The moment one enters the Nacogdoches High School library, it's obvious that something is missing.
Thousands of books that used to occupy the shelves have since been pulled during the library's most recent renovation.
Staff photo by Keith Lansdale |
Student Miriam Aguilar, senior, looks through the new library at the Martin Education Center For Achievement. Behind her Catherine Kwiatkowski, teacher, helps her look through the shelves.
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Staff photo by Andrew Rogers |
Kathy McEuen stands among the now empty shelves of the Nacogdoches High School library.
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NHS librarian Kathy McEuen said she still needs about 12,000 more books, which would bring the total to around 18,500.
So why does a library go from full shelves to needing three times its current inventory? McEuen said the process is known as the CREW method, or continuous review evaluation and weeding.
The CREW method is a product of the Texas Education Agency, McEuen said, and is a set of guidelines used to decide which books go and which books stay.
The biggest deciding factor involved in the method is the constant updating of the average copyright dates of the collection.
"The average age of the books in the library was 1968 when I started," she said. "But this school wasn't even built until 1979."
Bringing the average age up is one of the main concerns McEuen had in selecting which books stayed and which ones didn't.
"My very first day, the very first thing I did was download the catalog and send it to a company to be evaluated," she said. "I had it evaluated by three different companies."
Those were Follett Library Resources, Bound to Stay Bound Books and Perma-Bound. The first and most recent evaluations were done by Follett Library Resources, and the graphs showed a change from an average book age of 1968 in Aug. 12, 2008, to an average age of 1995 in Sept. 10, 2009.
"After weeding, the collection is now at 1995, which is right under 'recognized,'" she said, explaining that TEA mandates libraries should strive to have an 'exemplary' collection based on the agency's standards. "But every year it goes down because the collection gets older."
The biggest reason for keeping a current catalog is because information in non-fictional fields improves and changes as the years pass. But how does the CREW method rate classic pieces of literature? The answer is having books with the same familiar titles but with newer copyright dates, even if it is to replace first edition works.
"I had no partiality in the transaction," she said. "Basically we want good, solid, current books. There are older titles, but this is not a depository of historical books. It is more a preparation ground for getting kids ready for college."
During the library's existence, different books had been donated over the years by teachers, organizations and other people, but those books could not be treated any differently.
"I have books donated by Dr. Archie McDonald, but when those books get worn and torn they will be withdrawn," she said. "Once you give a gift, it is up to the person receiving the gift's choice to do what they want with it, and when to dispose of it. You no longer have control over where that book is put, and that's part of the policy.
"The policy says to treat all books the same, and whether they are donated by an individual or given as a memorial, they stand under the same scrutiny as any other book," she said. "But you can't focus on a book, because then you are losing sight of the real goal."
So where did the thousands of NHS books end up? They were sent to the Martin Education Center For Achievement, an alternative school located on the Thomas J. Rusk campus.
"Last year, we got a whole bunch of boxes from the library," Catherine Kwiatkowski, a teacher at the Martin School and now librarian, said. "We're still sorting them out, because they have different kinds of call numbers."
A classroom that had been used for storage was cleaned out, and through local donations from the community, the room was repainted and renovated to give the school its first real library.
"I've seen a lot of alternative schools, but this is going to be the very first one I've seen that has a library," Kwiatkowski said. "I was looking through the collection, and we got some good classics."
Some of the books were not in very good condition, Kwiatkowski said, but only a small percentage. The reference are in the back of the classroom, but even for a school that previously had no library, the books are outdated.
Kwiatkowski said they are just happy to have anything at this point.
"When I walk through Hastings, I see books and think that would be cool to have in our library, but we don't have the money" she said "We don't even have a library fund, so we're very lucky to even have this. We're definitely open to future donations, especially the newer best-seller books."
A list of books available at the NHS library can be found online on the NHS Web site.
No records were kept of which books were removed from the NHS shelves, according to McEuen, and no current online catalog is available for the Martin School.
