoken in the English language, although some Spanish-language and bilingual resources are included when appropriate;
- Book and literacy-related information of interest to professional educators.
B. Selection Process
The Information Manager is made aware of new resources to be considered for inclusion in the TeachingBooks database through any of the following avenues:
- Publishers,
- Authors/illustrators,
- Focused searching for resources that support titles listed on specific reading initiatives and/or award booklists or that are requested by customers seeking additional resources on specific titles or authors,
- TeachingBooks-initiated investigations into authors and books that the educational community may value.
Once aware of resources, the Information Manager ensures that the referenced book/author meets the criteria outlined in VI.A. above. The Information Manager also ensures that the electronic resource meets other criteria (format/technical integrity, authority/reliability, and additional criteria) as outlined below in the remainder of the Selection Criteria section VI.
Any materials that TeachingBooks originally produces are automatically included in the collection.
C. Originally Produced Resources
TeachingBooks original productions—including Original Author Programs, Written Interviews, and Book Readings—are planned with much thought and deliberation.
The authors and illustrators that TeachingBooks chooses to interview are carefully selected with the goal of representing a wide cross-section of books and book creators. To choose the authors/illustrators, the following criteria are considered:
- potential or actual use of creator's books in classrooms,
- demographic diversity (such as race, gender, geographic location, and sexual orientation),
- subject area expertise,
- grade level ranges.
Additionally, TeachingBooks produces audio recordings of authors and illustrators pronouncing their names and briefly introducing themselves. This collection of audio recordings, referred to as the Author Name Pronunciation Guide, is open to all authors and illustrators who have published one or more trade books geared toward or relevant to the PreK–12 audience.
D. Format and Technical Integrity
Ideally, resources are well-designed for the online environment and have minimal commercial "noise." If the content of a resource is deemed potentially useful to an educator, any potential negative aspects of that resource (e.g. advertising, quality of the web design) will be weighed against its potential usefulness in determining whether to include it in the database.
All of the resources are selected because they have the potential to help educators and their students think about books and authors/illustrators in new ways. That said, inevitably, the quality of the resources in the TeachingBooks collection varies.
E. Authority and Reliability
The creators of the resources are considered for their authority and reliability. Creators of the resources in the database can include:
- The publisher, author, or illustrator of a specific book;
- Educational and library-centered entities and organizations;
- Individuals/entities with a background in children's literature, young adult literature, education, librarianship, and/or reading/literacy.
F. Unfettered Access
All resources to which TeachingBooks links must be publicly available—they must not require additional registrations or fees. Some resources on TeachingBooks are not in the public domain, but TeachingBooks has arranged for open access for subscribers.
G. Categories of Resources
All non-TeachingBooks produced resources must fit into one of the following content categories: Author Programs, Book Guides, Book Readings, Thematic Booklists, Book Awards, or Valuable Links, including Authors Personal Websites. Examples of resources that don't fit into these categories and are not included in the collection are the following: online books, e-books, reviews about specific books, or short promotional blurbs about authors.
Weeding
Having made a conscious effort to create a broad collection, and because there is no space limit to the number of resources that the database can hold, TeachingBooks keeps most resources selected for the collection.
TeachingBooks is committed to the technical reliability of the resources in the collection. Links that are "dead" are removed as soon as possible, either manually or via an automated link-checking program. The automated link-checking process involves links being continually checked for reliability; if a link fails three consecutive times, it is removed from the website.
If a resource that is identical to another one is unintentionally added, one of the them will be removed while the other one is kept.
In order to give customers the option of choosing for themselves the resource that works best for them, TeachingBooks may keep multiple resources about the same book that are similar (but not identical) to one another.
If TeachingBooks becomes aware of a resource that has changed significantly or is no longer as potentially useful as initially deemed, TeachingBooks reserves the right to remove the resource.
Intellectual Freedom
This collection development policy reflects the philosophy and goals of TeachingBooks and supports the principles of intellectual freedom described in the Library Bill of Rights and other position statements on intellectual freedom from the American Library Association (ALA) and the American Association of School Librarians (AASL).
Every resource in the database has been selected based on its deemed educational potential. TeachingBooks includes a wide variety of resources varying in format and in educational quality, knowing that what might be the right resource for one person is not necessarily the right resource for another.
Individuals are encouraged to decide for themselves which item will be most useful for their purposes. There is something here for everyone, even if not everything is for everyone.
Software Internet filters contradict TeachingBooks' perspective that life-long learning and information literacy is best served by educating students to think critically so that they can be their own filters.
Useful intellectual freedom resources that TeachingBooks consults include:
- Cooperative Children's Book Center webpage on Intellectual Freedom (accessed 6/1/09): http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/freedom/default.asp
- Ensuring Intellectual Freedom and Access to Information in the School Library Media Program by Helen Adams, Libraries Unlimited, 2008.
- Intellectual Freedom Manual, Seventh Edition, by the Office for Intellectual Freedom, American Library Association, 2006.
Reconsideration Procedure
TeachingBooks users have the right to request that TeachingBooks reconsider the inclusion of a resource (or resources by a single creator/resource producer). To do this, the following steps should be taken:
- Customer reviews the resource—both content and environment/context.
- Customer contacts TeachingBooks Director with inquiry: info@TeachingBooks.net
- In consultation with TeachingBooks Information Manager, TeachingBooks Director begins discussion (via email or phone) with customer, to open up the dialogue about the concern.
- If the concern remains, customer requests and completes the TeachingBooks.net Reconsideration Form.
- The TeachingBooks Director reviews the completed Reconsideration Form, the electronic resource, and the Collection Development Policy.
- The creators of the resource might be contacted if appropriate.
- Other relevant professionals—such as outside educators from an elementary, middle school, or high school environment—might be consulted to provide an objective and practical perspective.
- A decision is made by the TeachingBooks Director, weighing all information from items 5, 6, and 7 above.
- Decision is communicated to the customer within four weeks of the submittal of the Reconsideration Form.
- A general email (without personally identifiable information about the requestor, book, or online resource) is sent to the License Coordinator in charge of the license through which the requestor accessed TeachingBooks. The purpose of the email is to let the License Coordinator know that TeachingBooks addressed concerns that were raised from a user accessing the TeachingBooks database under their license.
Policy Review and Revision
This Collection Development Policy and its associated procedures have been approved by TeachingBooks staff and LIS peers in the Children's/YA Literature field and is reviewed/revised biennially.
Last reviewed: June 2009
