Selection Policy

If you want to develop a culture of reading within a school or community, the worst thing you can do is provide poor-quality books or books that fail to meet the interests of your patrons. With this in mind, the RLES Media Center staff goes to great lengths to provide high quality books from every genre and at every skill and ability level. As not all books can be read by the media center staff, we use a variety of venues to when considering books for our collection:
  • The American Association of School Libraries 
  • School Library Journal
  • Junior Library Guild
  • The American Indian Library Association
  • Mackin Compendium
  • New York Times Book Review
  • Kirkus Reviews
  • Vendor Visits from Sebco Books
  • Student and Teacher Requests
  • Amazon Reviews and Bestseller Lists
  • Goodreads.com


Weeding Policy

Weeding - or discarding books from the collection - is a healthy and necessary library activity. Books are discarded from the collection when: 
  1. The book is damaged and repairs are not possible.
  2. The book no longer meets the interest of patrons.
  3. The book is replaced by newer, higher quality, or updated titles that meet the same need.
  4. The book no longer serves the curricular goals of the school.
Focused weeding will take place twice annually - in the fall and in the spring of the school year. Additional weeding shall take place as time allows or necessity dictates throughout the year. ALL discarded books will be given away to the community during conferences or other community gatherings, save for when weeded titles are in disrepair or the content has been deemed to be of low quality.

As the RLES Media Center is fully funded to provide high quality books - both physical and ebooks - all books donated to the RLES will also be given to the community.