Collection Analysis
Santa Fe Indian School Library Media Center
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Assignment 3
Collection Analysis
Info 665 – Prof Collins
Collection Development
Submitted by:
Doreen Bailey
Christina Hernandez
Taryn Hickey
Sherry Thurston
Table of Contents
Santa Fe Indian School Library Media Center…………………...……………………………3
Collections to be Mapped……………………………………………..…………………………4
Strengths and Weaknesses of Mapped Collections…………………………………………….5
External Comparison of Mapped Collections………………………...………………………..6
Group Strategies and Responsibilities………………………………………………………….9
Appendix A: Collection Mapping Worksheet………………………………………………...11
Appendix B: Collection Map for Three Selected Areas…………………………...…………12
Appendix C: Collection Map of SFIS LMC Collection………………………………………13
Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………...………..16
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Santa Fe Indian School Library Media Center
“The Library Media Center is the heart of the learning environment at
Santa Fe Indian School. It provides resources to support the curriculum and the
information needs of the school community.”
-SFIS LMC Mission Statement
The Santa Fe Indian School Library Media Center serves a population of 700 students
from Pueblo villages, the Hopi-Tewa villages, the Jicarilla and Mescalero Apache tribes, and the
New Mexico Chapters of the Navajo Nation. This group of 7th – 12th graders, many of whom
reside in the school dormitory, represents 25 separate language or dialect groups. In addition,
SFIS LMC serves the information needs of its 100 staff members and various Native American
community leaders from around the state, bringing its user population to nearly 1000 patrons.
The Library Media Center provides nearly 16,000 resources to support and enrich the
school curriculum which consists of the typical American middle and high school courses, plus
specialized studies that reflect the school mission which places emphasis on the continuation of
the traditional Pueblo way of life (Course of Study, 2009). Resources must meet acceptable
standards of quality, especially in the depiction of Native Americans, in order to be included in
the library collection. There are 22.33 items per student in the circulating collection, granting the
LMC a “Good” rating when evaluated by the national standard of 40 items per student (Ho &
Loertsher, 1995, p 24).
The library encourages reading fluency, interest autonomy, and information literacy by
offering stimulating and diverse materials in a variety of formats and levels of difficulty.
Resources serve and expand the interests and skills of the library’s patrons while remaining
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appropriate to a school environment; however, because SFIS LMC is the only library to which
the students have regular access, it collects resources in a wider range of topics, levels, and
formats than most school libraries (adapted from Hopkinton, 2005).
Collections to be Mapped
Two general subject area collections were identified as needing an infusion of resources
due to their insufficiency in supporting their respective areas of the school curriculum:
Geography & History and Social Science/Statistics. SFIS has a total of 44 resources under
Geography and History which, at 0.0729 items per student, makes it a less than fair collection.
The library has a strong geography section, but Dewey 900-909, especially Land and People
(900 and 908) and Philosophy and Theory (901), is weak and should be augmented if such funds
are available.
Statistics under Social Science (310-319), and especially General Statistics (310), is an
even weaker area of the collection. While the library has a number of books that contain
statistical information on specific countries of the world, there are only six books on the subjects
of statistics or statistical analysis, and half of those are on probability theory. These six available
resources can only be found by keyword search because they are classified under other Dewey
categories. There are no items available for browsing in the 310 Statistics area of the non-fiction
shelves, making Social Science/Statistics a less-than-mediocre collection with 0.0086 items per
student. If the library had more funding, this collection could be strengthened.
The special emphasis collection selected for study is the SFIS Indian Collection. At SFIS,
all materials related to Indians of North America are classified as Dewey 970, with further
subclasses to specify which aspect of Native American experience is covered in the resource.
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The strength of the SFIS LMC lies in this collection, with a total of 3,968 items—an average of
5.7 items per student. These resources support the required community-based units found in
every course at the school, as well as the school’s unique Native American-focused courses
(Course of Study, 2009). Although the Indian Collection is a strength of the Santa Fe Indian
School Library Media Center, it needs to be constantly updated to provide students, staff, and
community members with the current resources needed to complete projects. As the SFIS LMC
attempts to purchase appropriate and quality resources pertaining to Native Americans published
every year, the collection demands a large part of the library’s budget. This large budget, and the
importance of these resources to the SFIS collection as a whole, qualifies the Indian Collection to
be selected as the special emphasis collection for this study, in the hopes that more money can be
found to support acquisitions in this area.
