Jeffrey Steven Hornyak Collection Evaluation and Development Plan FRIT 7134 February 18, 2012 Site Description

and Environmental Scan Northside High School is located in Warner Robins, Georgia. The school has a total of 1,956 students enrolled and 290 staff members including 123 certified teachers. Northside also has a freshman academy where entering ninth graders take classes separated from upper classmen for much of their freshman year. Freshmen may venture out to the main campus for electives but most of their classes are contained in the freshman academy. There are currently 353 seniors enrolled at Northside. Among the seniors, 48% are Caucasian, 44% African American, 6% Hispanic, and the remaining 2% are other races or biracial. Among seniors there are 47 students currently receiving special education services, and 5 ESOL students. The reading levels of the senior class vary among those with above grade level lexile scores to much below current grade levels. At one time there were two media centers serving both campuses, they were consolidated seven years ago into a newly built media center. Northsides media enter is located in the main lobby hub of the school upstairs at the intersection of the Science and Social Studies halls. The media center boasts a collection of 23,357 items including books, periodicals, DVDs, and other resources. Local resources include access to a virtual library from the Gale Group. Students and faculty also have access to Salem Press History Resources and to test prep material through www.usatestprep.com. These resources help students excel in all academic content areas and provide preparation resources for the myriad of standardized tests the students must take. The

media center makes every effort to accommodate requests for additional resources that students and faculty may need.

Collection Review and Mapping For this assignment I have chosen to focus on Finance. I teach Math of Finance at Northside, the class is a senior level math elective. Math of Finance is open only to seniors and currently 112 seniors at Northside are enrolled in the class. The foundation for Math of Finance is in a conceptual understanding and application of personal finance topics. Much of the class is project based and includes a focus on simulations of various financial issues that students face during and after high school. One of the major projects includes researching stocks and then buying $100,000 worth of securities on a virtual stock exchange. Students are then required to monitor their portfolio and make advanced trading decisions based on market conditions and the direction of the overall American economy. Other notable projects include the million dollar project where students are required to use the knowledge attained from class to spend $1,000,000.00. Students are required to spend the money in different categories that have spending caps in place and students must then study the tax and estate planning issues that arise when spending large amounts of money. The class bridges a great deal of the personal finance portion of Economics which is a required course for graduation. I have chosen to include select standards from Economics for this project as they help to deepen the knowledge base that Math of Finance helps provide.

The following standards were evaluated: SSEPF1 The student will apply rational decision making to personal spending and saving choices. SSEPF3 The student will explain how changes in monetary and fiscal policy can have an impact on an individuals spending and saving choices. SSEPF4 SSEPF5 The student will evaluate the costs and benefits of using credit. The student will describe how insurance and other risk-management strategies protect against financial loss. MMFA1 Students will use basic functions to solve and model problems related to stock transactions, banking and credit, employment and taxes, rent and mortgages, retirement planning, and other related finance applications. MMFP4 Students will make connections among mathematical ideas and to other disciplines. Recognize and use connections among mathematical ideas. Understand how mathematical ideas interconnect and build on one another to produce a coherent whole. Recognize and apply mathematics in contexts outside of mathematics. MMFP5 Students will represent mathematics in multiple ways. Select, apply, and translate among mathematical representations to solve problems. Use representations to model and interpret physical, social, and mathematical phenomena.

The selected standards focus on teaching students basic personal finance calculations as well as the underlying conceptual frameworks that surround those topics. Highlights of content include studies in capital markets, banking, employment finances, dwelling finances, credit, and retirement planning. The standards also focus on bridging the standard contents to other

disciplines, notably Economics. The content of these classes provide students with a broad range of understandings and skill sets related to personal finance. These issues are critically relevant for seniors taking these classes as all of them will be entering the adult world where they face serious financial decisions. A strong background in personal finance can help these students establish healthy financial habits that can benefit them throughout their lives.

