Hey Library Lady is Back!

I can’t believe how fast time has flown by…I have been working at EHS for almost 6 years now!  I can’t believe it’s been 3 years since I was in graduate school and participating in the technology challenges through the cooperative that helped this blog get started.  Blogging is a good thing for a librarian.  First of all, I couldn’t see the library for all the crap that I inherited when I first started working here.  It was a mess—old equipment, smelly books.  Our average collection age was 1986 (older than my high school graduation year!).  Our last assessment has our collection age at around 1990.  (Most high school’s have a 20 year old collection according to the research I have done).  When I went back and re-read my blog entries, I was amazed at how much I had accomplished.  I have to be proud of it all as there is so little feedback or sense of how my small part fits into the bigger picture that I find myself needing to define and redefine continually.

What’s been accomplished in these last five years?  First and foremost, I finished my Masters in Librarianship from Rowan University and enjoyed every minute of the stress, challenge, and chaos of commuting an hour back and forth weekly, juggling work and home and school, and just the face-time experience with such exceptional professors and professional colleagues.  It was an amazing experience and it’s one that I truly miss.

I have weeded and cleaned A LOT of equipment and books from the space.  I have worked hard to develop relationships with people in every department throughout my building, and I have gained valuable perspective from listening to everyone and reflecting on how the whole picture fits together.  I feel we have created a space that is comfortable for students—even if it still feels somewhat sterile. I have lost and regained my secretary several times as personnel changes were made.  This was very discouraging, but ultimately my faith has been restored.  I have been awarded education foundation grants – 4 years in a row, which have added 100 of books and some e-books yearly to our collection.  These have made a huge difference in how many kids are choosing to read.  Additionally, I have set up a successful collaboration with a few teachers to get their kids into the library repeatedly to select books. One of the most gratifying experiences has been having two college interns.  The second continues to commit to volunteering here and I absolutely adore her and everything she brings to this place.  She is going to rock the world in whatever area she chooses to hone her talents.

I am so excited to have her returning to EHS next fall.  You can see her work and mine by going to our library web page: http://www.ewing.k12.nj.us/Page/240

And still I struggle… Of course, there are the things that haunt me as well.  I can’t do displays.  I am a creative, imaginative person who can’t do displays and it drives me insane that I can’t get them right.  So I am going to seek the help of my public librarian friends and some retail geniuses to figure this out.  It is an area that infuriates me to no end because displays obviously attract readers.  I haven’t done very many programs after school for students.  I have many ideas but need some discipline and a timeline to implement them.  I like to think of myself as adaptable and creative when roadblocks arise.  Somehow in these areas I find myself sidelined when I should be able to zigzag my way through. 

January...Time to Regroup and to Go Forward

This entry is actually from a week ago...I never found time to post. I have been joking that the last few days, which have been slow, (thank God), have been me in my own small think tank. Having down time really allows the mind to go places and think of all the possibilities. I also started my library management class on Thursday and it will provide me the opportunity to revise/revisit all of our policies and procedures for the media center. That is about where I need to be..I had the old folder on my desk waiting for this...nothing like a school assignment to ensure something gets finished! Also, ListenNJ has started to take off a bit here with a few faculty members who recognize the convenience of having audio books on their MP3 players for shopping, walking/exercise, and in the car. I have at least two on mine right now and alternate when one bores me or is inappropriate for the moment--like trying to get through Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs. I don't know quite what to do with it and it has entered my dream life--strange doctor types like Dr. Finch, ugh! Might not actually finish it.

Today our after-school tutoring program will start with teachers from our high school and student volunteers from TCNJ. I am so excited about what this program could do and who it could serve...though I am realistic that it will take time to get it running. The program will target students who have parents with limited English skills, those who are unnable to find an appropriate study environment, and those who need help in more than one subject area. We are also going to work with teachers who discover early on that students are falling behind in the research process and could catch up with the help of the librarian and tutors in that subject area. We hope to catch some of our students who have transferred into the district from other schools who may not have been adequately prepared for our requirements, especially our term paper proficiencies.

(This part is from last week)
It’s been a long time…I have thought some entries, but since there is no technology to get what’s been in my head onto the blog without my speaking it or typing it, it hasn’t found its way here yet. (Even if it does exist, I don’t like the idea of mind probes.) Finally, we have reached finals and the end of the first semester, so there is a moment to write something. So here’s my update.

