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Education Lending Right

School Library Survey out now!

Once again school libraries across Australia are being asked to participate in the Educational Lending Right (ELR) survey. Survey information has been sent out to 600 randomly selected schools in a Curriculum Corporation envelope, with a distinctive green ELR label.

If you are one of the selected schools, please take the time to undertake the survey. There are no questions to be answered or statistics to be manually retrieved. The survey uses your library management system (LMS) to calculate book title numbers. The process varies depending on the LMS you use. In some cases, all that is required is for a back-up to be provided. In other cases, a program is provided which is run in the LMS. Step-by-step instructions are provided and, depending on the size of your collection, this should not take long to run.

It is essential that enough survey responses are received to ensure that there is statistical validity to the data collected. For this reason, telephone and email support are provided throughout the survey period. When you have received the survey information, you may receive a follow-up phone call to check whether more assistance is required.

Financial support for the Australian writing and publishing industry

By completing the ELR survey, you are providing the statistics required by the Australian Government’s Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts to calculate payments for Australian authors, illustrators, translators, compilers, editors and publishers. These payments are made on the basis that income is lost from the availability of books in educational lending libraries. In June 2008, payments totalling $10.469 million were made to 10,275 Australian creators and 383 Australian publishers. This amount is a considerable boost to the writing and publishing industry, ensuring the continuing growth and development of quality Australian resources for our school libraries.

‘I want to do the survey, but never seem to be selected’

To ensure statistical integrity, only 600 schools are randomly selected across Australia. Schools with less that 100 students are excluded from the survey. Selection is also limited to schools that have one of the following library management systems: Alice, Amlib, Bibliotech, Bookmark, Circ/Cat, Destiny, LibCode, OASIS and Oliver. If your LMS is different, we encourage you to speak to the company and urge them to participate in the survey.

Top 100 Australian books

The statistics collected by the ELR survey are used to provide the interesting top 100 Australian books list.

Mem Fox’s Possum magic is still number one after eight years. Mem has another three titles in the top 100.
Emily Rodda has 19 titles in the list.
Paul Jennings is the next most popular with 13 titles.
An introduction to Australian spiders by Esther Cullen is the new non-fiction book in the top 100.

Fiction newcomers to the list are:

The Barrumbi kids by Leonie Norrington

The best pet by P E Matthews

Dog star by Janeen Brian

Dragonkeeper by Carole Wilkinson

Green fingers by Emily Rodda

Hot stuff by M D Clark

Jade McKade by Jane Carroll

Lockie Leonard, human torpedo by Tim Winton

Once by Morris Gleitzman

Storm boy by Colin Thiele

Tashi by Anna Fienberg

Selby’s secret by Duncan Ball

So much to tell you by John Marsden

Specky McGee by Felice Arena

Uncovered! by Paul Jennings

View the top 100 books list at http://www.curriculum.edu.au/scis/partnerships/top100_2007_2008.pdf

Schools participating in the survey last year received a colourful top 100 Australian books poster.