Behavioral Collection Development

May 2, 2008 karrisa

            Tri-County Schools in Easthampton, Massachusetts is a behavioral special education school with about 120 students. That means the students that attend the school are labeled as behavioral problems. The student’s original school district pays anywhere from $50,000 to $60,000 a year for the student to attend Tri-County Schools. The ages range from 7 to 20 years old with the majority of the students attending the middle and high schools. The school is split into three wings for the Elementary, Middle and High schools. There is one library that services the three schools. It includes about 15 computers, a lot of bookshelves and a few tattered books. The majority of the books donated from surrounding schools and libraries. In the last few years the school has purchased quite a few book sets from Scholastic books. These are used for reading classes, so the whole class can be reading the same book at the same time. Scholastic books has also offered Tri-County Schools a grant to expand their library. For every book that Tri-County Schools buys Scholastic books will match that dollar for dollar. This is a great opportunity for the school to expand their library.

            For this collection development experiment I want to concentrate on the Middle and High schools section of the library but more specifically, I want to give the library a “behavioral section”. Currently the library has no order to it. It is not organized by Dewey or Cutter. It is alphabetized by author’s last name but there is no cataloging program. That means that the students can’t even check out a book. The current book borrowing policy is, a teacher can take their class to the library and the students can use the books in the library or take them back to the classroom but the teacher is responsible for the book. In other words no one knows where the books are and there is no way to track down a book if you need it or tell how long someone has had a book. Honestly it’s a stretch to call it a library. The book sets are on a sign out by teacher only so they have are easier to keep track of.

            I want to add a collection of books that these particular students would enjoy. These students are mostly foster children, or children who live in residential programs. They have been through more then most people can imagine. Sadly they think they are the only ones going through these tough times and feel there is no one to help them. Even though the teachers, counselors and other staff try to be there for the students as much as possible, there is such a high turn over rate for staff that it is hard for the students to become comfortable with the new people. My hope is having a collection of books that these students can relate to will help them through their hard times. This can provide an escape for the students. A while back the students were poled about what books they would be interested in reading. This is where the idea of behavioral books came from.

            I am not going to concentrate on the rest of the library because I think this is the most important section. This section currently does not exist so I am building it from scratch. 

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