Amy VickreyCollection Evaluation and Development PlanDr. Lucilia GreenFRIT 7134 – Fall 2012September 30, 2012

Site Description/Environmental Scan

I teach British Literature and Multicultural Literature to seniors at McEachern High

School in Powder Springs, GA. It is part of the Cobb County School System, one of the largest

systems in Georgia. Our enrollment is approximately 2,400 with 215 faculty/staff. MHS has a

rich and long history. It was an Agricultural & Mechanical School first in 1908 and evolved from

there to a high school in 1933. Our campus is unique as it resembles a college campus with 15

buildings and numerous ball fields and a nature center spread across 240 acres of land. To read in

more detail about our school’s history, click on this link:

http://www.mceachernhigh.org/page/jmhs-history/

Our library houses a collection of approximately 18,000 resources. It has a classroom set

of personal computers, as well as laptops. We are directly linked to the Cobb County server,

which gives us access to Cobb Virtual Library. It is a county-wide online resource center. On it

we can access GALILEO, as well as the Literary Resource Center. We are also linked to Destiny

for searching for local school resources or county-wide resources. To read more about our Media

Center resources, click on this link: http://www.mceachernhigh.org/page/media-center/

In the English Department there are 3 Senior English teachers. We teach AP English,

Honors and College-Preparatory British Literature, and Multicultural Literature. There are

approximately 595 seniors distributed amongst these classes. About 210 of them are British

Literature students. There are two special needs students and twelve ESOL (Spanish-speaking)

students in these classes. There is only one College-Preparatory British Literature class;

therefore, the reading levels of the majority of these students is on- or above-level. The two

special needs students are in the College-Preparatory class, but their disabilities are behavioral,

not intellectual.

Curriculum Review/Mapping

We have just finished studying the Anglo-Saxon period, and because British Literature is

studied chronologically, we will be looking at the Middle Ages next. I wanted to broaden our

scope to all of Europe this year, because of the Common Core focus on informational texts and

making connections across the curriculum. I want my students to trace the beginnings of the

Medieval period in Europe and how Britain, specifically, fits in this broader view. The main

literary focus will be Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Some areas of focus will be the

Black Plague, the Crusades, religious doctrines, wars, literature, and historical timelines. The

major assessment will, of course, be in the form of a research project/paper. Each individual will

complete a paper, but will also be a part of a group with connectable topics. Each group will

produce a multi-media project that compiles the main connections and aspects discovered in their

papers. A wide variety of Web 2.0 tools are at their disposal, as well as Media Player, Microsoft

Office resources, and digital photography. In addition to the resources I have selected for

purchase (see spreadsheet for Materials Order), I created a Resource List through Destiny. Our

Media Specialist recommended this for my online sources “web site” as it would be easy for

students to access from any computer at school, and, as long as they keep up with the username

and password for Cobb Virtual Library (we provide each student with a sticker with this

information on it), it is easy to access from home, too. For the purposes of this assignment, I will

provide a link to Cobb Virtual Library and Destiny

(http://cvl.cobbk12.org/inside/level/hs/index.html). The username for CVL is cobb, and the

password is bird. Click on Destiny and choose McEachern High School, click on the Catalog tab,

then click on Resource Lists, then click on Public Lists, and scroll down and click on The Middle

Ages List. There you will find a list of online resources for the research paper and the group

project. These are the main standards that will be associated with this unit of study:

Reading & Literary:

ELACC12RL2- Determine two or more themes or central ideas of text and analyze their

development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to

produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text.

ELACC12RL3- Analyze the impact of the author's choices regarding how to develop and relate

elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the

characters are introduced and developed).

ELACC12RL7- Analyze multiple interpretations of a story, drama, or poem (e.g., recorded or

live production of a play or recorded novel or poetry), evaluating how each version interprets the

source text.

Reading Informational:

ELACC12RI2- same wording as RL2 in Reading Literary standard above

ELACC12RI3- Analyze a complex set of ideas or sequence of events and explain how specific

individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop over the course of the text.

ELACC12RI7- Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in different

media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively) as well as in words in order to address a question

or solve a problem.

