Juanita Douglas

Collection Development Assignment

FRIT 7134 – Spring 2011
March 3, 2011

DESCRIPTION OF SITE AND LEARNERS

I am one of the 13,285 full-time employees who work for the DeKalb County School System.

This school system is the second largest in the state of Georgia. DeKalb County School System,

one of the most culturally diverse counties in the nation, has a student enrollment of more than

102,000 students in 143 schools and centers. Approximately 75% of the students are black, 10%

white, 10% Hispanic, and 5% other races. Seventy percent of the students in DeKalb County

qualify for free or reduced lunch. The lowest percentage at one school being 10%, and the

highest being one hundred percent at another school.

I have been teaching Language Arts at Stephenson Middle School for the past four years, and

have really enjoyed working with the students, staff and community. Stephenson Middle School,

based on the last FTE count, houses 1,158 students, and 76% of these students qualify for free

and reduced lunch. Stephenson Middle School is considered one of the better schools in county.

This statement is supported by substitutes, parents, and the number of students enrolled with

special permissions and affidavits. Stephenson Middle School personnel comprise of 76 staff

members, 68 of whom are teachers. At Stephenson, we have been allocated five positions for

administrators; however we have been functioning effectively with four since the beginning of

the school year in August.

Stephenson Middle School opened its doors in the fall of 1996 to approximately 1,100 students.

Today, SMS serves a population of approximately 1,158 sixth, seventh and eighth grade

Juanita Douglas
students. Of these students, 94% is black, 2% Hispanic, 1 % Native American, 0 white, and 2%

Multi-racial. The learning abilities of the students vary. 81.6% of students meet and exceed their

reading standards at the last CRCT examination, and 18.4% of students did not meet their

standards. Stephenson Middle School did not meet AYP this year though. The reason being, of

the 138 students with learning disabilities 54.3% did not meet the basic learning.

The Mission in the Stephenson Middle School Community is to ensure that the success of every

child is maximized in a dynamic, nurturing, learning environment. The school hours are from

8:50 – 3:50, however the media centers opens at 8:20 for students wanting to use the media

center before class begins. The media center currently has 13,209 different titles and18, 268

copies. It is also equipped with 21 computers for students use, 10 laptops, 3 working LCD

projectors, 1 promethium board, and 3 working digital cameras. The media center also has

Internet connection but prior to using the Internet, a student must have an Internet Acceptable

Use Agreement signed as a part of the Student Code of Conduct brochure.

CURRICULUM REVIEW
Since I am teaching in the seventh grade I chose sot examine an area where my students will

more likely use, and I can easily meet with their teachers. I chose to examine the Seventh Grade

Social Studies curriculum. More specifically I chose to examine the government and civic

understanding of Africa. I have noted that the information in this section will be mainly used by

the seventh graders because the social studies curriculum focuses on a different area each year.

SS7G4 The student will describe the diverse cultures of the people who live in Africa.
a. Explain the differences between an ethnic group and a religious group.
b. Explain the diversity of religions within the Arab, Ashanti, Bantu, and Swahili ethnic groups.
c. Evaluate how the literacy rate affects the standard of living.

Juanita Douglas
Government/Civics Understandings
SS7CG1 The student will compare and contrast various forms of government.
a. Describe the ways government systems distribute power: unitary, confederation, and federal.
b. Explain how governments determine citizen participation: autocratic, oligarchic, and
democratic.
c. Describe the two predominant forms of democratic governments: parliamentary and
presidential.

SS7CG2 The student will explain the structures of the modern governments of Africa.
a. Compare the republican systems of government in the Republic of Kenya and the Republic of
South Africa to the dictatorship of the Republic of Sudan, distinguishing the form of leadership
and role of the citizen in terms of voting and personal freedoms.

SS7CG3 The student will analyze how politics in Africa impacts standard of living.
a. Compare how various factors, including gender, affect access to education in Kenya and
Sudan.
b. Describe the impact of government stability on the distribution of resources to combat AIDS
and famine across Africa.
Economic Understandings

SS7E1 The student will analyze different economic systems.

a. Compare how traditional, command, and market economies answer the economic questions of
(1) what to produce, (2) how to produce, and (3) for whom to produce.
b. Explain how most countries have a mixed economy located on a continuum between pure
market and pure command.
c. Compare and contrast the economic systems in South Africa and Nigeria.

Standard Concept Tasks/Activities/Products Resources

SS7CG2 Government Students will complete a graphic
organizer comparing the governments www.freedomhouse
of Kenya, Sudan and South Africa .org
SS7CG1 Politics Students will hold the mock trial based onhttp://www.bradley.e
the scenario chosen. They follow the rulesdu/campusorg/trial/b
of law and flow smoothly. asic_info/stages/

Juanita Douglas
 SS7G1a,b; Economics Using the Publisher template provided http://www.pbs.org/wn
SS7G3a; Politics by the teacher, students are to create et/africa/index.html
SS7G4a,b, Government their own newspaper. It should include www.cia.gov
SS7CG1a, information that would be relevant to http://www.galileo.usg.
SS7b,c; anyone who wanted to know about edu
CG2a; Africa Today
CG3a,b
SS7G4 Culture Students will write a comparative essay
comparing and contrasting two any two
cultures found in the African regions.

