Library Petting Zoo

Happy Birthday to ME! Yes, I scheduled my “Library Petting Zoo” on my 26th birthday…because I wanted it to be like a party! And it was! It was such a great day.

The original date for this was set for last Friday, but a “snow” day (there was not even a hint of snow, but it was cold) put a stop to that. So I rescheduled. I totally stole this idea from the awesome E-literate Librarian, whose blog I adore. When I read about her Petting Zoo, I knew I had to do this! Everyone was intrigued by the name. And then they reminded teachers on the morning announcements, so all the kids thought there were going to be actual animals in the library. I know I’m crazy, but they must think I’m COMPLETELY nuts (and I’m okay with that). I had quite a few laughs over their reactions.

I got lots of birthday love from both teachers and students, and my mom even made great snacks for me to share with visiting teachers. I really wanted to draw them in because I’m desperately trying to drum up library business! They all know that I’m a techno-geek, but today they got a real taste of what I’m into. I think some great collaborative projects are going to come out of conversations and ideas shared in the library today, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.

I had to have some animals in my zoo, so I kept this Glog up on my projector all day. All of the animals were animated, so it was very cute!

I just got in some great content-related graphic novels that I ordered from Scholastic with our Book Fair profits, so I put those out on display.

I had four stations set up with laptops and my tutorial comics with four fun, easy, free, teacher-friendly tech tools. We “petted” with Glogster, Animoto, Voki, and Mixbook. The first three have great resources and areas specifically for educators. I’m looking forward to working with the teachers on projects featuring these tools. I already lined up a poetry project using Voki and a project on the rock cycle using Glogster. YEA!!! Although I’m not a Mixbook expert, I used that one because I could “sell” it to everyone — including any non-instructional staff that stopped in. I have a feeling several grandmas will be using Mixbook to make a brag book.

All of the resources, links, and comic tutorials I created are here on my presentation wiki. Feel free to use and share!

I also had our available Flips and digital cameras out to pet and remind teachers that they are available for them to use.

The cake balls and king cakes provided by my wonderful mom (and #1 volunteer) didn’t hurt, either!

Several teachers mentioned that they would be interested in having more activities like this and other more in-depth sessions over the summer. YEAH!! I’m pumped! I love my job and I’m so excited about what’s to come 🙂

Cathartic Weeding

I’m still adjusting to the different pace in my new position. After a few years of running on HIGH all the time, it’s taking more than a little getting used to. Also, there’s fact that it’s past the middle of the year, teachers are feeling overwhelmingly busy, and state testing dates are quickly approaching. So they aren’t exactly beating down the library door. The good thing is that I’m really getting a chance to make my changes and do my version of weeding. This library will be moving to a new school within the next year or so, and I don’t want to pack up and move the old junk. The librarian before me inherited a overwhelmingly junked up collection and did quite a lot of weeding (for which I am extremely grateful!).

cc photo by Rishabh Mishra (possible248)

I’m a pretty hardcore weeder, though. I actually attended middle school at CMS myself quite a few years ago, and I was even a student library worker there. There’s an embarrassing amount of material that was there when I was a student there. Heck, there are quite a few encyclopedias from before I was born. So a couple of things have happened in this world since I was born, right? Yeah, that’s what I thought. And, oh yeah, we have World Book Online now, along with quite a few databases that can give the same (but actually current) information. Needless to say, I’m getting rid of A LOT of outdated reference material. I actually feel guilty about this weeding, just because of the sheer bulk of it. I’ve also started going through the fiction section. Books that haven’t been touched since my district broke apart from another district 3.5 years ago. Books with weird looking, outdated technology or sci-fi things on the cover. No 13 year old in 2011 and beyond will consider reading this stuff. I should be able to donate a lot of it to the classrooms. The remainder will have to find its final resting place elsewhere.

So, friends, when did you finally let go of your old, dusty, outdated encyclopedias? Anyone else inherit a library with a similar collection? Are you like me, looking to keep up your collection by making sure it’s fresh (and not dated and moldy)? Weeding can be, overwhelming, stressful, and cathartic all at the same time…but it’s definitely a good thing!

Destiny Quest

I know that so many school libraries use Destiny as their library management program. I’ve been a Destiny user for several years now, but just discovered Destiny Quest. While the regular Destiny interface works for me and meets my needs as a librarian, the catalog isn’t the most appealing interface for students. Enter Destiny Quest:

The search features in Destiny Quest are a lot more user friendly. Students can search by subject, title, author, etc. all in the top search bar. When the results appear, students can easily use the side toolbar to narrow their search. This interface is so much more visually appealing and easy for students to navigate. And searching is just the tip of the iceberg with Destiny Quest.

