The South Dakota State Library now has your 2009-10 school library statistics available for access and comparisons. Bibliostat’s CONNECT is an online tool that gives you easy access to comparative statistics and facts about school libraries in South Dakota.

With CONNECT, you can quickly and easily identify peer school libraries and then compare your library to others on any of hundreds of measures. From your web browser, you can select comparison school districts by name or allow CONNECT to identify them based on specific criteria you provide. You choose the data elements or output measures that you are interested in looking at, and then choose if you would like to view the results in a graph or an Excel table.

You will need the unique login and password assigned to your school district during the 2009-10 School Library Survey. Once into the database, select “South Dakota Schools,” and proceed.

Can’t remember your login or password? Contact either of the State Library’s school coordinators: Joan Upell at (605) 295-3152 or Lee Crary at (605) 295-3173.

Later this fall, watch for the South Dakota State Library’s “2010 School Data Digest,” a snapshot of South Dakota school libraries during the 2009-10 school year.