Collection Development Policy Statement

School of Education:
Early Childhood Education

University of Northern Virginia Library
Dr. Peter Williams, Dean of School of Education
Linda Nainis, Dean, Learning and Instructional Resources

Antje Mays, Consultant (email)

I. Purpose

The purpose of the Early Childhood Education collection development policy is to guide the library's support of UNVA's present needs and anticipate future program growth and changes. The Master of Education in Early Childhood Education brings together pedagogy for pre-school and early elementary education and aspects of child, developmental, and school psychology, as well as cognitive development. LC-call numbers thus fall into classifications for education and to a lesser degree psychology and clinical areas (cognitive development, pediatrics).

II. Scope

Language
The materials are almost exclusively English or translations into English.
 

Geographical Areas
Emphasis is on the foundations of education and practical elements of early childhood education. Many of these principles originated in Europe and the Americas. For teacher training of students based in Virginia, United States focus is paramount. For distance students at the international campuses, geographically dispersed origins provide additional substance for their future work as educators in their home countries.

Chronological Periods
Material from the twenty-first century predominates for present and future teacher preparation. Some very targeted historical focus is sought only for specific research on historical foundations or teaching interests of UNVA faculty.

 
III. Types of Material and Formats
Given the geographically dispersed locations of UNVA, subject-supporting scholarly and practitioner-oriented e-book collections and full-text databases of journals, trade magazines are the best way to ensure that all students from all campus have access to equal library resources. As students are enrolled both in Virginia and worldwide (distance programs), the primary emphasis should be on in-depth electronic Education resources to serve the reference needs of UNVA's communities, including distance learners.

Early Childhood Education is rooted in theoretical, psychological, and historical foundations and hands-on practitioner-oriented training. Teachers' curriculum workbooks are uniquely helpful to student-teachers as they learn to design lesson plans. Education is affected by ongoing changes in policy and new advances in pedagogy; thus electronic formats can most efficiently provide continually updated content. Care should be taken to balance on-site print workbooks with electronic versions for the benefit of the distance students.

Through electronic resources the library can provide current journal literature, conveniently accessible to on-site and distance students. Electronic products are generally preferred over print equivalents, all else being equal. There is an ever increasing demand for online resources with remote access. This is an area with unlimited growth potential, and the library will meet that challenge. Thus, electronic resources are actively purchased.

For online materials, the purchasing preference is the subscription basis. Perpetual use purchases are generally discouraged. Given a choice between similar databases when selecting new content, it is preferred to stay with the same vendor, unless there is a strong reason such as truly unique content which only another vendor can provide. Many databases from few vendors keeps the database interface more consistent for students and faculty.

Print may be purchased selectively, as appropriate, on a small scale, mostly for reference materials such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, and certain types of directories and handbooks. The most appropriate scenario which could occur that might justify campus-specific exclusivity of materials not available to other locations would be materials of strictly local importance.

IV. Strengths & Weaknesses
Early Childhood Education benefits from a strong online collection for the larger area of Education; over 110,000 e-books are provided by EBL and ebrary. Of these, about 5% are devoted specifically to Education Education and recent imprints represent a high percentage of the collection. Psychology e-books provide additional coverage on early cognitive development and knowledge acquisition in early childhood. A rich collection of databases includes  Education Research Complete, Teacher Reference Center, and ERIC, and subject-specific ABI Complete modules (Education Module, Children's Module, Psychology modules, ProQuest Psychology Journals). Additional databases may be added in the future.

The print collection is small, but in light of UNVA's multi-campus research environment, the collection-building emphasis should continue to be on electronic resources.

V. Related Resources
Additional library collections relating to Education are described in the collection policy statements for  Educational Leadership, Educational Communication Technology, TESOL, Curriculum Support, and Higher Education Administration; they are served by separate collection development policies. Social Sciences materials also include Psychology resources valuable in supporting early childhood and cognitive development.

VI. Subjects and Collection Levels:
Subject collecting is characterized by levels 1-5, with Level 1 representing the most intensive buying, and level 5 representing the lowest level of buying.

1. Research Level: Advanced and comprehensive collection supporting doctoral dissertations and independent research, as well as support for faculty in their doctoral-level course preparation and specialty-related research. Materials at this level should include research reporting, new findings, scientific experimental results, and other primary documents and/or original research dissemination. Other resources at this level include all important reference works, a wide selection of specialized books, e-books, instructional videos and/or streaming web-based instructional A/V materials, an in-depth collection of journals, e-journals, major in-depth full-text databases for indexing, abstracting, and full-text journal content.

2. Study Level: Thorough collection supporting baccalaureate and master's level coursework, master's theses, and project-based independent study, as well as support for faculty in their baccalaureate and master's level course preparation and specialty-related research. This level supports general subject overview and some specialized knowledge, but is not as in-depth as the Research level. Materials include a wide range of books, e-books, workbooks (for example teacher's workbooks, lab manuals), A/V materials where appropriate to the academic discipline, core journals, e-journals, electronic full-text databases, and reference works providing study foundations.

3. Basic Level: Introductory collection to provide a basic subject overview. May include some resources for faculty course preparation and research. Materials include major encyclopedias, dictionaries, important bibliographies, a few major journals / e-journals and possibly drawing from general academic full-text databases already purchased for other subject areas.

4. Minimal Level: Few selections of either very basic works or occasional selections of specialized works in a narrow sub-field, but no systematic support of the subject area.

5. Not collected

 

Subject emphasis: Materials should be primarily chosen for their emphasis by subject, keeping in mind that English is a second language for most undergraduate and graduate students. The subject list below is a starting point for selecting new materials and a guidepost in case of withdrawal projects.

* A few useful titles may be classified under pediatrics because cognitive, psychological, and physiological development and disorders affect children's learning. Thus library additions in pediatrics are passive, and actively seeking them out is not recommended.

Pertinent LC Call Number Areas

Although UNVA's library does not actively pursue print collections where call-numbers are traditionally emphasized, the Library of Congress (LC) call-number classification system has great value in drilling down with precision to the curricular areas to be supported, even with e-book collections. Similar to a taxonomy, the LC call numbers classify knowledge consistently. This systematic language for coding subjects supports several important library roles: (1) retrieving library holdings by classification ranges of e-books from the online catalog to assess where collections need to be enhanced or pared down; (2) coding curriculum-support profiles for e-book vendors and approval plans; (3) teaching students an additional way to search with precision for library resources on their research topics.

Following are some of the call-number ranges into which Early Childhood Education titles can fall:

B

BF 309-499 Consciousness/cognitive psychology. Learning, attention, intelligence thought & thinking
BF 712-724 Developmental psychology. Includes infant, child, adolescence, adulthood

L

LB1050.9-1091 Educational psychology

LB1101-1139 Child study
LB1139.2-1139.5 Early childhood education
LB1140-1140.5 Preschool education. Nursery schools
LB1141-1489 Kindergarten

LB1501-1547 Primary education

R*

* Note: a few titles may fall under these call number ranges because cognitive, psychological, and physiological development and disorders affect children's learning.

RJ 61-85 Pediatrics-miscellaneous topics. Study & teaching, research. Includes areas such as e.g. cognitive disorders, pediatric neuropsychiatry.
RJ 101-104 Child health. Includes mental health.
RJ 125-145 Children-physiology. Includes children & adolescents, behavior, developmental psychology.
RJ 365-570 Children-diseases. Includes adolescents, pharmacology, children's mental & behavioral disorders, child psychotherapy, child mental health.