• Australian School Libraries Research Project

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16 August 2009Australia’s school children are in danger of not getting what they need to support development of critical skills in information and reading literacy according to this survey.

The survey aims to build an accurate snapshot of all school libraries in Australia by gathering useable and ongoing data about collections, resource levels, budgets and personnel.

This data will enable:

* opportunities for evidence based advocacy for school libraries;

* the partners to run a comparative study of resourcing in school libraries around the nation based on accurate data; and

* the partners to investigate the roles of library personnel in schools.

In a second stage of the Project, the partners will use the data collected in this survey to link to national data from Department of Education Science and Training on students’ literacy learning outcomes. This second stage of the Project will add to the large body of established research which shows that well resourced and staffed school libraries have considerable impact on the development and maintenance of literacy outcomes for students.

The Policy Advisory Group is a joint committee of the Australian School Library Association (ASLA) and the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA). It was formed in 2002 and part of its brief was to gather statistical information about school libraries. The survey is a result of the work of this committee in partnership with Edith Cowan University.

Image: Jessamyn West / Flickr

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