Anonymous Patron writes “Sad News From Bellignham, MA When the town prepared to open its renovated middle school, the School Building Committee found only four boxes of books to stock its new library.
“We had no library books at all. We had some fiction to start (with), but not that much,” Elaine D’Alfonso, principal of Bellingham Memorial Middle School, said this week.
As the fiscal 2006 budget season begins, D’Alfonso and other school officials hope additional cash and a full-time library/media director will improve the library.”
my favourite comment
From the principal: “Purchasing the bulk of a library’s non-fiction books at the same time is not a good idea she said, because they would all go out of date at the same time.”
They will not! Science, especially technology books will be outdated long before books on animals, architecture, history, poetry…etc. etc. I bought my non fiction all at the same time (and have since bought more, through budget and bookfair) and haven’t had any problems.
And can I just say they had really piss-poor planning? Even when our school was built, the company was savvy enough to know there was a seperate book budget needed. (And all I got was $25,000 cdn)
I thought our system was bad, I’m really glad I don’t work/live in that area.
s/
starting a new library with nothing
I too had the charge of trying to start a new middle school library with little or no new books. The 2 feeder schools were told to go through their collections and send over books more appropriate for a middle school now that they were going to be K-5.
Most of the books from the other school were not only 20 years old but some were 30 and even 40 years old. Those I referred to as the cr** pile. To thing a school would just keep those books on their shelves seemed unbelievable but there are no SACS standards about the age of books. Just an emphasis on the number of books.
But I am slowly building the collection through donations from parents and students, hosing bookfairs, going to garage sales, everything I can think of to bring good books to our students.
Until the school board realizes the importance of a current libary collection vs new uniforms for cheerleaders and sports players, nothing much will change.