November 29 Reading Log

This week, we talked about librarians and job descriptions in the library. Studies have shown that student achievement is higher when a full time media specialist is in the school. However, there are different staffing mandates and the media specialist may or may not be the only librarian for the district, if full time (Staffing the School Library). But if I'm lucky, I will have volunteers, circulation clerks, and paraprofessionals working with me in order to make the library run more smoothly. If I do, then I will need to be sure that the job descriptions are clear and that my job isn't confused with the others. In order to make a clear distinction, I will need to first build good relationships with everybody involved lest I create political in-fighting with everybody involved and make a decisive action about establishing myself as the librarian (Tough Choices). In order to make this happen, however, we first need to think about what standards we are holding ourselves as librarians. What duties do we see the librarian and the clerk doing? If the district office doesn't have a job description, then the library needs to create one based on the standards and duties that the librarian has lined out on paper (Managing the Clerical Staff). Even after these steps have been completed, there still needs to be a continuous evaluation system. As a librarian, I need to continuously make sure that the library environment, planning and preparation of instruction, and the instruction itself is running to the best of its ability as well as evaluating the performances of support staff (Performance and Evaluation). The job might run into other people's jobs as well, such as the tech support. Who creates and run the library website? Do we both have equal say in its creation? (Staffing the School Library). Some other questions that need to be considered include: What personal dispositions to need to be successful? How do you self assess to move foreword? What professional skills do you need to improve upon? (Developing the Vision)

There may be a time when we need a substitute in the school library. Leaving a letter giving direction as to what the sub can do. This includes shelving books, cataloging new books, and sorting books for shelving. It's also important to tell them about the catalog, library website, and anything else that would be helpful for the sub to know when helping students and teachers (Dear Teacher Librarian Substitute).

 But we also need to reward the people who help us in the library. Allow volunteers and paraprofessionals to have the chance to check out new books first. Give acknowledgement to work done well, such as talking to the principal and giving a shout out to the radio or news station (Persk, Rewards, Glories...). This will boost the confidence in the library and further build relationships with everybody involved.

November 15 Reading Log

Weeding is a necessary evil. We have to weed books in order to get new books that are current and appealing for students and teachers alike, but it's sometimes hard to get rid of them, especially if we think it still has some value in it. Even parents and teachers might take offense if they see you throwing away "good books" (Spilled Milk). That's why we need to have guidelines to help us make those tough decisions. When weeding, we need to consider how much it's being used, if it looks old, or if we have multiple copies of the same book (Weeding policies). When weeding, we should do it in small sections throughout the year without making a big fuss about it. If we do, then we're giving into the possibility of protests from parents and teachers and therefore, never getting anything cleared out (Spilled Milk). Having support from the administration such as the principal is a great help in this area, especially if he (or she) is interesting in developing the library for student learning (Spilled Milk).

Checking for racism and bias is something else we need to consider when weeding. We want to give students a well rounded view of information, not beliefs of one group or another. I would never have guessed to scrutinize illustrations for stereotypes such as what animals are representing certain groups of people, as Questioning Your Collection suggests. It's easy not to think about certain things because I'm in the position of power as being white, but it's something to think about, especially if you're in an inner city school. If we don't question what we consider sacred, including classics, how are we ever going to develop our collections for a diverse group of students?

November 8 Reading Log

With growing popularity with non-print materials such as ebooks and online databases, I always wanted to know what would happen with print materials. Is it worth buying new print materials when we're moving towards ebooks and online databases? According to Ellen McNair in Print to Digital, print materials may still be useful depending on the school district. Some schools may not have the budget to have both a digital and a print source available for students or they have both but don't have the money to continually invest in nonprint materials since they're expected to have both print and nonprint. This is true in the schools that I've observed in; because of a tight budget, they're unable to have ebooks or even online databases.

But if you do decide to have ebooks, how do you decide what print materials to keep and which ones to let go so you can get online. This can be done through inventory. You will not only know what you have in your collection, but you can also know it well enough to determine which books are out of date and which ones are good enough to keep (Inventory for the School Library). This would definitely be helpful to know in the science section since new information is constantly coming out, causing the print materials to be out of date before they even hit the shelves. Certain books should still be kept in print such as ancient civilizations, narrative nonfiction, Civil War, and popular new fiction (Print to Digital) since students (and teachers) still use these topics in class and want students to use print materials.

Choosing books is a very important job for the school library media specialist. We want students to love reading and entice them back in again and again in order to discover the love of reading. But how do we do that if books are old, ugly and well, unreadable? Darcy Lohmiller says that as librarians we really do need to judge the book by its cover. If we don't like the cover of a book, then why would we expect students to read? Because we're in an age filled with digital materials, our print materials need to be catchy, else we're wasting our money for them. The book covers need to reflect the words in the book and be appropriate to its genre.

Ebooks should also be considered because they reach students who wouldn't have read normally. Chris Gustafson mentions that some students prefer ebooks because of a variety of reasons: They can make the font bigger, they read longer books because an ereader doesn't really tell you how long the book is, and they want to read more in general. This is a big plus to include ebooks in the library, but we also need to think about how we're going to incorporate them into the library and whether or not students know ebooks are available.

It's a lot to think about, especially if you're a smaller library who runs on a tight budget. Is it worth it to get ebooks for the students, or should we just continue getting the print materials?