This is a tweaked repost of last year’s blog entry on year end reports.

As the school year ends, school librarians find themselves completing inventories, chasing down overdue books, converting our spaces to testing sites, and compiling to-do lists a mile long to wrap up projects, instruction, and other items. Hopefully one of those items on our lists is preparing our annual reports.

My district requires that we complete a report providing the number of books, periodicals, etc., in our collection, noting the numbers that were weeded and purchased in the given school year, and detailing the funding sources for said resources. My state requires us to complete an annual media and technology report which focuses more on the technology in our schools but also highlights print and electronic resources, average publication dates, and circulation statistics.

While these are great reports to wrap up the year and provide some small insight into the media and technology in our schools, these reports do not showcase the instruction, professional development, and literacy initiatives that occurred throughout the year. To actively advocate for school librarians and school library media programs, we must provide the best documentation possible, a comprehensive year-end or annual report, that will highlight more than circulation statistics and material counts.

Here are some examples to help us get started with our annual reports:

• Springfield Township High School Library Annual Report – Former school librarian Joyce Valenza used her annual report to highlight curricular connections, her professional development activities, trends and patterns in usage both on- and offline, and included issues, plans and goals for the next school year.
• Wendell Middle Media Center Annual Report – Media coordinator Linda Dextre uses her annual report to highlight the teaching and learning, events and activities from the learning commons, budget analysis including operation losses, and quotes and pictures.
• Durant Middle School Media Center Annual Report – Media coordinators Kristen Ziller and Janice Edwards include their SMART goal in their report, as well as a infographic to give a quick view of the year.

Jennifer LaGarde, “librarian ambassador and education road warrior” at Adventures of Library Girl, provides additional insight and information about creating annual reports in her blog, School Library Annual Reports: Connecting the Dots Between Your Library and Student Learning.  We cannot see our annual reports as one more thing to do on our already full plate. We must view these reports as the advocacy tool that they are:  promoting teaching and learning, documenting the impact to student achievement, highlighting the professional development and growth in us and our staffs, and showcasing the resources, usage trends/patterns, and literacy initiatives happening at our schools.

Author: Deanna Harris

I have spent my career in education as a middle grades language arts teacher, a middle grades teacher librarian, and a coordinating teacher at the NC Department of Public Instruction. During my twenty-three years, I have focused on teaching and learning, student achievement, and teacher leadership. I have worked with beginning and veteran teachers through mentoring, internships, staff development, and professional learning teams.

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Categories: Advocacy/Leadership

Tags: year end reports