Policies & Procedures

The mission of the Rutherford County School System is to provide an educational environment that encourages and enables each student to develop his/her potential and become a responsible and contributing member of society.

Our Promise

To promote life-long learning by the students of LaVergne Middle School, the media center specialist and staff will provide leadership and support for the development, promotion, and improvement of the school curriculum, professional materials, and students’ information seeking skills and interest in reading.

Student Policies and Procedures

The library opens at 7:15 am and closes at 3:00 pm. Students may come to the library before school, from 7:15 am to 8:00 am. Students will visit the library with their ELA teachers on a regular rotation.

Students may check out three (3) books at a time for three (3) weeks. Students will check out books by providing the library staff with their Student ID number. Students may NOT check out books for another student. A book may be renewed indefinitely, unless another person has requested the book or if the student has overdue books or outstanding fines. Once a book is checked out, the student assumes responsibility for the book.

If books are damaged or lost, a fine will be assessed up to the price of replacing the book.

Internet access is limited to assigned work only. Students must have an Internet usage form on file (AUP). 

Students may search the catalog from the LMS Library Media Center page.
All students must return all books by May 8th for inventory. Students who do not return books or pay fines may be at risk of missing out on field trips and events.

Maintain a courteous atmosphere. You are expected to study, read magazines, work in the Maker's Space, or look for books.

Students who disregard the rules will be asked to return to their classrooms, and their checkout privileges may be restricted. Check-out privileges may also be restricted if you leave your books in the halls or classrooms, or if you mistreat your books.

A Scholastic Bookfair will be held twice a year. The library and school rules apply during this time. Students will have an opportunity to browse the bookfair during ELA class; after this chance, students may leave the classroom, with teacher permission, only when an item is to be purchased.

Teacher and Staff Services

The LaVergne Middle School Media Center’s collection of materials has been selected to reflect the needs of the curriculum and the learning community. 

The LMS media center provides a professional library for the faculty and staff of the school community. This library offers class set kits, guidebooks, and other professional resource materials. Most class set kits include books, teacher guides. Class sets are chosen based on the Rutherford County grade-level reading list.

Teachers may check out media center materials for as long as they need them. The teacher checking out the material remains responsible for the item. Teachers should consider time as a factor since others may also request use of the material. Special consideration should also be made concerning the relevance of the material to one’s subject matter and test objectives.  This can help to avoid overlapping. In some cases, overlapping of skills and objectives is necessary and understandable.

The media center will provide flexibility and fairness to all teachers through cooperative instructional planning, as well as providing teachers with the necessary media resources to enhance their curriculum.

The media center will assist in school-wide planning of curricular and instructional planning.

The media specialist will run a report for 1st-period teachers, notifying them of the missing and overdue student items. Please encourage students to bring back library books in an effort to maintain our collection. 

Class Scheduling Procedures

The LaVergne Library Media Center provides open access and flexibility to its patrons in accordance with the Rutherford County Media Guidelines and those of the Association of American School Libraries recommendations and guidelines.

Students must have a pass entered into e-hallpass.  This policy keeps the reading teachers best informed of the number of times a student is accessing the library. This effort helps teachers become aware of the times a week a student visits the library without completing a book.

Teachers, please send no more than two students at a time to the library (unless bringing a class for a scheduled session).

Teachers may schedule classes for media center activities with the librarian. During the scheduling, topics such as materials requested for book carts, research, technology, and assessment may be discussed between the librarian and the teacher. This cooperative effort will provide the media specialist with the necessary information to gather resources that will enhance research efficiency.

Procedures for Bringing Classes to the Media Center

Students should return any books that are due upon arrival at the media center.

Students must have an Acceptable Use Policy form signed by a parent or guardian on file with the STS or Rutherford County for Internet Usage.

Teachers are expected to provide active supervision.

Behavior Consequences

1st offense: Reminder of rules provided verbally by the librarian
2nd offense: Students who ignore reminders will be sent back to class with a notification provided to the teacher.
Some behaviors are so severe that the student may be sent back to the class without any verbal reminders.

Positive reinforcement will be provided for appropriate behavior. Examples are bookmarks, verbal praise, notes in agendas, or passes to other media center activities.
LaVergne Middle Library adheres to and follows the guidelines set forth by Rutherford County Schools. Please refer to the Rutherford County Schools webpage to read the policies for the following:

4.402 - Selection of Instructional Material (Other than Textbooks)

4.403 - Reconsideration of Instructional Material and Textbooks

4.404 - Use of Copyrighted Material
Selection Policy

Materials are selected to serve the breadth of the curriculum and the needs and specific interests of our students with individual learning styles. The LaVergne Middle School Library Media Center provides a wide range of materials on all levels of difficulty, in a variety of formats, and with diversity of appeal. To a lesser extent, general materials on teaching and parenting are collected.
The day-to-day operation of the LaVergne Middle School Library Media Center is the responsibility of the media specialist, who coordinates, selects, and purchases all materials. While extensive help and advice are sought from administrators, teachers, library assistants, students, parents, and others affiliated with the school library, final responsibility for the selection of all materials lies with the media specialist.
Selection Criteria: There are general selection criteria that apply to all library media materials. LaVergne Middle School adheres to the Rutherford County Board of Education’s policy regarding selection of materials as well as reconsiderations of instructional materials and textbooks. Rutherford County Board of Education Policy # 6-6.

