Last fall, Wendell Elementary School became one of 101 public school libraries in the state of North Carolina to receive an LSTA grant for purchasing library books. The State Library of North Carolina, a division of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, awarded the $10,000 federal grant and it has helped us build a much stronger library book collection to support the school's curriculum and boost student achievement. We've still got a long way to go before our library collection is where it needs to be, but this grant program has helped bring us closer to our goals.
A requirement of the grant was that we match the $10,000 in grant monies with another $2,500 in local money. Can you guess how many books that much money can buy? Try 937 NEW books! Before we added these new books, the average age of our reference book collection (books like World Book Encyclopedia, dictionaries, atlases, & science encyclopedias) was 1988. Today the average age of our reference collection is 2004... this is a huge leap forward! Imagine all the things that have changed since 1988 and think about how great it is that we now have books in the library that bring that current information to our students.
Before the grant, the average age of our science books was 1992 (that's 17 years old, for those of you who struggle to be "math smart"). Do you think anything has changed in the world of science since 1992? Today, because of the LSTA grant, our science books are more up-to-date (but still not where they need to be), with an average age of 1999. Other subject areas in our collection made significant gains in average age, going from 1992 to 1999.
Besides bringing our collection more up-to-date, we were also able to add a significant number of "best books" to our library, easy biographies and transitional chapter books for emergent readers. Whether it's reading for fun or using books for information in research and learning, students at Wendell Elementary now have access to some fantastic new library books thanks to the LSTA grant!
Great thanks to the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services which administers the Library Services and Technology Act, and distributes the funds through a grant to the State Library of North Carolina.