This is a note for the middle and high school librarians.  If you're not
one of these, you may want to pass this along to your friendly neighborhood
school librarian.

The 3M company, cooperating with the The American Association of School
Librarians (AASL) has a competitive grant program to give library
collection security materials to middle and high school
libraries.   They're planning to make about 100 awards this year.  Move
quickly if you're interested.   The deadline is March 1.

http://www.ala.org/aasl/3msalute.html

Folks sometimes ask, how I got there...
I was working on a reference question about book theft/loss at school
libraries, which isn't as well documented as I had hoped.  The folks at
AASL pointed me to the before/after figures from libraries who got this
grant in the past.

In case you're wondering, according to the AASL, based on applications to
this program, the average loss rate for schools without a theft detection
system is 4% - 6% of the collection per year.  The range was as low as 1%
to as high as 10%.  Based on this, a  high school with a collection of
18,000 volumes would probably lose 900 or so volumes per year.

Betty

  _________________________________________________________

    Elizabeth L. Brown
    Digital Reference Specialist
    Library of Congress, Washington, DC  20540-4604
    [log in to unmask]                telephone: 202/707-2235

    Library of Congress American Memory Home Page:
    http://memory.loc.gov/
_________________________________________________________