Hempfield mulls librarian feedback on book posting policy

Hempfield Area School District librarians are requesting a portion of the district’s policy on book acquisition be changed in order to potentially save the district money on reading materials.

Approved in August, the policy requires school librarians to post lists of books they intend to purchase 30 days before they are acquired.

Hempfield residents are able to express concern with a title listed for purchase by submitting a form, which the librarian, building principal, subject area teacher and assistant superintendent will review. The form, linked on the webpage, asks respondents to specify their name, address, the school library and the book being cited. They also must note what specific part of the policy applies to the book.

According to board member and policy committee chair Jeanne Smith, the district’s librarians are asking if the period of time that the books must be posted could be shortened to two weeks instead of a month, to make sure the district doesn’t miss out on book deals.

“After the lists of proposed books for order have been on the district website for 30 days, the quotes the librarians had received … may have increased after their posting, as quotes are only good for 30 days,” according to Smith. “The librarians requested that consideration be given to reducing the number of days on the website to two weeks.”

According to Smith’s report at the meeting, the district also was previously able to use a subscription service that provided better pricing for books the librarians wanted to order. Because the book titles aren’t known in advance through the service, they’re not able to be listed for 30-day review, and the district had to drop the subscription service.

Dropping the service resulted in each school receiving approximately $200 less in books, the report read.

Board member Tony Bompiani suggested that the librarians wait a year to see how the policy works out. noting that any new policy will often have glitches early on.

“I think they need to give it a year, see how it works, and if they need to do some changes, then the board can step in and do some changes,” Bompiani said. “If you just keep going back and forth like a yo-yo, then they’ll be be debating about it for another 18 months, and we’ll keep spinning our wheels.”

Smith says she plans to bring the topic to the full board at its November meeting.

“I just think it’s costing us books in the library that we could have, and I don’t know that it would make a big difference to move it two weeks,” Smith said. “I think it would give people plenty of time to look to see if they have concerns. I don’t think anyone’s intent was to hurt the process or the amount of books that we get. I would hope that we would have a good discussion on that.”

Superintendent Tammy Wolicki declined to comment.