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About the Curriculum Collection

Resources for the Curriculum Collection |   Materials in the Curriculum Collection |  Organization and Content |  Searching  for Curriculum Materials |  Historical Textbooks |  Call Number Guide

Print Version [PDF]

The Curriculum Collection, located in the Social Sciences, Health, and Education Library (SSHEL), is representative of only part of the vast core of materials related to teacher education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library. The emphasis of the Curriculum Collection is on textbooks, curriculum guides, related multimedia materials, software, and catalogs from textbook publishers. The Curriculum Collection is supplemented and enhanced by the School Collection (S-Collection) of children's and young adult books. The primary purpose of the Curriculum Collection is to support the instructional programs of the College of Education and the methods courses in the subject disciplines for preparation of early childhood, elementary, and secondary school teachers. Together with the S-Collection, it serves the curriculum needs of the children's literature courses taught in the College of Education and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science.

The goals of the Curriculum Collection are as follows: to maintain a collection of items for use by students and teachers that is accessible during working, evening and weekend hours; to reflect as many different philosophies of education as possible; to provide materials of interest to varied ethnic and racial groups; to maintain a representative historical collection of textbooks for examination and research purposes; to provide a reference collection of guides to curriculum materials; and to acquire textual materials from those school districts to which University of Illinois student teachers are assigned.

RESOURCES RELATED TO THE CURRICULUM COLLECTION

• Guide to Curriculum Materials
• Finding Lesson Plans
• Finding Basal Readers
• Curriculum Materials that Utilize Children's Trade Books
• School (S-) Collection
• Selected Internet Resources for the Curriculum Collection
• Selected Internet and Print Resources for Historical Curriculum Materials

ORGANIZATION AND CONTENT

Call Numbers

The Curriculum Collection houses a variety of materials to assist teachers with their duties. Due to the unique nature of textbooks, curriculum guides, and kits cataloged within the curriculum materials, there are a variety of call number elements to distinguish between distinct types of materials. Most Curriculum Collection call numbers are made up of five elements, each starting a new line of the call number. 

Sample Curriculum Collection Call Numbers

Prefix: The three most common prefixes in the Curriculum Collection are:

• TEXT.: Printed materials that would be used by students (such as textbooks) and/or their supplementary or accompanying materials, such as teacher’s guides and workbooks.
• CURR.: Guides, outlines, lesson plans, programs, and overviews. The distinguishing feature of CURR. materials is that they have no accompanying student textbooks or materials to be used by students, but provide resources for teachers.
• KIT:  Materials that are packaged together in a set in order to teach a certain topic. They often include materials such as videos, music CDs, maps, charts, and other supplementary materials.

Dewey Number: The materials in the Curriculum Collection mostly use specific Dewey numbers that have been established for the collection over the years. The numbers in the examples above are for the following categories: Shakespeare (822.33), Substance Abuse (362.29), General Science (500), Folk Art (745), and Basal readers, reading (372.4).

Publisher Code: The publisher code is a four-to-five letter code unique to each publisher of materials in the Curriculum Collection. The code is usually made up of letters in the publisher’s name. In the examples above, the publishers are the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), Scholastic (SCHOL), McGraw-Hill (MCGRH), Grow Publications (GROW), and Holt, Rinehart, Winston (HOLT).

Date of Publication: This is fairly self-explanatory; however, in the second example above you see the letter “A” after the date. This is to indicate that there are two books (or sets of books) that fall under the same call number, so we needed to differentiate between them. For example, if a publisher releases three sets of books in the same year called American History, American History: Beginnings to 1866, and American History: 1867 to Today. The original set will have no letter after the publication date. The second set will have an “A” and the third set will have a “B”.  

Individual Volume Label: The last line of a Curriculum Collection call number tells you more specifically what each volume in the collection consists of. Nearly All TEXT. and KIT  materials use individual volume labels, while most CURR. materials do not. However, sometimes a publisher will release several volumes of a curriculum guide. In that case, the individual volumes would be labeled 1, 2, and 3. In the first example above, the book is the second volume in the set. The most commonly used suffixes include: 

• txt  (student text)         
• TE  (teacher’s edition—includes a replica of the student text in the book)
• TG. (teacher’s guide—does not include a replica of the student text in the book)
• WKBK. (workbook)
• sup. (supplementary material)
• tests
• transpar. (transparencies)
• forms (duplicating worksheets, also called “blackline masters”)
• chart (posters)
• key (answer key)
• CDROM

Suffixes can also be combined as necessary. “TE.WKBK.” is a teacher’s edition of a workbook while “TG.sup.” is a supplement to a teacher’s guide. A number before the suffix indicates either the grade or the level (if books come in Levels A-D, we will label them 1-4). A number after the suffix indicates the specific volume of the book with that call number/suffix. For instance, in the last example above, the volume is the fourth teacher’s edition of a workbook for third grade/level three.

Location

Materials are located under each prefix within a given subject area. Within each prefix, materials are assigned Dewey Decimal call numbers according to subject and are physically arranged in a Dewey classification sequence. 

Materials which are not located in the Curriculum Collection may be borrowed from other state schools using I-Share, the statewide library online catalog, or may be borrowed through Interlibrary Loan (ILL).

SSHEL also houses a file of intelligence and development tests that are used in teacher education. Research-oriented and theoretical works are included in the SSHEL main collection.

SEARCHING FOR CURRICULUM MATERIALS

When searching the Library Catalog for curriculum materials, an excess of non-curriculum materials are often found by the catalog. However, there are two specific ways of searching the catalog for curriculum materials only.

1. Most curriculum materials have subject headings which combines the subject of the material (i.e. history, English, economics, etc.) with the subject "study and teaching." Either the Advanced Search or Basic Search may be used. When using the Advanced Search, enter the subject (i.e. history) in the first search box and select "Subject" from the drop down menu. Then, in the second search box, enter "study and teaching" and again select "Subject" from the drop down menu.

A similar search may be conducted in the Basic Search by entering the subject plus study and teaching, i.e. history study and teaching, and selecting "Subject" from the drop down menu. To further refine the search, include elementary or secondary in the search, i.e. history study and teaching secondary. Including secondary in the search may also retrieve some college-level materials.

Either of these searches should find curriculum materials related to the subject you are searching for. Please remember to check that the location of the material is "SSHEL Curriculum" or "SSHEL Storage" to ensure that it is a curriculum material. 

2. The second type of search must be done using the Classic Catalog Advanced Search screen. Enter the subject in the first search box and select "Subject Words" from the drop down menu. Then, in the second search box enter one of the call number prefixes listed above and select "MFHD Search" in drop down menu.

This is especially useful if searching specifically for textbooks (TEXT.) or curriculum guides (CURR.). This technique can also be used to locate specific materials, including kits (KIT), games (GAME), CD-ROMs (CDROM), flashcards (FLCRD), videorecordings (VIDREC), music CDs (CDISC), and DVDs (DVD).

CALL NUMBER GUIDE BY SUBJECT (Curriculum Collection)

For comments on this page contact: Social Sciences, Health, and Education Library

Last modified by: Kelly McCusker on 6/11/13