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20 Ontario School Library Association or for a quick funding calculation, use the number of students multiplied by the average price of a hardcover book. using achieving Information Literacy and the pages identifying size of book collections and resources (pages 28- 31), compare your collection size to the standards: for a school of 500-999 students an acceptable book collection includes a "minimum of 15,000 items or 22 items/student whichever is greater" (p.28) and "40-60 periodicals" (p.29). I hope these suggestions are helpful and that adding your enthusiasm and innovative ideas to your budget plan will help you both be successful in your funding proposals. I know my library falls short in some of the standards but I have been able to maintain a decent collection using some of these sources of information to back up my request for funding. Dear Rita, our school has a reading focus with emphasis on getting reluctant readers into books. I checked my circulation stats and found that the boys at my school are not borrowing resources. I can't see myself shelving resources as "boy books" to get them into the library, so what should I do? From, NE Ideas? Dear NE, There is always someone hard to reach when it comes to reading, but you will be able to draw in male readers easily with a few additions. at the risk of stereotyping male readers, I will offer a few suggestions. • Improve the graphic novel collection with specific attention to the titles the boys request. • order magazines that relate to sports, skateboarding, biking, cars, basketball or science to bring in male readers. • seek out an avid male reader and help him to organize a book club. see if you can arrange funding to buy the books for the readers. select a title (Forest of reading or a first book of a recent series) and advertise by word of mouth or book talk when classes come to the library for instruction. • Identify adventure, historical, horror and fantasy genre titles and display them prominently for the readers to browse. • create a display of read-alike titles, basing your display on what your male readers are asking for. • suggest that teachers use a reading challenge (40 Book challenge) in their class to encourage the reading of a variety of genres and provide book bins for genre browsing when the classes need new classroom library books. • Book talk new books that might be of interest to boys. show your enthusiasm for new titles and have copies available when you have promoted a book. • chat with the boys who come to the library and see what they are reading and what else they would like. z …continued from page 19