A conversation on curation with Mrs. Musselman

AASL Curation Key Commitment: Make meaning for oneself and others by collecting, organizing, and sharing resources of personal relevance. 

During my practicum experience at Fort Dorchester High School, I was placed with Christine Harley as my supervising librarian but the school is large enough to have a second librarian: Anna Musselman. Ms. Musselman took on the role of teaching me about the school collection, their collection development efforts, and how she advocates against book challenges in our library. 

Throughout the course of our conversations, we focused on the AASL Curate Domain. Ms. Musselman explained that she implements this specific domain more than I might realize since it is more than just ordering new books for the collection. She does work with Mrs. Harley to place new book orders and takes suggestions from students, teachers, and does her own research on what books would fit their collection's needs. She shared that she likes to use the School Library Journal, Goodreads, Follet Titlewave, Junior Library Guild, and more to read reviews and curate a great selection of titles ot order. I was able to watch her showcase how she uses these resources and how she judges her selections, which was an amazing learning opportunity for me and I will be using many of the same resources in my position as a school librarian. Ms. Musselman went on to explain that part of curation was also weeding books that no longer fit the needs of their library either due to age, misinformation, or low circulation. For example, she shared how she had a background as a science teacher so when she became a librarian at Fort she helped analyze the entire science nonfiction section to determine if it was up to date and relevant. She said she weeded every book that had Pluto as a planet! 

Furthermore, our conversation also focused on how she felt the curate domain related to teacher collaboration and she shared that both her and Mrs. Harley make it point to speak to all teachers at the beginning of the year about what resources they would like to see in the library's collection to support instruction. One of the curate competencies details how school librarians contribute to collaboratively constructed information sites, which Ms. Musselman says she does often when she collaborates with teachers on research assignments.  She shared that it was a challenge to get students to evaluate sources and have them seek sources independently, so she often works with teachers to curate online resources for students to use before a lesson to aid in research success. 

Finally, Ms. Musselman and I extensively talked about her advocation for student reading choice and her fight against book challenges in her school district. Last year, the book Stamped by Jason Reynolds was challenged all the way up to the school board, and Ms. Musselman personally spoke against the challenge at a publicly broadcasted board meeting. She firmly believes that it is her responsibility to curate an amazing and appropriate selection of books in her high school library that represent diversity and reflect her student population. 

As I reflect on our conversation, I admire Ms. Musselman's dedication and passion for curating the best possibly library collection she can for her students, both physically and digitally. At one point, she showed me a specific set of data she pulled from her collection and how it will help her in making decisions on what titles to remove from the shelves based on age and use. I felt like Ms. Musselman was not just engaging in a conversation with me, but teaching me tips and tricks I can take back to my own personal school library. It was very clear that she understand the curate domain and competencies and helped me understand them better so I can be as successful as her in collection development and advocation.