The task
The two articles below take opposite positions on one question:
Should the library system shift its collections budget from 78 percent print toward 60 percent print over three years?
Read both. Then analyze both positions to determine which one is better supported by evidence. Use specific evidence from both articles in your answer.
You are not being asked which side you agree with, and you will not be scored on which one you choose. You are being asked to judge the arguing — and either article can be argued for. Allow about 45 minutes.
Article 1
Where the Readers Are
1A collections budget should follow the readers. Over the past five years ours has not.
2Digital circulation — e-books and downloadable audio — rose from 310,000 checkouts a year to 744,000, an increase of 140 percent. Print circulation over the same five years fell from 2.4 million to 1.87 million, a decrease of 22 percent.
3The holds list shows where the shortage is. Taking the twenty most-requested titles of last year and looking at both formats of each: the median wait for the e-book was eleven weeks, and for the same title in print it was three. Same books, same readers, same system. We are rationing the format people are asking for and leaving copies on the shelf of the one they are not.
4There is also what the shelves cost us, and it does not appear in the collections line. Thirty-eight percent of the system's print collection did not circulate a single time last year. Every one of those volumes was cataloged by a person, shelved by a person, inventoried twice, and some of them moved to a storage facility we rent by the square foot in Long Island City.
5Last spring we surveyed cardholders and 4,100 responded. Sixty-two percent said that at least half of what they now read, they read on a screen. Among cardholders under forty it was 74 percent.
6I am not proposing that we empty the shelves, and I am not proposing it quickly. I am proposing that a budget currently split 78 percent print and 22 percent digital move to 60 and 40 over three years, roughly six points a year, with the split reviewed at the end of each one. Sixty percent of a collections budget is still a great many books. It is simply closer to where our readers already are than 78 is.
Article 2
The Shelf Still Matters
1Before the budget moves, somebody should do the arithmetic on a digital dollar, because Mr. Osei-Tutu has not put it in his piece.
2Our system pays about $55 for a popular e-book license. That license expires after 26 checkouts or two years, whichever comes first, and then we buy it again. The print copy of the same book costs us about $16 and circulates an average of 34 times before it is retired. That is $2.12 per checkout for the license and 47 cents for the book.
3This also answers his eleven-week wait. The digital line is long because the licenses expire, not because the budget is misallocated. Shifting money into a format that evaporates buys a shorter line this year and the same line again in two.
4In my branch's intake survey last year, 900 patrons answered a question about home internet. Forty-one percent said they have none.
5From three o'clock to six on a school day, every one of my eleven public computers is occupied and there is a line at the desk. The young people in that line are not choosing print over digital. They are here because the building is the only place they can get either one.
6A shift toward digital moves money from the cheaper format to the more expensive one, and it moves it away from the readers who have the fewest other ways to get a book. If the system wants to spend more on digital, it should say where that money is coming from, and it should say it to the people standing in line at three o'clock.
Your 45 minutes
Stop here if you have not written yet. What follows names the evidence in both articles and shows where each one is weak. Read it before you write and you will not be practicing the thing the test measures — which is finding all of this yourself, in forty-five minutes, with nobody helping.
After the clock — what was actually on the table
What each article put in front of you
Where the Readers Are
- Five years of circulation, both formats, with the starting and ending figures. He gives raw numbers and percentages, which lets a reader check the arithmetic and see the sizes.
- A holds comparison that holds the book constant. The twenty most-requested titles, each measured in both formats: eleven weeks against three. Comparing a thing to itself is the strongest simple design there is, and he uses it.
- A cost of the status quo. 38 percent of print did not circulate at all.
- A cardholder survey with its size. 4,100 responses, 62 percent.
- A bounded proposal. 78/22 to 60/40 over three years — he says exactly what he is asking for, which is rarer than it should be.
The Shelf Still Matters
- A unit-cost calculation, shown in full. $55 ÷ 26 = $2.12; $16 ÷ 34 = $0.47. Every input is named and the reader can do it again.
- An explanation of his evidence rather than a denial of it. She accepts the eleven-week wait and argues it has a different cause. This is the most advanced move in any of the five sets: an argument does more damage by re-explaining a fact than by disputing it.
- A local measurement. 900 patrons, 41 percent without home internet.
- A direct observation, bounded by time and count. Eleven computers, full from three to six, with a line.
Where each one is thin
Neither article is the better one. Each has evidence a careful reader can push on, and naming that pressure — in specific words, about a specific sentence — is most of what the first scoring trait rewards.
Where the Readers Are
- 140 percent from a small base. Digital rose 434,000 checkouts; print fell 530,000. Stated as percentages, digital looks like a wave and print like a trickle. Stated as checkouts, print's decline is the larger movement, and print is still doing two and a half times the volume. Both statements are true. He chose the one that helps.
- He does not mention the license cost at all. Whitcomb's paragraph 2 is information he certainly has, since it is his own budget. Leaving out the price of the thing you want to buy more of is a serious omission, and an essay can say so.
- The survey went to cardholders the system could reach. A survey distributed to people with an email address on file will over-count the people comfortable on screens. The 62 percent may be measuring the method as much as the readers.
- “Did not circulate” is not “was not used.” Reference volumes, local history, and anything read in a chair and put back count as zero in that number.
- The 74 percent is a slice, offered without saying how big a slice. Cardholders under forty read on screens more than cardholders over forty. That is worth knowing and it is not an argument for the whole system's budget unless he says what share of borrowing those readers do.
The Shelf Still Matters
- Her survey counts the people who came in. The patrons drifting away to digital are by definition not standing in her branch answering an intake survey. Her 41 percent is true of Morrisania's visitors and cannot describe the system.
- The 34-circulations average may not hold for the books in dispute. A popular new title is exactly the book most likely to be worn out or retired early, and it is the only kind of book with an eleven-week wait. If new popular print circulates 15 times rather than 34, her 47 cents becomes $1.07 and the gap narrows.
- The computer line is a different budget. Public terminals and staffing are not the collections budget, which is what Osei-Tutu proposed changing. The point is powerful and it is answering a question he did not ask.
- One branch, in one neighborhood, against a system-wide proposal. Morrisania is the strongest possible case for her argument, which is a reason to trust the observation and a reason to doubt the generalization.
Two essays, either of which could score well
If both of those look like real essays to you, the set is working as intended. On the test you will have two articles built the same way, and no time to find the perfect answer, because there isn't one. Pick the side you can support in forty-five minutes and support it.
Check your own
The Extended Response is scored on three traits. Read your draft against them, one at a time — and then read How the essay is scored, which has the full rubric and two responses to the same task, one earning a 6 and one earning about a 2.
- Analysis of argument and evidence. Did you say which article is better supported, in a sentence, near the beginning? Did you quote or name specific evidence from both articles — not just the one you chose? Did you say what is wrong with the evidence on at least one side, rather than only what is right?
- Development and organization. Does each paragraph do one job? Does a reader who has not seen the articles know what they said? Did you get to the end, or did you run out of clock in the middle of a paragraph?
- Clarity and command of English. Read it aloud. Sentences that you stumble over reading are sentences a scorer stumbles over too. Check that every sentence has a subject and a verb and ends where it should.
One more, which is not on the rubric and costs you the most: did you argue about which side is right instead of which side is better supported? That essay can be beautifully written and still score low, because it answers a question nobody asked.