Selection process: Requests and suggestions are sought from staff, parents, students, and other members of the LaVergne Middle School community. Concurrently, reviews are pulled from the literature of professional organizations and other reviewing sources recognized for their expertise. The removal of materials no longer appropriate and the replacement of lost and worn materials still of educational value is part of the selection process.
Gift materials, free and inexpensive vertical file resources, and sponsored materials are evaluated by the same criteria as purchased materials.

COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT POLICY

The LaVergne Middle Library Media Center exists to provide resources to support the curriculum and recreational needs of the students and staff of the school community and to assist in the development of information literacy of its clients.

The aim is to provide a balanced collection which:

Supports the school’s priority areas.
Reflects the local community as well as information of a global nature.
Supports curriculum needs.
Contains selections from the Volunteer State Book Award list, as well as national book award lists in the appropriate age levels
Reflects the recreational needs of the students.

The criteria for collection development will be according to:

Relevance to current or future curriculum.
Appropriateness of level to intended users.
Appropriate for the physical format and appearance of the material.
Cost, value, and suitability for library use.
Accuracy and currency of content.
Authority and reputation of authors, producers, or publishers.
Scope of the work, adequacy of coverage, and level of detail.
Treatment of subject matter, taking into account language, bias, and approach.
Organization and accessibility of information, layout, index, table of contents, glossary, white space, diagrams, photos, etc.

Reputable journals and selection aids will be consulted to identify potential additions to the collection, such as but not limited to:

School Library Journal
Titlewave
Recommendations from colleagues, students, and listservs
Wilson Library Bulletin

Booklist
Library Journal
Newbery and other book award lists

New York Times Book Review
School Library Journal

ASSESSMENT AND INVENTORY PROCESS

An essential step in collection development is assessment of the needs of the curriculum and student population with regard to library media resources. Library media specialists will develop yearly plans to assist in ongoing assessment.

Assessment of the collection includes taking inventory of existing materials, running monthly circulation reports, and weeding out outdated and inappropriate materials.

The inventory is a process by which holdings are checked against the automated cataloging system and the actual item to determine if the resource is still part of the collection and still meets selection criteria. The objective of this inventory is to ensure that the automated cataloging system accurately reflects the collection, which is the key access point for students and teachers to locate information within the library. Library media materials should be weeded out if they:

Are in poor physical condition
Have not been circulated in the last seven years.
Are outdated in content, use, or accuracy (Copyright date should be considered; however, do not decide to weed based solely on the copyright date of the material. Some older material may be considered classic or may be of great historical value to your collection.)
Are mediocre or poor in quality
Are biased or portray stereotypes
Are inappropriate for the reading level
Duplicate information that is no longer in heavy demand
Are superseded by new or revised information
Are outdated and unattractive in format, design, graphics, and illustrations
Contain information that is inaccessible because they lack a table of contents, adequate indexing, and searching capabilities
Are not selected by the general selection criteria

Withdrawing Library Media Materials

Although the final decision to withdraw materials from the library media collection is one which is made by the library media specialist, subject area, grade level teachers, and other faculty members may be invited to review the items marked for withdrawal. Withdrawn materials should not be sent to classrooms; the same standard of quality applies to all other instructional materials within the school. Duplicate or paperback materials may be considered for donations to classrooms or other schools in need.

CONSIDERATION FILE

Library media specialists should maintain a CONSIDERATION FILE for future purchases. This file should reflect school needs, staff recommendations, and reviews. Technology has greatly enhanced the efficiency of creating consideration files, e.g., Follett's Titlewave. For items not available, book jobbers who have online ordering and collection development, create a database to input ordering information for resources which are recommended for purchase, and to output a list of resources to order. Some suggested database fields are: Title, author, publisher, copyright, review source, price.
Rebinding Procedures

Some books can be easily repaired by the library media specialist and staff.
If a book cannot be repaired locally, a decision must be made to rebind or reorder the book.

Rebinding is usually not an attractive or cost-efficient option. Books that are rebound will have plain cloth covers without printed titles, illustrations, or book jackets. The best candidates for rebinding are expensive reference books and textbooks that are updated and expected to stay in the collection. Out-of-print books should be carefully evaluated as to their merit before rebinding. Books that have dirty, torn, or brittle pages should be repaired or reordered and not sent for rebinding.
Follow these procedures for books that need rebinding:

Be sure that books meet the minimum binding requirements of 3/4" to 1" inside margin for optimum readability
Remove circulation cards from books.
Update the automation software to provide a record of books sent for rebinding
Box books for pickup by the rebinding company, instructions.