New Books for a New School

Do you know where library books come from?

Ever wonder how books are selected for new schools?

Here in Frisco each book is individually selected for a spot in each school library. Every time a new school opens (which happens often here!) the district librarians work together to choose thousands of books for each library's opening day collection. It's a big job choosing all those books, magazines, audio books and reference materials, but it's lots of fun too.

Steps to a New School Library:

1. The library collection areas (nonfiction, reference, easy, etc.) are divided up and the New School Committee decides how much money should be spent on each area. We use collection development guidelines and look at the total book budget amount to decide how much to spend on each area, for example: budget 6.50% for biographies, 18% for fiction, 2.4% for the 800 section.
2. Librarians volunteer to select materials for each section of the library. This involves reading lots of book reviews and looking at library standards, TEKS, and the district's curriculum to decide what should be on the library shelves.  Some of our favorite selection tools include Booklist, Horn Book and School Library Journal - these are professional journals with special sections of book reviews written by qualified reviewers.
3. Librarians send their book choices to the New School Committee Chair (that's me) to be sorted, compiled, and finalized.
4. The New School Selection Committee meets in April to look over the lists and check for errors, such as books with outdated material, older copyright dates, titles in paperback instead of library binding, etc.
5. Changes are made to the collection and it is ready to be ordered from a library book vendor. The vendors will prepare our order by adding barcodes, spine labels, and sending records for each item to be uploaded into the library catalog. Both new elementary schools (Purefoy and Sonntag) receive the same opening day materials.

Up Next:

Books will be delivered over the summer and placed on library shelves.
Computers and technology will be installed so we can access our circulation software system, we use Horizon in Frisco ISD.
We should be ready for checkouts on the very first day of school!

Hopefully, all your favorite books are on the way.

Do you have an idea for a book we should have in the library?

Let me know by completing our new Suggestion Form.