SLJ's Book Buying Survey

Talk about buying power—media specialists and teachers spend an estimated $1.4 billion annually on nonfiction titles. And even though most librarians, like Shirley Morand of New Richmond High School in Ohio, expect budget cuts this academic year, they still plan to dish out a sizable chunk of money on books that support students' textbooks, according to School Library Journal's survey of supplemental books, which analyzed the spending habits of K–12 educators. The study, which took place last spring, reached 1,240 librarians, reading specialists, and curriculum coordinators nationwide.

Why do supplemental books dominate such a large part of the book-buying market? Because in this age of high-stakes testing, a majority of educators think these titles are crucial to student learning—and anything that boosts achievement ranks high on the totem pole. "Ninety-five percent of my supplemental book purchases are nonfiction books tied to the curriculum," says Joy Arnold, a librarian at North Kingstown High School in Rhode Island, who recently beefed up her Shakespeare and science collections.

Indeed, second-grade teacher Vicki Roberts at Sierra Vista Primary School in Arvin, CA, knows the value of her media specialist when purchasing nonfiction titles for her class. "She's very important when I'm looking for certain books or when I need ideas," Roberts says. Librarian Dona Benbow recently purchased the Kingfisher I Wonder Why series for Roberts's classroom, and the students love it.

Nonfiction titles are so critical to learning that the average librarian doled out $5,911 on books ranging from geography to mythology, outspending her teaching counterpart by nearly seven to one in 2003–2004. By comparison, classroom teachers say they spent less than $500. Still, teachers overall outnumber librarians 2.2 million to 83,000 and therefore comprise $1 billion of this segment of the book market.

It's not surprising then that media specialists say the number-one reason for buying nonfiction is to help teachers with their lesson plans. "When I purchase nonfiction, I look at what my teachers are teaching and try to build a collection that supports what they're teaching," says Linda Snyder, a librarian at Woodrow Wilson Elementary School in Bartlesville, OK. Teachers like Peggy Pennock, who also chairs the English department at Ferndale High School in Michigan, say their supplemental book purchases are almost always tied to the curriculum.

The largest concentrated source of spending for supplemental books comes from librarians, who say the district provides their budgets. However, many teachers like Pennock say their main source of money comes out of their own salaries. "Rather than jump through the bureaucratic red tape, we just dip into our own pockets," says Pennock, who spends between $200 to $400 a year on anything from books to posters for her classes. Some of that money, she adds, can include grants or donations.

Benbow represents the 80 percent of school librarians who have complete discretion over nonfiction purchases for their media centers. "I have 100 percent autonomy in making supplemental book purchases," says Benbow, who consults with the principal and teachers from each grade level before placing her orders. The survey also confirms the extensive influence of media specialists beyond the library, with more than 50 percent of classroom teachers saying that librarians give them advice on supplemental book purchases. As Morand, the librarian from Ohio tells it, her opinion weighed heavily when an English teacher asked her about buying The Picture of Dorian Gray for a unit on Oscar Wilde. "I told her to buy The Importance of Being Earnest because the homosexual overtones wouldn't go over well in our ultraconservative rural community," she says.

Librarians, however, often have less influence on classroom book-buying decisions at the high school level. "I would love to collaborate with the media specialist on supplemental book purchases, but that's not her role in our school," says Jennifer Glick, a social studies teacher at Northern Valley Regional High School in Demarest, NJ. "Her role is as another teacher who teaches students how to do research." Instead, Glick makes her own nonfiction book selections and must get a green light from her department supervisor before making any purchases. Still, media specialists must be mindful about "territorial issues" when making recommendations to certain teachers, advises Suzanne Roehrig, the librarian at Ferndale High School.

Overall, media specialists and teachers agree that science, social studies, and language arts get top billing when purchasing nonfiction titles, while music, art, and health rank at the bottom. In fact, librarians and teachers pretty much see eye-to-eye on most supplemental book purchases. The main differences lie in the degree of importance. For instance, both say these books benefit student achievement. But a majority of librarians says they're "critical" to learning, while teachers think they're just "very important." The reason? "Because teachers are so used to relying on textbooks and librarians tend to see that information can be found in a variety of sources," explains Snyder, adding that nonfiction books also tend to have more current information.

Media specialists and teachers also differ when it comes to their suppliers: librarians like to rely on providers like Follett Library Resources and Permabound Books, while teachers often place orders with e-tailers like Barnesandnoble.com or Scholastic book clubs, illustrating their lack of familiarity with wholesalers and the hefty discounts they offer. Spending, however is a different story—while librarians say they're not as price conscious as teachers, both sides draw the line when books start climbing to about $11 a pop. For more details about what your colleagues are buying and why, take a look at the charts on these pages.