Collection Evaluation I used four different techniques to evaluate the collection. My first evaluation of the collection was to browse the shelves of the library where I believed I would find books related to finance. I found there was a section of shelving that with the title Careers & Professional and I searched among the books to find those relevant to Finance. I found several that included personal finance topics. I then focused my attention on looking up the Dewey numbers I thought would be relevant to my search. I found the following Dewey numbers: 510 Math, 650 Management & Public Records, 640 Family & Financial Management, 310 Statistics, 330 Economics, and 380 Commerce. As I searched the shelves I found most of the items related to Finance in the 330s, 340s, 510s, and 640s. The second evaluation of the collection was performed using the online collection management software Surpass. Throughout my search I focused on keyword searches and Dewey decimal searches for finance, personal finance, money management, and investments. I found that the standards were broad and included the same wording as my searches. I did find that the Safari search returned some results that were not relevant at all. The system evaluates the keyword and searches both the title and part of the text or a synopsis that is on file. Most of the differences were in careers related to finance that may not be included in the specific standards

but this information is important none the less. I then searched several key words but started with finance which returned 27 results. Many of the results were quite good. As I looked through the results I found that not all 27 were relevant to Finance. I also found that there were quite a few books that were quite old, some more than by 20 years. The foundations of Finance may be fundamental and unchanging yet most of the intricacies of personal finance is part of an ever changing set of circumstances that includes but is not limited to: the general Economy, job markets, capital markets, and tax law. My attention was then focused on evaluating the circulation of the identified materials. The Surpass software allowed me to find circulation counts by Dewey class. I found that in the 300s where many of the books were found, only 43 had been checked out this year. In the 500s and 600s 41 and 90 had been checked out respectively. The following illustrates the circulation statistics for the focus material.

Copyright Date

Year Circulation Volumes Percent 6.7% 13.3% 20.0% 13.3% 13.3% 26.7% 6.7%

1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s

1 2 3 2 2 4 1

When I looked closer at the actual resources selected many of them had been checked out once but others had not been checked out for more than two years. There were some titles related to capital market transactions and other investments that had been checked out by my very own students in the past few months. Students taking Economics also had been checking out some of the books in the past semester and a few of the books related to American economics had considerable circulation. Once I began looking into circulation I did notice that some of the books that were popular with students were quite old, one finance book was published in 1991, much has changed in the finance world in the past 21 years. This led me my final evaluation of the collection which was to do an age analysis of the materials. I took the Dewey call range 330-340 and found the following about the age of the collection: Copyright Date Collection Volumes 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 9 47 83 38 35 68 28 Percent 2.9% 15.1% 26.6% 12.2% 11.2% 21.8% 9.0%

As you can see, 68% of the collection was published prior to 1999. I returned to the standards and noticed that much of the material was not just centered on established financial

theory but centered on current financial trends and habits. I became concerned about the age of collection as much of the material written before 1999 would not have the current issues related to finance such as the downturn in the capital markets of the late 2000s or the collapse of collateralized debt obligations market. This led me to believe that resources should be purchased that had been published in the past few years.

Collection Needs Resources should be chosen that span content areas. Because the standards addressed are from both math and social studies the resources should address and connect the content areas. Various types of media should be purchased. The current collection is heavy on print materials and there are many resources such as DVDs, audio selections, software, etc. that can be added to the collection. Keep the focus on non-fiction resources as there are likely little to no fiction titles available in personal finance. Resources should be chosen that have been published in the past 7 years. This may seem like a short window yet due to the fast changing nature of financial markets and the economy, the resources must be relevant. Read reviews carefully to ensure accuracy and to control bias in materials. Many people consider themselves experts in the financial field, great effort should be used to ensure the greatest efficacy of resources purchased.

Budget Summary The $4,000.00 budget was used to find resources of different formats including: books, ebooks, DVD series, and audio selections. Attention was also given to find a variety of content that allowed teachers to check out materials for their whole class as well as finding resources that would allow students to focus on a particular subject related to personal finance. Furthermore, resources were purchased that allowed students to find the connection between personal finance and the greater American economy. There are also books including narratives that are not strictly information based that tell the stories of Americans that have struggled with their finances. Most of the books selected are found in the 300s and 600s of the Dewey Decimal System while a few are from the 500s. These Dewey numbers represent books from Economics, Family & Financial Management, and Math. Finally, a variety of resources were purchased that focused on multicultural issues within finance and a few resources that were written in Spanish to accommodate ESOL students. The following table represents a break down of the materials being ordered: Format Books eBooks CD Audio DVD Series TOTALS Number of Items Purchase Price 41 15 2 9 67 $1,452.13 $630.13 $127.79 $1,769.77 $3,979.82

A wiki of other web based resources was created and can be accessed by anyone using the internet by directing their browsers to http://financeresources.wikispaces.com/.