Matching your collection to your school’s needs

Your school library collection supports the needs and interests of your particular community.

The profile form provides a framework for thinking about and identifying the characteristics of your students, teachers and local community. This will influence which resources you add to your collection, whether by provision of access or by purchase.

Take a few minutes to ‘picture’ your school community and make notes on the profile form. Once you have reflected on your community, consider the following:

• Does your collection reflect current curriculum topics and support guided inquiry learning?
• Is it well matched to the reading and learning needs of all your students?
• Does your collection reflect the different cultures and languages spoken within your school community?
• Does your collection provide resources that can be accessed 24/7?

This information will then feed into your weeding and collection assessment decisions, your collection requirements plan, your library budgeting and selection, and content curation.

There are further tools on our website to assist you with these processes.

A copy of your School Community profile should be kept in your School Library handbook.

• Community profile template (DOC)

  Word (82Kb)

• Community profile template (PDF)

  PDF (31Kb)