Strengths and Weaknesses of Mapped Collections
Library collections can be assessed by how well they accommodate the library’s mission
and patrons’ information needs. As stated in the above description, the Geography & History
collection of the LMC is only mediocre, at 0.0729 items per student. This area (Dewey 900-909)
should contain materials covering anthropology, sociology, and the relationship of land and
culture, all of which are elements of the Social Studies curriculum at SFIS. Having less than onetenth of a book per student is unacceptable in such an important and broad subject area; this
insufficiency of resources directly contradicts the LMC’s mission of supporting school
curriculum. Since the relation of land to culture is the perspective from which all social studies
courses are taught at Santa Fe Indian School, the lack of sufficient resources in this area is
unacceptable.
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Unfortunately, the same can be said for the LMC’s miniscule Statistics collection. At
0.0086 items per student, this collection cannot support even the infrequently-taught probability
and statistics course, offered once every three years (Course of Study, 2009). If the school is
committed to teaching action research, as it does in a number of courses (Course of Study, 2009),
the LMC should have supporting materials, such as works on the analysis of statistical
information or general works on probability theory. This inadequacy is, again, in direct
contradiction to the LMC’s mission and values. However, it is important to note that these
deficits are partially ameliorated by online subscription databases, such as Gale InfoTrac, Issues,
NewsBank, and World Geography.
The true strength of the LMC lies with its special emphasis Indian collection. In keeping
with its main objective—to support and enrich both the school curriculum and community
needs—the SFIS library provides resources which support unique coursework in areas such as
heritage languages, Native American history, tribal governments, and tribal arts and crafts; in
short, it covers all aspects of the Native American experience that are needed for communitybased education units in all courses, and for the senior honors project (Course of Study, 2009).
The collection, consisting of over 25% of the total library collection (the only other
collection which comes near this figure is the large fiction collection), is the greatest strength of
the LMC, but requires constant additions in order to keep the collection current and fulfill the
needs of students, staff, and the Native American community, many of whom use these resources
for important research related to government and funding issues. The Indian collection has an
average age of 1985, making it the second most aged area of the SFIS collection, because few of
its resources are deselected for being dated; however, if more funding were available, more
timely and accurate resources could be acquired to replace those that are out-of-date.
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As the LMC is the “heart of the learning environment at Santa Fe Indian School,” having
sufficient resources to support curriculum is a necessity. In order to accomplish this mission and
better support the needs of the school and community, LMC staff must add resources to its
Geography & History and Statistics collections, as well as weeding outdated resources from the
Indian collection while adding more current items.
External Comparison of Mapped Collections
In order to further analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the three chosen collection
areas, each was compared to its respective collection at the Rough Rock Community School
Library. Rough Rock is a Bureau of Indian Education grant school like SFIS, located in Chinle,
AZ. The mission of the school is “to focus on the Diné Fundamental beliefs of Knowledge,
Planning, Harmony, and Hope;” the foundations of the school are “Navajo culture, philosophies,
and language” (Rough Rock Community School, 2008). This focus on Navajo culture and
tradition is similar to that of Santa Fe Indian School’s focus on Pueblo culture, and each school
library exists to support these concentrations in addition to school curriculum. Although RRCS
consists of students in grades K-12, enrollment is actually slightly lower than that of SFIS, at just
short of 600 total students. The RRCS library holds approximately one-third of the titles held by
SFIS, at about 5000-5500 titles (unfortunately, the school librarian did not respond to a request
for more accurate information).