I just finished The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean and it was so good! It was announced as The Michael Printz Award winner for this year, and since I never read the award winners until way after, I thought I’d snap it up for a change. How to sum it up? Adèle Geras in her review of The White Darkness wrote that “reading Geraldine McCaughrean is like being on a spiral staircase. You move down and down and it gets darker and darker, but somehow you're traveling towards some kind of light.” And that is exactly what it felt like to finish the book last night. You simultaneously experience Sym’s freedom and entrapment and it is terrifying. When I turned out the light, I felt like I was suffocating—immediately I found myself imagining being stranded in Antarctica with my two children trying to figure out how I would keep them alive. Enough panic ensued that I found myself out of my bed, kissing them goodnight again. It was strange and eerie, but I felt pride that a book labeled YA could make my 36 year old self feel so many different emotions. After adding some extra blankets and thinking about a heat wave, I was able to drift off to sleep. Here’s a review of the book at Teen Reads: http://www.teenreads.com/reviews/0060890355.asp .

I have been starting to work on a collaboration with other librarians, including the youth librarian at the Ewing Branch of the Mercer County Library and a librarian at TCNJ, who is interested in helping me expose high school seniors to the college library. I have been advertising to students three ways that the school and public library can work together to help students with their work. 1) Carry your MCL card to school and we can place books on hold via the MCL website 2) Use ListenNJ to download audiobooks onto MP3 players (if they don’t like reading, they may prefer listening—also it doesn’t make you feel sick in the car to listen to an audio book) and 3) Use the statewide online reference service of Q&A NJ or IM with a MCL librarian if they need help after hours. Next fall, I plan to have the Ewing Youth Librarian come to our Back to School Night to talk to parents about some of the ways they can improve their research/study habits by knowing how they can utilize both libraries to their fullest.

On being a slug and Halloween wrappers

It's late, I haven't written in awhile and I am coming out of a week of sluggishness. I have worked hard to rid myself of the habit of procrastination...so I've been battling the beast--why when I live in a state that has 4 distinct seasons--a place I have lived in most of my life--do I find every year is as difficult an adjustment to the change of season/time as the one before. I love Fall but hate the change from summer energy into winter slug.

I have been reading lately--goes with slug behavior so it makes sense. I am listening to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants on CD---what an awesome example of how YA literature is not always poorly written or formulaic (sp?). I always love hearing a good story. I felt the same way about listening to Laurie Halse Anderson's story Speak or Alice Sebold's Lucky. These stories are so helpful to me---I remember being intense and sensitive and reflective as a teenager. Why as a thirtysomething do I often think of them only as silly and shallow??? I am also reading The Memory Keeper's Daughter which is equally engaging.

As for work, the library is sweltering again. Now we have moved from AC or the lack of it to heat and the lack of need for it. Am I being prepped for a life in the tropics???? Anyway, we are entrenched in term paper season, so I find myself moving between Reconstruction and the Holocaust, Mary Shelley and Emily Dickinson. Actually, I just find myself moving. All the time. Nonstop. Did I mention I am exhausted? I love research...it is like an addiction for me...so it is difficult sometimes to be helping students who haven't caught on to it yet or will never be interested in it. Luckily, I have been blessed with patience and optimism.

Tomorrow...and the day after I will be battling Halloween candy wrappers that will escape me...despite that my keen ears can hear the crack of a soda can opening or a wrapper crackling, an occupational hazard (is hazard the right word? I certainly don't want to be that nasty librarian who is cold and unfeeling.) I am tired, so this doesn't make sense I am sure...I will still have fun on the worst day at this job so I don't want it to sound totally negative.

I guess I just wanted to write a post to make sure I have more than one in October, to make sure too much time doesn't get by me, to make sure I can hold on to something as time flies by.

BibMe, FixYa! and other contemplations

There's an irony to knowing that the AC gets fixed two days before a cold front passes through...but at least it's fixed!! Last week I was stumped by a TV that was stuck in Progressive Scan Mode, and today I fixed it in 2 seconds...it was great!!! I went to Google and typed in the problem and the brand of the TV. About 15 hits came up, and I ended up at FixYa!, which diagnosed the problem in a minute..not the TV, the DVD player. The fix? Take out the DVD and hold the Stop button for 5 seconds. Easy or what? Bring on the next problem...I am ready!
The AV issue is always problematic, and my favorite teacher response is"didn't they teach you this stuff in school?" Last I checked, library school doesn't have specific classes in how to program a DVD without the remote...mostly because noone returns the remote with the TV! It's a sensitive issue because, like nearly every school in the nation, when the district cut back from 2 to 1 librarian, the AV one got cut and technically it is not in my job description, but it needs to be maintained and protected. In my opinion, we need a clear plan for how to maintain our equipment--especially the LCD projectors that we have in the building. I am researching a solution with our tech guy to lock them down to the carts so that they don't walk. As they get smaller in size, they fit nicely into a backpack and can easily walk away.

