Before I begin to think about summer vacation, I finalize our end-of-the-year school library report. This report highlights the school library usage, online resources, and other library services. It is a chance to celebrate our impact on student learning and the school library’s important role in providing a welcoming and safe environment for learners.
I focus on the areas below when designing and gathering data for the report.
Purpose: What do you want to highlight about your school library? What story does your data/information tell? Are you persuading leaders in your building to adjust your budget or another area of emphasis?
My school library report focuses on how many students we impact with our services and specifically addresses our impact on student learning.
Audience: Determine what leaders in your building and district you will send your report. What information will they find helpful? How will you present the information? Will you change the format and information for the parents and community?
I provide a format for my administrators so they can quickly skim to gather information. For parents and the community, I provide additional details including explaining different tools and how they might impact their students directly.
Resources: What resources do you include? Do you list all the online database statistics? You may want to include usage numbers for specific databases in your report.
I keep our database information simple for the report. If our administrator asks for additional information when purchasing databases, I can provide specific usage numbers.
Format and Design: Determine a format easily accessible by your audience. Links or attachments are easy to click to open in an email. If you can embed the information in an email, even better. (I have not been able to figure out a design-friendly way i.e. free way to embed it into our email – yet).
I create the report in Google Slides and change the page set up to legal size – 8 1/2″ X 14″. After adding detailed information, I download the document as a PDF. Canva also provides templates that can be downloaded as a pdf. The documents can be attached in an email.
How do you create a report for your school library? What do you include? Post your ideas below to help others (and me) with future reports.
Author: Becca Munson
Becca Munson, Librarian, is a National Board Certified Teacher with over 24 years of experience in education. Becca is the Coordinator for Library Systems in the Blue Valley School District. Previously, she was school librarian at Blue Valley West High School. She opened two buildings in Blue Valley and spent some time as an Ed Tech Specialist before returning to libraries. Becca supports over 45 librarians and support staff as they work to fulfill the mission of flexible scheduling, collaboration, and literacy.
Categories: Advocacy/Leadership, Blog Topics
Thank you for sharing this. It is easy to read and seems manageable to create. Thank you for all you do.