Recent happenings

So much has been going on in the library!  I was waiting to post until I had pictures to show you, but what with just moving, I can't find the cord to transfer photos from my camera to the computer.  Well, just as well, then you will be able to see the complete transformation from before to after.  It's still in the process of changing right now.  My self-imposed deadline to be all done (moving books back into the library space, posters up, furniture in, and now some other things I'm excited about) is August 1 for registration.  We'll see if I meet that!

When I do post the pictures, I will also share some things I've learned in this project.  I will say that since I'm a K-12 librarian, the only librarian in the district, it's great to have someone to help with an eye toward design of the library.  I found that person at the local furniture store here in town.  It's great to have someone who knows the space, knows the people, and can see the possibilities.  Oh, also, make sure when you begin to have a tape measure!  Of course we have several at home, but since I live 20 miles from the school, when I forget it, I can't just pop back home and get it.  I ended up having to change my entire floor plan because my measurements (done with - ahem - a ruler) weren't accurate and I needed more space for fiction books than I thought, so the fiction is where I thought the nonfiction would be.  (Plus, I don't put books across the full length of a bookshelf.  I give a little room at the end so I can stand a book up vertically to feature it.)  But I think it's better this way, anyway!  

I got the go-ahead on Follett Shelf, an ebook program that will work with the students' laptops.  Very exciting!  I was always apprehensive about using Nooks or Kindles because that's an additional device to break.  I have to admit, my superintendent had the vision of this type of ebook program way before I did.  Mr. Egli, are you a closet librarian?  (Apparently I already heard about Follett Shelf at the AEA meeting I went to this spring.  I think that Vgotsky's Zone of Proximal Development applies here - I just wasn't ready to learn about that yet.)

I met with the new TAG teacher and am very excited about that.  It is so nice to have someone who speaks my language - defensible differentiation, autonomous learner, Henry Passow's could-would-should test - and we get to teach a class together!  (My son isn't too excited about that, as he is in the class.)  It's a class for any high school student, and we're going to really be able to make it our own.  It's basically a research class, but also learning about your own learning style, study skills, expanding the walls of the school to learn, and really, being responsible for your learning.  All those things that we think schooling should be - that's what we're going to do. 

Oh!  And gutter shelves!  Have you heard of these?  They're going in!  I anticipate two section of them, about 48 feet total.  I'd love to put them in at the elementary, too.  We'll see.

I did a Titlewise collection analysis.  The previous librarian did a fantastic job of weeding - two years ago, the average age of the collection was 1973!  But now it's a much more respectable 1993.  I'm going to have to do some more weeding - I'm adding a lot of books to the collection, and there are still more books that probably should go. 

Loving life!

Happy!

Photo by What What, with Creative Commons rights.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/whatwhat/1679093/