Auditing your school library

Auditing your school library can be a very daunting prospect, especially if you’ve never worked in a library before or alongside other library colleagues. Librarians at Westminster Schools Library Service have developed our approach based on knowledge and expertise gathered over many years of helping schools get the best from the school library audit.

We begin our consultation by asking a series of questions, such as:

What do you want to achieve from the audit?
What is your budget?
Do you have a librarian actively managing the library and or classroom collections?

Before we begin the audit, we review the book collection as a whole to see if it is comprised of fiction books and non-fiction books and how these are arranged in the library. We often find library books stuffed into boxes, bags and piled high on top of bookshelves.

We examine books to check if the information is out of date or not at the reading and comprehension level of pupils and students. We check the physical condition of books to see if they are grubby, tattered or tired. And we try to ensure that books remaining in the school library are appealing to today’s readers, be they enthusiastic or more reluctant. Not every book has an attractive and exciting cover but we all respond to books which look inviting.

We take note of equality, diversity and inclusion in the books on the shelves of the library. We want to ensure that these books represent the world we live in and that readers can see themselves in them.

What we leave on the shelves is as important as what we remove when conducting a book audit. And of course, we always work with school staff to ensure that our approach to weeding the collection reflects their stated requirements. And we review as we progress. The aim is to help schools develop a space with books that will be read and enjoyed!

This article was written by

Westminster Schools Library Service

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Supporting schools to create exceptional libraries and classroom collections.

Our Schools Library Service librarians provide support, advice and consultancy for nursery, reception, primary and secondary schools in London boroughs and surrounding areas.

Our mission is to help improve the educational and life prospects of children and young people by assisting schools in developing a culture of reading for pleasure and reading for purpose in their libraries and classroom collections.