Of the three collections under investigation, the general Statistics collection is the most
comparable in that both libraries have very few items in either the Dewey 310-319 range or when
evaluated based on keyword searching—SFIS has 6 while RRCS has none. This suggests that the
weakness seen in SFIS’s collection is not unusual for schools of its type, with few
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probability/statistics courses taught; however, the fact that it is not unusual to have so few
resources does not make it the best practice. Both SFIS and RRCS would benefit from the
addition of general resources to support their statistics and probability courses, no matter how
infrequently they are offered.
In the Geography & History area, where SFIS has 44 resources in Dewey 900-909, RRCS
has 25. All of these items are monographs, and they almost all fall in the 909 classification
(World History). In addition, RRCS library has 10 items and three encyclopedia sets that fall
outside of the given Dewey classification range but that relate to the subject, for a total of 38
geography and history resources. Given the much smaller total collection size of RRCS, the fact
that history/geography resources almost equal those of SFIS shows it to have a stronger
collection, although with less variety of format. However, when comparing the collections per
student, both are shown to be very weak, with approximately 0.063 books per student at RRCS
compared to 0.073 at SFIS.
Again, the main asset of the SFIS LMC is shown to be its extensive Indian collection,
where it is clear that the SFIS collection outweighs that of RRCS in both size and quality. In the
RRCS library catalog, a keyword search for “‘Indians of North America’ or ‘Native Americans’
or ‘Natives of North America’” revealed 688 resources, or approximately 13% of its collection
and 1.15 titles per student. These figures are dwarfed by the Indian Collection of SFIS, at 25% of
its total collection and almost six books per student. This is not to say that the collection at
RRCS is without merit; in fact, its resources span all appropriate reading levels evenly, offer a
variety of fiction and nonfiction, and are up-to-date, with an average publishing date of 1992
(making the collection an average seven years younger than the SFIS collection). However, to
these admirable qualities the collection at SFIS LMC adds a variety of formats, such as audio,
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VHS and DVD, while the RRCS collection has very little other than monographs. In all, SFIS
has a more extensive collection with a higher variety of materials.
Given the institutional differences between Santa Fe Indian School and Rough Rock
Community School, these comparisons can only give a limited analysis of the SFIS collections.
Santa Fe's location as the capital of its state, and the library's subsequent heightened use, require
the collection to outweigh that of another, typical school. In addition, this type of comparison
evaluation "rests on the assumption that a sufficient number of books is a measure of
importance/quality" (Collins, 2010). However, even taking these considerations into account,
SFIS is shown to have a relatively strong collection, especially in regards to its mission to teach
and preserve the Pueblo culture.
Group Strategies and Responsibilities
Our group took a different tack on the assignment this time. We scheduled an online chat
using the collaboration tools provided in Blackboard. During the chat we worked out our various
understandings, or misunderstandings, of the assignment, and assigned ourselves sections of the
assignment to complete. It was decided that Christina would handle the title page, table of
contents, and internal analysis sections; Doreen would take care of the information about the
library and subject areas to be mapped; Sherry would do all of the mapping and graphing; and
Taryn would be responsible for the external analysis and final editing of the paper. We
established a timeline for completion of our assigned tasks, giving ourselves one week from the
date of our chat to write our assigned sections, which would leave one more week for retouching
and editing. Once again, the group relied on Doreen for much of the assignment’s background
information, giving her more responsibility, as she had primary knowledge of the chosen library.
Everyone participated more fully in this assignment than Assignment two, which made the task
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less daunting. I was responsible for the table, and Doreen and I interpreted the criteria for the
paper differently; part of the difference in interpretation had to do with the way the table was
presented in Loertscher (1986). Loertscher did not provide detail about how he created the table,
and while the data is there, he did not specify how he put the table together. Additionally,
Murray, Messervey, Dobbs, and Gough (1986) present the data a little differently than
Loertscher, so a document on method and design would be helpful.