Collection Evaluation

Before I even went to our media center, I conducted a Destiny search from my PC in my

classroom. I used “medieval history” as my key words. It yielded 45 results. I also used

“medieval literature” and that yielded 29 results. Across these two searches the Dewey numbers

seemed to have a diverse range, as seen in the chart below:

Dewey Total Resources

200’s 5

300’s 5

500’s 1

600’s 3

700’s 3

800’s 4

900’s 28

F 2

REF 14

VT 8

eBook 1

When I went to the media center, the media specialist used Destiny to do a county-wide search.

She used “middle ages literature” as her key words and yielded 385 results. Unfortunately, an

examination of most of the “off-site” materials showed that there usually weren’t any more than

two copies of each in the entire county, so inter-library loans didn’t appear to be viable.

Next, I took my lists around to the appropriate shelves to do a physical evaluation of the

materials. When I reached the 900’s section, an almost palpable smell of dust and mildew

reached me before I even picked the first book off the shelf. There was one book in particular the

media specialist had marked for me to find as it had the oldest copyright of 1935! I found the

book and pulled it to examine its cover and title page. I discovered that the copyright was

actually 1953, not 1935. 1953 is not much better, but it uncovered another issue with collection

management – data entry error. Despite the 18 year mistake, the book had obvious signs of

decay: mildew stains and crumbling pages. The jacket was also ripped in the corners and not

secured to the book itself. After pulling several books in the section for a closer look, I

discovered almost all of them to be in similar conditions. I went back to the office and sat down

to figure out the average copyright of these books: 1979! There were only five sources published

in or after 2000! Age is definitely a major weakness in this collection.

The media specialist did a circulation report on the majority of the resources. It was not

surprising that many of them had not been checked out at all in the last 10 years. None of the

videos had ever been checked out by students, and only three teachers had checked them out in

the last 5 years. The eBook had been ordered two years ago by another English teacher to be

used for a similar project. Apparently, she never used it, but a History teacher checked it out for

a week last summer. That was an interesting find. There is a total of 18, 586 resources in

circulation in our media center. In the 900’s section alone, there were only 44 sources checked

last year. In the 800’s there were only 20. If the average age of the collection for my topic is any

indication, we are in dire need of updated materials to increase circulation.

Obviously, the available collection has many weaknesses. Besides age, I think diversity is

an issue. Most of the books, discovered during the physical inspection, have small print and very

few illustrations. Being that the topic of the Middle Ages is fairly established, much of the

information in these books is probably still accurate, but there is need for updated formats and

more interactive texts. Most of students are not opposed to using print resources, but they are

turned off by page after page of small text and no pictures. These formats are intimidating and

boring. If they were limited to just the physical resources in the library, they would be able to get

the projects done, but it would be very time-consuming, tedious, and frustrating for them and

me!

My last evaluation was for matching the resources with the curriculum/standards. As far

as information is concerned, most of the resources appeared to still be accurate representations of

the time period. Many of the books, however, were either too specific or too broad, nothing

comprehensive. The issue with too specific or too broad is that a student would have to spend too

much time sifting through small bits of information in multiple books. This would lead to

confusing sources for documentation purposes and, possibly, misrepresenting information. In

skimming through the Table of Contents of several resources, there didn’t appear to be any

detailed multicultural information. Given that the Middle Ages covered much of Europe and

Asia, there should be more than just the usual information about The Crusades and Italy. The

lack of technology also falls short of the standards, as well as having a variety of versions of

texts for comparison. And, to be blunt, there are no resources of any sort for English Language

Learners.

Budget Summary

Based on my findings above, I determined that we needed more digital, multicultural, and

ELL resources. I also felt that there is still enough of a need for print resources to warrant a great

deal of weeding old books and purchasing new and updated books. In searching for new

resources, I also discovered some new subtopics that could be incorporated into the research

projects: warfare, art, and music. As mentioned above, to add to the purchased resources, I

created, through Destiny, a public Resource List of online resources relevant to the unit project.

Please see the attached Excel file for titles, costs, reviews, etc. Of my spending budget of $4000,

I was able to use $3,935.85.