Library Mission

The mission of the Westcliff Library is to cultivate a love and appreciation for reading and ensure that students are effective users and creators of ideas and information; students are empowered to be critical thinkers, skillful researchers, ethical users, and creators of information.

Selection Criteria

As an educational leader, the certified school librarian uses his or her unique knowledge base, drawing from both education and library science, to promote the success of all students and to provide experiences that help learners locate, evaluate, and use information to solve problems while becoming lifelong readers and learners.

The librarian will follow the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, the School Library Programs: Standards and Guidelines for Texas, and the FWISD Selection Guidelines to make decisions when adding new items to the library. The librarian understands that other stakeholders in the school community are integral to the library collection development process. Teachers, students, and parents will be allowed to make recommendations to the collection as interests of users are essential to the collection. To ensure balance, reliability and comprehensiveness, the development of a vibrant collection of resources must be carefully planned.  The goal for selection is to provide a wide range of instructional resources for students and faculty that present varying levels of difficulty, diversity of appeal, and a variety of points of view. Resources that are selected are those that:

Collection Maintenance Weeding Policy

An underlying principle of planned collection development is evaluation.  In the same way both the materials and the existing collection are evaluated before selection takes place, evaluation of the materials and the existing collection must occur before materials are removed. The process of removing materials is called weeding. Weeding ensures that the school library collection contains only those resource materials that are accurate, current, and relevant to the curricular and recreational programs of the school.

Materials that will be considered for weeding include:

•       Items with outdated or inaccurate information

•       Items that are worn out beyond repair

•       Items that are no longer relevant to the curriculum

•       Items that have not been circulated in the last five years

•       Titles that have been replaced by newer editions

Weeding is a process that happens naturally throughout the school year as circulation continues. Because weeding is a viable part of maintaining a strong collection, yearly comprehensive weeding will be scheduled to remove materials no longer appropriate to the collection.

The collection is regularly evaluating for weeding, repairs, and outdated information. The collection is evaluated by the librarian professional each year. The way that the library disposes of weeded materials varies. Materials that are damaged are thrown away, while materials that aren’t damaged are sent back to the library distribution center.

Gifts Policy

Gifts and donations are a great way for students to benefit from the generosity of the community. Gifts, donations, and funds for the school library are accepted with the understanding that items added to the collection, and the disposition of funds, must meet the same criteria as purchased materials. All materials added to the school library should support the curriculum and needs of library users. Gifts and donations, like purchased materials, will be removed from the collection at the end of their useful life. The library will not estimate the value of a donation for tax purposes.

FWISD Selection Policies serve as an umbrella for school policies.

Additional information may be found by viewing FWISD Selection Policy.