Collection development of selected school resource centres in Sri Lanka

Abstract

This dissertation presents the study on the collection development of selected school resource centres in Sri Lanka. The survey method is employed and the instruments used are two questionnaires. The first questionnaire was administered among selected fifty school resource managers and the second was administered among two hundred school children in the Colombo district in Sri Lanka. Out of 50 school resource managers sampled, only 48 usable responses were used. Only 182 students' responses out of 200 are usable. The study revealed that the majority of school resource centres did not follow a collection development policy guideline. The most common information resource in the resource centres are books. Most school resource centres do not possess electronic resources and the majority of school resource centre collections are mainly print based. The current resource collection is not balanced among the various disciplines. More than ninety percent of resources are obtained and selected by the Ministry of Education. The majority of resource managers do not agree with the practice of central selection of materials by the Ministry of Education. The majority prefer greater involvement of the Special Book Selection Committee or cooperation between school teachers and resource managers in selecting materials. The results also indicated that the current collection generally does not meet the students and teachers learning and teaching requirements and is in poor condition. However, the collections in the school resource centres are comparatively current. The age of the majority of the books in the collection are less than ten years, and more than fifty percent of books have been published between 1990-2000. There is a need for the school resource centre to follow a proper collection management system in order to build up an ideal collection.