Juanita Douglas
COLLECTION REVIEW

Our media center uses the Destiny Online Cataloguing System. This is a very comprehensive

system, and can be accessed from any location where there is Internet connection. After choosing

my content area, and locating the relevant standards, I immediately checked our Destiny. I

wanted to find the number of items in the media center that are related to African and where I

could locate these. I found there were 99 items on Africa and they could be found in the 900s and

300s area. Some books were also found in the non-fiction sections and these are arranged

alphabetically according to author.

Since I had an idea of where to look in the media center, I then went to peruse the shelves. All

the shelves in the media center are short, which allows everyone, even students in wheel chairs to

have easy access to the books. The non-fiction books are on the walls surrounding the media

center and the fiction books are on the shelves in the middle of the media center.

I began looking at the books in the 900 section, and found they were quite many, and many dealt

with the historical and cultural aspect of Africa. The books were in good condition and were

neatly packed on the shelves. I decided to go back to Destiny to narrow my search, to find

materials specific to my needs about Africa.

Prior to analyzing the books on Destiny, I decided to stop and interview the Social Studies

teacher on my team. He told me that he seldom used the resources in the media center for the

units on Africa, because many of the books are very general, and do discuss relevant and modern

changes in the continent. He also said he loves United Streaming, and uses that very often in his

classroom. He said he would also rent movies and documentaries and show them in the

classroom. He argued that these images made lasting impacts on the students on the students’

Juanita Douglas
memories. When asked how he would improve the collection he stated he would include

resources that dealt with the governments and economy of the African regions.

I then decided to go to Destiny to limit my search on the resources that the media center has on

African governments and their economic markets.

My search on African governments revealed that the library has four books. The most recent one

published in 2000. I decided to the search by the general subject Africa according to date and

found that there were 26 items published after 2000. Two of these are reference books that could

not be taken out of the library; two were fiction, 1 compact disc, and 1 video. The other books

dealt with the cultural and geographical location aspects of Africa.

Below is a chart which shows the percentage of resources about Africa in the media center based

on their date of publication. Nothing has been purchased for this collection after 2008.

Analysis of Resources By Date of Publication

2005- 2008 2000 -2004 1995-1999 1990-1994 1985-1989 1980-1984

4% 9%
12%

15%

28%

32%

Juanita Douglas
Summary of Collection Needs

1. Purchase books that have been published in the past decade. Even though the collection

has ninety nine books on Africa, most of them focus on the geographical aspects of the

region.

2. Choose books that focus on the modern changes on Africa. Most of the resources in the

media center address the issues during slavery and the apartheid periods.

3. Purchase audio books and books with large print for our students with disabilities. The

audio books and books with large prints in the media center targets the English Language

Reading standards and not the Social Studies standards.

4. Locate videos that address the areas of modern Africa.

5. Purchase some graphic novels since the Social Studies inferred that the students were

more visual learners.

6. Explore the use of technology with teachers. Other than United Streaming and Galileo,

the library does not subscribe to any online data bases. Teachers in the Social Studies

department have not been using the library. The availability of money to be spent in their

department would be a good opportunity to use technology to entice them with

technology and e-books to use the media center for updated materials. I will therefore

purchase data bases which contain information that can be used by the social studies

teachers in various areas.

BUDGET SUMMARY
Identifying the relevant and needed resources for the media center was an enjoyable, but time

consuming task. I researched several vendors, and did some comparison of prices. The ranges in

Juanita Douglas
prices were very small. TitleWave is my favorite vendor because the items have multiple

reviews, and identified a specific grade level that the book can be used for. Amazon.com was

the site I thought I would use the most, but after this assignment, I realized it may not be the

ideal one for media specialists. I had a difficulty locating the ISBN for some of the books sold on

the site, and I was not very impressed by some of their reviews. I therefore did a basic search

there, when I found an ideal book, I looked for similar books on Novelist, and then purchased

them from Title Wave.

I have tried to cover every standard of the unit by purchasing books, videos, novels; graphic

novels and realistic fiction, books in large print, data bases and atlases. Multicultural aspects are

covered in most of the books since the unit involves Africa and its different cultures. According

to our school data our school has 1% Hispanic so I purchased a few Spanish titles. I also bought

these because Spanish is offered as a course, and the Spanish teacher could assign readings to

students from these texts. The total cost for updating the media center was $3786.51. See the

attached Excel spreadsheet for specific titles and vendors.

I have also included a list of websites teachers can consult, or direct their students to when

researching the Africa regions on my wiki link inserted below

http://juanitadouglas.pbworks.com/w/page/37101313/Social-Studies-I--Resource-Guide

Juanita Douglas