We recently received a suggestion that we shelve all of the Accelerated Reader books together in one location. Although this would be convenient for the students participating in the program, it would create other issues for the staff and other library patrons.
A company called Renaissance Learning has developed the Accelerated Reader program which uses independent reading in popular or classic books to develop reading skills. The student’s skill level and understanding of the books read is measured by tests created and sold by Renaissance Learning. Each school district that uses the program decides which tests to purchase, so the titles listed for each school district are just a small portion of those available.
Our local school district’s list is available online and is extensive. Currently, the only way for us to match the books in our collection with the books on the district’s list is to search each title individually in our catalog. There are 203 pages with over 20 titles on each page on our local list.
Several years ago we did put some notes on the items that we knew were on the local list. These notes can be accessed by typing “MHWPL: Accelerated Reader” in the LOCAL NOTE search of the catalog. This will give patrons a list of some of the books we have at each reading level. Unfortunately, we don’t have access to a list of the new titles added each year to update these notes. This means the only way to keep these notes current would be to check the entire list each year. We don’t have the staff available to do that, and only someone with very specific training can enter the notes in the computer record.
Even if we were able to determine exactly which of our books were and weren’t on the list, there would still be the issue of creating a separate section in each of the different categories of books that we have, since the Accelerated Reader program uses books of all types at all levels. It would really be like creating two libraries, one for Accelerated Reader Books and one for books that aren’t on the list. Since the only thing that would be different about the books is each section would be the Accelerated Reader designation, they would be difficult to keep them in the correct section. It would also mean dividing up books by the same author into different sections. So, although shelving the Accelerated Reader books separately would help some people, it really isn’t very practical for our library.