I have to mention how happy I am that I found BibMe.org because yesterday it saved my life before grad school and my presentation on Libraries Serving Remote Users. I absolutely love how you can type in some of the information and then the site searches for the URL and finds the rest to fill in. What a time saver!! I was so wired last night after class from all of the fun stuff I am learning. The most interesting topics to me were the Handhelds, the Disaster Planning, and Wireless, and the EField Trips. I have been searching for Virtual Fieldtrips to recommend to my colleagues, and some of what was presented was pretty cool. It got me thinking and I am considering trying to put together some of my own from vacations that I have taken. Or at least consider how I photograph the future vacations I am planning on taking. The whole wireless thing mentioned WiMax, which is Sprint and Nextels merge to create the next step in wireless technology. To learn more about it go to Mobile-Tech-Today from CIO to read some articles on it. As for my topic, I am considering moving to the Cleveland area so I can be a part of CLEVNET, which is a library network that has huge remote offerings for its patrons. Check out the site:
http://dlc.clevnet.org/1E157477-78CB-4E7A-93F7-68443B4027E3/10/219/en/Default.htm . This library consortium offers e-books, audiobooks, videostreaming, and music downloads for remote users. WOW!!
Well, that's all for now. I realize that noone reads this blog--but I am okay with it; it has really become okay that I am only writing for myself and sometimes I write about stuff, read it later and realize I had forgotten about ideas or projects. I do get weirded out sometimes that I talk to people like they're really out there reading though. Anyway, I am exhausted...I just realized a bit ago that my son used the metal can opener as a hammer---vague recollections of noise while I was cooking dinner--and now my hardwood stairs and stair railing are dinged up--hence, this didn't go over well with my husband tonight. Maybe I can find a fix at FixYa! I'll have to Google it. If not, as my daughter says to her kindergarten teacher, "Tomorrow is another day!" Yes, and in my case, it will be another day doing a job I totally love.

Where'd I Put My Sense of Humor?

This week we have had HSPA make up testing in the library so I have been able to catch up on my professional reading and do some planning for library programs. We are still battling the heat---this is our 3rd or 4th week without AC and I am starting to feel the effects. I try to find the humor in it---Dante could use this place for research on the sequel to The Inferno (yes, I know he is dead), etc., but I am starting to lose my mind a bit. It would be different if the windows opened. I am getting a lot of comments about "back in the day when there was no AC...yes, I remember those days since I never in nine years taught in a classroom that had air conditioning and I taught one year in the tropics--give me some windows that open and I am quite capable of perserverance!

On a positive note, both the HSPA and the heat have gotten me out of the space and into other classrooms for some 9th grade history orientations. I mostly cover database use and some of the features of printing and citing from the databases. I also cover what sites are best--gov, edu, org and sites that still have human editing like directories and Librarian's Index to the Internet and Internet Public Library, which are two of my favorite sites.

I did find a citation builder this year that I like besides www.citationmachine.net . It's called BibMe! at www.bibme.org . If you choose Manual Entry Mode, I think it is clearer and more aesthetically pleasing to use than Citation Machine. Sorry, David Warlick :(

The magazines have all been organized and the routing schedule has been established. This year we have over 15 teachers involved in our magazine routing service, and over 12 different magazines being routed. In the spring I asked for suggestions and got some very good ones from the staff. I particularly like Discover, Inc, and Cuisine-at-Home. I was disappointed by FamilyFun, which I thought would be great for staff who have families since it is from Disney. It's not bad, but it is not as good as I thought it would be.

Teen Read Week is October 14-21 this year and the theme is LOL at your library. When I went searching through our catalog to find humor books, I realized we are seriously deficient in the most obvious of choices provided by ALA --which led me to think about the last time I laughed out loud. Suffice it to say that, except for the occassional giggle, I am a bit devoid of humor in my life. Time to watch some Jack Black--maybe School of Rock???? Yes, it is a favorite. Please send some suggestions as I can't even remember what is funny anymore!! Except for my own kids--though even they haven't been making me laugh hard enough to make my stomach hurt. I welcome any suggestions--for reads or flicks that might bring some much needed laughter to my life :) I actually did find other web sites that had great humor booklists for teens, making me realize that humor is kind of an individual thing. Here are some links to some I found: http://sfpl.lib.ca.us/sfplonline/teen/booklists/teenhumornew.htm and http://www.scld.org/teens_booklist.asp and http://teens.denverlibrary.org/find/genre/humor.html .

Right now, we have a student worker for one block a day who is helping me with a weeding project. We have so many old videos that haven't circulated in a long time--some are old high school events that I definitely want out of the catalog. Hopefully after this long project is done, I will be able to resubmit my collection to Follett and see if we are moving closer to a collection age within 10 years of 2007. I took on weeding the 300s but had to stop because of the heat and other things of greater urgency.

One thing we are talking about doing here is creating a place in Outlook to schedule our computer labs. If that works then we will look into scheduling equipment as well. I think it will be a great way to utilize existing programs to make our job easier and more efficient. Of course, it has to go through the technology dept...so we will see.

