Christian School Libraries: One Librarian’s Attempt at Accreditation [working title]   last revision 3/28/2006 webmaster and copyright This article consists of three parts: 1.    Narrative (HTML below or choose pdf from menu on left) Titles for a Christian elementary school library (about 70 pages) Bibliography     This is the Narrative  (about 40 pages)                                 What is this? This is one half of a new library project for Community Christian Academy  (CCA) in Lowell, Massachusetts. It is a growing list of titles –currently at 515 - specifically chosen for CCA to gather in the future plus a description of school library issues from a Christian perspective. The other half of the project consists of organizing and cataloguing the already existing collection. This aspect of the operation is detailed in  a blog http://ccalibrary.blogspot.com in order to provide a real-life example of how to start and build up a library with minimal resources. As of now, the library will be maintained by parent volunteers. (It began in Nov 2003)   As of Feb 23, 2006 this site/text/project  is about 100 pages. It should be seen as an unfinished, rough work that adds in some part to the scholarly and popular dialogue on Christian school evaluation... At some point, it I will publish a much refined version in hard-copy.   Who is this for? This was initiated by the parents of the school’s PTO and so is first for the parents of CCA, followed by the teachers and administration. It is also intended for others who interested in starting a library in other urban Christian schools, particularly administrators, librarians and library students.   Who is doing the work?. Winifred Flint, an academic librarian, began and continues the project. Kathy Moriarty, a school libraries consultant, assisted in the initial efforts. At the beginning of the project, both were in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts.   Why is it on the web? To avoid being a burden on the school office help, we chose to create and manage the project on the Web. We also wanted to reach a wider audience of those interested in urban Christian schools – especially library students.   When will it be done? The initial Titles List will be done mid-summer 2004 [done]. The cataloguing of current collection will be done by Sept 2004 [Oct 2004 more likely]. Purchases from the Titles list will be done as funds allow. The Teachers Page will be done by mid-August when CCA teachers return for their annual workshop [done]. The various sections under Scholarship will be added or completed as time allows by the start of school in September 2004.[ the lit review will be postponed until at least Jan 2005]   Where is there more info on this project? Scroll down.     Navigation hint: at the end of each major section listed below is a link back to HERE (marked as “Return to Top of Table”).   General Project Description   Bibliography                    LINK TO PDF CCA Characteristics Scope and Sequence Collections Policy Copyright information Definition of “Library” Finance Library issues unique to urban Christian schools Literature review Questions for further study Recommendations for CCA Selection Policy    Temporary ad hoc     Longterm   Teacher's Page Titles List              LINK TO PDF   WebMaster & Contact Info Why this project is on the Web Workdesk     General Project Description   This is a list in process of the books suitable for the core collection of an urban  Christian elementary school library. Its initial purpose is to guide the donations and purchases of books for the near-future for a particular school –Community Christian Academy (CCA). Its larger purpose is to be a working model for other urban Christian schools who wish to add a library. For our purposes, an urban Christian school is defined as one that identifies itself as Christian, is underfunded, located in a city and aspires to send its 8th grade graduates onto a college prep high school. Parochial schools are included in this definition.   A digression about the nature of the project.  From what we can tell through all of our  searching, nothing of this scope currently exists. Bits and pieces are  here and there but nowhere in the print literature or on the free Web is there  a comprehensive work of this nature. Ideally, we would have submitted our work first to our superiors in the library profession by writing this up for one of our trade journals, which meant that you’d be reading a document that was close to 100% free of errors and inconsistencies. We chose not to go this route, thus releasing something that is incomplete and containing errors. As scholars, this is disturbing and as professionals, humbling. But as Christians, we felt it was the right thing to do in this particular case. After thoughtful consideration, we concluded that the cause of urban Christian schools could be furthered more by opening our project now- in its imperfect state -  to the wider Christian community than delay it by two years to deliver something that was better presented, but not materially different. We are hoping that our unique use of the Web will bring new hands, plus additional experience  and funds into an arena desperate for all three.   The current collection of CCA is about 500 volumes – currently in the process of being catalogued. These were undirected donations or bonus purchases from annual Scholastic Book fairs, selected by PTO members. The school did make a major purchase in the late 90’s and bought a World encyclopedia. A  visual inspection of the collection indicated strengths in middle elementary fiction and easy readers. A couple of the primary grades had their own libraries stocked with purchase from the RIF program (initiated by the PTO).   During the visual review, we (the team of librarians) discarded a number of titles. Many were of too advanced a reading level-these were sent on to CCA’s high school. Others were out of date, poor literary quality, hard to read print, or in disrepair. A set of volumes on Nazism gave us pause. Keeping it in a collection that had few history works would have given undue emphasis to the topic so we discarded it; if our collection was more balanced we might have kept it. Works whose titles or cover artwork indicated inappropriate description  of the occult were immediately discarded. These were typically contemporary juvenile fiction.   According to the Christian schools organization of which CCA is a member -ACSI, accreditation requires a minimum of 1875 works in the library plus other specific requirements, (ACSI School Accreditation Manual,2002, p58). Deciding how to work up the minimum number required us to prioritize the selections. In order to best harness the enthusiasm of the PTO which wanted a circulating library as soon as possible,  reference works were not going to have the traditional first place. Primary effort would be in finding non-fiction works that dovetailed neatly with the school’s Christian mission and its curriculum. Teacher requests made over the years would have the highest priority. In a perfect world, unconstrained by time, we would have examined every title that interested us, but obviously we couldn’t. Instead we used specially selected review sources and publisher catalogs. Finding these sources was the most difficult part of this project. There are a number of selection aids written from a Christian perspective that aid in finding appropriate fiction, but very few in finding non-fiction. And there were none written from a multi-ethnic viewpoint. If one had to guess the ethnic identity of  American Christians from the review sources available, one would assume we were all  Caucasian.   Return to Top of Table   CCA Characteristics   Description “Our curriculum has changed from [Alpha Omega] lifepacks to using standard textbooks. We currently use Houghton Mifflin in math and ABeka and ASCI in most other subjects. Currently we have 125 students enrolled in K4 to 8th grade and about 50 students in our High School, for a total 175 students.   Lowell is an urban city with a population of 105, 000. About 61% of our students come from Lowell while the rest come from surrounding suburban towns. On the average, the parents come from hard working, double income, below to middle class families.  After September 11 and the current national state of economy, some of our parents are unemployed. Also a low number of our students receive Public assistance.” CCA -STAR form 1C, 12/1/03, p. 2   “ The students [sic] population are about 40% from various ethnic groups including Indians [from India], Asians, Spanish and Africans…50% of each gender.” CCA – STAR form 1C, p.3   Return to Top of Table     Scope and Sequence This was derived from CCA’s self-assessment for ACSI’s STAR program toward accreditation. (Science and Bible  were missing from this scope and sequence.)       United States History Culture other than United States History other than United States Geography Language Arts Assorted Subjects   Math-Arithmetic Operations Math-Geometry Math-Graphs Math – using clock, thermometer, money, rulers, and banking Return to Top of Table                           US HISTORY K5 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 US Bio K5 1   3           US Symbols Pledge   1               US Freedoms     1               US National Parks   1                 US Transport. History   1               US Flag Holidays     2             US Groups: Native Americans, Pioneers, etc     2             Mass. History         4         US History: Discovery to  Civil war         4