September 2009

Library Schedule and Collaboration

Collaboration and coordination are going to be very important words this year as adjustments are made to the library schedule to see more students more frequently in the library. The goal? Enhancing student information and media literacies through instruction and practice. The method? Each student in grades 1 - 5 will come to the library once a week and participate in library programming and all classes will be on the same programming schedule. Together, let's build a stronger library program that results in higher student achievement.

Book Review Magazines in All Languages

For the second year, the library has subscribed to children's literature review magazines in French, Spanish and German and also in English from England and Australia. Find out what children are reading back home! Please stop by the library to read the current issue and recommend for purchase books that appeal to you.

Online Distance Learning for PD Credit

Professional development budgets are smaller in the current economic environment. What better time to try distance learning? You may be interested in professional and personal development through The Georgia Center for Continuing Education. Courses begin throughout the year and are offered on a wide variety of educational topics.

Blog Bit

Change is inevitable, but our approach to change may determine how successful we are in managing the process. Here are several “pivot points for change” from Seth Godin's list in his blog post "Pivot Points for Change":

Keep your customers, but change what you sell to them.
Keep your staff, but change what you do.
Keep your mission, but change your scale.
Keep your products, but change the way you market them.
Keep your technology, but use it to do something else.

To me this suggests that change doesn't necessarily mean giving up what is important, but rather adjusting your perspective. We are dealing with lots of change this year and maybe you will find the ideas in this post helpful too.

In the library, I'll be focusing on mission, products, technology. Advances in technology are moving libraries to change what they offer and how they offer it, but our mission is the same -- to support learning and we will continue to do so in many ways, large and small. Our marketing opportunities are quite different with the new website -- expect a new look and new "marketing" tools this year, all geared to help all our patrons better use the wonderful products that the school has purchased to support instruction through the library.

Recommending Books for Purchase by the Library
Recommending books for purchase by the library is now easier. All you need to do is go to the Primary School E-Bulletin Board on the Primary School Library webpage in the All-School Portal. At the E-Bulletin Board, you look for the link (on the right side of the screen) that says “Recommend Books for Library Purchase”. Open that screen, type in the information you have about the recommended book (title, author, publisher and so forth) and submit. To return to the E-Bulletin Board, simply hit the back arrow twice. Your request is automatically recorded on a purchasing list.

Tutorials on Library Electronic Resources
Here are links to online tutorials for a number of the different library electronic resources. You may want to bookmark these for future reference.

GALILEO

Britannica Elementary

Grolier Kids

BrainPOP

Bookflix

World Book Online


Teacher Book Cart
Please stop by the teacher cart in the library to see if any of the materials on the cart are useful for your classroom. Everything is free and everything must go! Many books are paperback or duplicates of titles that are already in the collection, but are otherwise great books. Check it out!