In an effort to hold true to my promise to myself, I also sent the library's web page url to www.school-libraries.net , the site founded by Peter Milbury. I included this blog separately in the personal interest pages. Still not exactly sure how much my job and my opinions can diverge. Hopefully it will help me check out some sites and put names to faces when I go to the conference (NJASL) in November.

Weeding: An essential task in collection maintenance

This week I managed to get half of the new nonfiction books I purchased onto the shelves. To do this I moved the 800s, cleaned all the shelves in the 800s and added the new books. I also weeded many books from the beginning 300s and will clean those shelves and add the new books. I took all of the old titles out of the computer and prepared them for discard. I am only weeding books that were published before 1970 that haven't circulated in the last 7 years or books that are damaged, faded, and falling apart. I still can't believe no one weeded these shelves, though I do know efforts were made at one point. The big task is going to be the 600s. Something is wrong with one of the chillers in the library and they are waiting for the part, so the working conditions have been terrible--by afternoon no one can work in the space. I am hopeful that the temperature will improve during this week.

This week I also went through all of my web resources from CJRLC and LII. I handed out different web sites to the staff for their content areas. I also discovered some that I liked. One of them was www.pagebull.com which is a search engine that displays the opening page of each of its result list so that you can see whether that page would be helpful to your search. I really liked using it. I compared the results with Google and found that the quality of the results were similar. I also discovered some teacher sites, which I will include in the next entry.

For grad school this week, I am preparing my casestudy rough draft. I have to include a whole bunch of data and information about the school, area, and the media center itself. I measured the space and discovered it is around 5,000 square feet, which I could be wrong about, because it is shaped as an arc---not quite as easy as measuring a box. I also have been looking over policies and procedures and realize that they are kind of old and outdated---another project to work out. For this past week's class, I had to investigate software and hardware web sites/programs. I got to play with Picasa, Google's photo management and editing program. I also reviewed www.mobiletechtoday.com --which is an online site dedicated to providing up-to-the-minute news on what's happening in mobile technology tools. It was interesting, but way above my expertise. I will stick with Picasa!

A New School Year Begins

In late August I visited the Natural History Museum in Washington, D.C. with my kids. One display there continues to run through my brain. A display of a huge Emu-like bird with an explanation of how increased isolation led to increased physical size in the species and a lack of flight due to lack of predators. I come back to that display often while starting the new school year, continually drawing the same conclusion: I don't want to be an Emu! I didn't expect to continue this blog, even though I enjoyed the Tech Challenge and am planning to do the second one also. I am still unsure about blogging...for me. Honestly, what has drawn me back is the thousand thoughts I have a day about stuff that I really can't share with anyone else in my building and perhaps can only share with one other person in my district. But no matter how great even that person is, a varied opinion is needed after awhile. That's also why I am back in school working on the last 6 classes towards my MLS. I miss talking shop with someone. I am sure that many would disagree, but in my circumstance, the school library can be a lonely place. Maybe I will see it differently after awhile. Last year I still had a teacher-centered mentality. But teachers don't all see M.S. as teachers--especially here since there is only one--with all the management and administrative tasks, the teaching has moved to the back burner. My overactive brain struggles from time to time with where I fit in here. New district, new position. My more rational side says, "don't overthink, just keep forging ahead!" So I will, but I am going to set a goal for myself to reach out and make contact with other school media specialists to avoid feeling lonely.

In other news, I finished last June inventorying the entire library, something that hasn't been done in more than six years. Our tech guy was able to make me a portable cart to move throughout the stacks so that I could scan the books and make updates. I was able to do a lot of the inventorying during AP exams and final exams in June. That made me realize though just how much weeding needs to be done. There are so many old books in this library...I get frustrated thinking about how many years no one weeded these shelves. Now that I have ordered new books, I am having trouble fitting them on the shelves until I weed. Unfortunately, I am starting the school year without a secretary since she has been pulled to help every day in another part of the building. I know that many people don't have support help, but here it is essential. Our library seems massive. It is difficult to be in the back of the library and monitor doors and equipment in the front of the library. So getting into the stacks to work will have to wait for the moment.

Last year I also reevaluated our magazines and polled the staff. They gave me a list of new titles--more parenting, more general reading periodicals for kids to read. I added a title for people with ADD. More specific titles to recharge the staff's interest in their content areas. We are going to continue our magazine routing service to the staff since it was successful last year. I think there will be more people participating since we've got lots of new titles.

So far the students who have been in the MC have been very focused and courteous. I miss the big groups that I built up last year during lunches...hopefully they'll be back this year. Tomorrow we are putting up our Hispanic Heritage Month display, me and the student worker we have for the last block of the day. We were able to get all the new and freshman student IDs made this year more efficiently by working with the technology department to have the names inputted earlier. Same with our database for the library. Last year was a nightmare. Overall, I am pleased with what I accomplished last year and feel confident that I will accomplish a lot this year as well.