Candidates make effective use of data and information to assess how practice and policy impact groups and individuals in their diverse learning communities.

In my first semester of my second year of grad school, I took SPU 516: Literacy Development and Instruction in Core and Intervention Areas. This course was designed to study the assessment, circular, and instructional needs of students who exhibit significant reading difficulties. For an assignment, I created an evaluation plan for expanding a library collection to better cater to student reading levels. 

Library collections can be the beating heart of research and development for the students to access them and while it is important to have levels of resources that challenge their thinking and understanding, a balance of reading levels is equally as important. In order to find out what levels the community is reading at and how to challenge them, ways of evaluating must be put into place. Looking at evaluating from the different perspectives is such an important feature as well. In order to fully understand the environment that a librarian is working to serve, all perspectives of how the collection is impacting the community must be investigated. 

When completing this assignment, I was reminded of how community input helps libraries and librarians to make decisions on how to move forward with their studies and resources. The resources that the library has can provide these resources in order to survey and understand what is working with the strategies that are being used. Since libraries need to constantly adapt to fit into the world that is constantly changing, these reports are crucial to helping in this process. As a field that is constantly changing, asking for information is also a constant process that needs to be clearly outlined and revisited as time goes on. 

Evaluating how much the library means to a community is also something that can reinforce the library's relevancy and importance. Libraries are pillars that stand and work for the people that surround them. In planning for their own community's needs and continuing to evolve as the world does, libraries are always necessary and continually needed.