By Debra Lau Whelan

To gain a better understanding of collection development and the issue of self-censorship, School Library Journal recently conducted an anonymous survey, which was emailed to 5,438 of SLJ's Extra Helping subscribers on November 18, 2008. The survey closed on December 2, 2008.

The results are based on 654 school libraries responding, and they are broken down as follows: 53 percent elementary school librarians, 37 percent middle school librarians, 30 percent of high school librarians, and 5 percent other. Some 29 percent of respondents were from the Northeast, 24 percent from the Midwest, 19 percent from the Southeast, 15 percent from the West, and 13 percent from the Southwest. Results are accurate to within +/- 4% at a 95% confidence level.