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Appendix A
Collection Mapping Worksheet
School Name:
Santa Fe Indian School
Number of Students:
700, in grades 7-12
Total Collections:
15,629 (not including circulating equipment and archival
materials)
Total Number of Collection Items per Student: 22.33
Subject Area
General Emphasis Collections
1. Geography and
History (900-909.999
Dewey)
2. Social
Sciences/Statistics
(310-319 Dewey)
Special Emphasis Collection
1. Indian Collection
(970-970.999 Locally
Modified Dewey*)
Number of Items
Items per Student
44+7 (in other Dewey
categories, but not 970)
.0729
6 (in other Dewey categories)
.0086
3968
5.6686
* At SFIS, 970 is used for Indians of North America, rather than for History of North America,
and rather than Dewey 973. Decimal numbers after 970 represent various aspects of Native
American culture and experience.
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Appendix B
Collection Map for Three Selected Areas
Items per
Student
Exemplary 7.0
Superior 1.20
Good .60
Fair .30
General Emphasis
Special
Emphasis
Items per
Student
22
22
21
21
20
20
19
19
18
18
17
17
16
16
15
15
14
14
13
13
12
12
11
11
10.0
9.5
9.0
8.5
8.0
7.5
7.0
6.5
6.0
5.5
5.0
4.5
4.0
3.5
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
.5
10.0
9.5
9.0
8.5
8.0
7.5
7.0
6.5
6.0
5.5
5.0
4.5
4.0
3.5
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
.5
Total
Collection
Standards by
Number of
Students
Statistics .0086
(6 items)
Mediocre
Making
Geography and
History .0729
(51 items)
Good
Indian
Collection
5.6686
(3968 items)
Total
Collection
Standards by
Number of
Students
Excellent
Exemplary
Exemplary 7.0
Superior 1.20
Good .60
Fair .30
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0-8
Progress
9-16
SFIS
22.33
20-24
25-32
33-40
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Appendix C
Collection Map of SFIS LMC Collection
(please see attached, separate Excel file for a complete picture of the map)
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15
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Bibliography
References:
Collins, C. (2010). Collection evaluation and analysis. Retrieved March 5, 2010 from
Blackboard Online website:
http://drexel.blackboard.com/webapps/blackboard/content/listContent.jsp?course_id=_130916_1&content
_id=_2925425_1
Course of Study. (2009). SFIS Teacher Handbook. Santa Fe, NM: Santa Fe Indian School, Inc.
Evans, G.E., & Saponaro, M.Z. (2005). Developing Library and Information Center Collections
(5th ed.). Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.
Follett Library Resources. (2010). Title Wise collection analysis Santa Fe Indian School.
Retrieved on February 1, 2010 from
http://www.titlewave.com/ca/analysis/overview.html?caid=1128295&SID=9a8b47d2707
31d0ad0bef7f1229d7f3b.
Ho, M.L., & Loertscher, D.V. (1985). Collection mapping: The research. Drexel Library
Quarterly, 21(2), 22-39.
Hopkinton High School and Hopkinton Middle School Library (2005). Selection Policy &
Guidelines. Retrieved on January 28, 2010 from
http://www.hopkintonschools.org/hhs/library/selpol.html.
Library Advisory Committee (2001). Library media center three-year plan, 2001-2004. Santa
Fe, NM: Santa Fe Indian School Archive.
Loertscher, D.V. (1985). Collection mapping: An evaluation strategy for collection development.
Drexel Library Quarterly, 21(2), 9-39.
Murray, M., Messervey, M., Dobbs, B., & Gough, S. (1985). Collection mapping and collection
development. Drexel Library Quarterly, 21(2), 40-51.
Rough Rock Community School (2008). About us. Retrieved March 3, 2010 from
http://www.roughrock.bia.edu/about_us.htm
Sando, J. (1992). Pueblo Nations. Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers.
Sources:
Central Rappahannock Regional Library Web Library (websites classified by Dewey number)
http://hq.crrl.org/reference/weblibrary/index.htm
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Rough Rock Schools website
http://www.roughrock.bia.edu/default.htm
Santa Fe Indian School Library Media Center website
http://lib.sfis.k12.nm.us
Snow Age of Collection Report (list of books in a collection under given Dewey numbers)
http://www.lib.snow.edu/Age_Of_Collection/ReportAPage133.html
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Bookstacks Dewey Decimal
http://www.library.illinois.edu/circ/tutorial/dewey-schedule-numerical.html
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