All of the typical catalog information is available when students click on a cover. They can also easily view Accelerated Reader info, peer reviews, recommendations for similar books, and the option to hold a book if it’s unavailable.

Oh wait, did I say peer reviews? Yep. Destiny Quest goes way beyond offering a nifty looking catalog. It gives students a social place to interact with their classmates and share what they’re reading.

You can add your friends (like on Facebook?!?!) to keep track of their book updates. You can see what they’re reading, reviewing, recommending, and even what they want to read. What an AWESOME way for them to find books that they want to read too. AND it’s a cool place to keep up with all the books you’ve read, are reading, and want to read.

Just drag and drop book covers onto your shelves to keep track. It’s so easy and so fun!!!

Plus there are some amazing ways that you can use Destiny Quest for research, which I’ve also been introducing to my students. Like all they have to do is drag/drop books and websites into a list and BAM! it formats the citations for them automatically.

I’m Quest obsessed. With my students, I’ve started a Quest craze. They’re logging in at home. They’re rating, reviewing, and recommending books. They’re showing their friends how to log on to Destiny Quest so they can share what they’re reading. The social aspect TOTALLY hooks them. But in the process, they’re learning to use the other tools as well, which is pretty amazing.

Does your school have Destiny Quest? Have your students taken to it as much as mine have?

Nesting

So I’ve survived my first official week as a middle school librarian!

This was exam week at my school, so there wasn’t too much activity in the library. I’m anxious to start working with and getting to know the students, but it really was nice for me to have a quiet week to finish my “nesting.” I also had some time to really explore some of the features of Destiny that I haven’t used before. I discovered Destiny Quest, which has an awesome interface and allows students to not only search the library collection, but to read and write reviews, recommend books to friends, and put books on hold. I am really looking forward to sharing this resource with my students and teaching them to use all of the cool features. Definitely more to come on this!

I thought that the library needed some fun puzzles that the students would enjoy. My mom gave me these two for Christmas:

At first the kids just kind of stood there and looked at them. Which of course cracked me up. I guess they thought I’d put puzzles out on the circulation desk just to tease them? They obviously don’t know me yet! So after I talked a few of them into giving it a shot, they became quite popular and I even had a few come in during lunch to give these puzzles a try.

I also got a Diary of a Wimpy Kid jigsaw puzzle. I found this cool felt mat that came with a tube and straps so I can roll it up without messing up the puzzle if I need to. After the reluctance to try the maze puzzles, I had my library workers get this one started. A few kids that came in during lunch also tried this one out. I think this is going to be a hit!

I’ve been toying with the idea of shelving fiction by genre once we get into the new library. Regardless of if I do that or not, I knew I wanted to at least tag the books by genre so the students could browse the shelves for genres more easily. I ordered color-tinted label protectors and have started tagging the books:

Orange – Series

Light Blue – Realistic Fiction

Dark Blue – Sports

Pink – Romance

Yellow – Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Green – Mystery/Suspense/Horror

I’m also thinking I need to add a color for historical fiction, and maybe one for classics. I think the series tags are going to be particularly useful for students.

This is also giving me a chance to get to know the collection and do some weeding. The librarian before me did a lot of weeding, but there’s still so much that I just don’t see as anything the students would want to check out. Plus there are some titles that we have with serious multiple copy overkill. I knew my elementary school collection so well, there were few times that I even needed to use the catalog. Although this collection is much bigger, I know I won’t be happy until I’m extremely familiar with it. Which is why I’ve decided to take on this project right away.

We’re off on Monday, but we’ll kick of the new semester on Tuesday with LYRCA (our state book award) voting! It’s an event I love, giving students the opportunity to vote on real voting machines. We have about 140 students participating. So I’m looking forward to another great week!

My Week in Transition

This was an exhausting, emotionally draining week for me. The retiring middle school librarian had a substitute this week in the library, but she did spend a bit of time early in the week cleaning out and packing up. My replacement at the elementary library started on Monday. I spent the week in limbo — mornings at the middle school and afternoons at the elementary school. I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to do this. It allowed me the chance to tie up my loose ends at the elementary school and get myself situated at the middle school.

Being the techno-geek that I am, I made some changes to scheduling and morning routines at the middle school by infusing technology. I went crazy with the Google forms and I’m loving it! Mornings at the CMS library are very busy. Thankfully, there are several awesome teachers who have library duty to help out. Not only do students flock in to study, use the computers or printer/copier, return/check-out books, etc. but the library also takes care of selling temporary and replacement ID cards. These forms are now being used for students to sign in:

The ID Business form has been especially successful since the ID station is in the computer lab and the spreadsheet can be pulled up at that station so the names pop up as they are entered.

I went round and round trying to decide how I wanted to do scheduling. I needed to keep up with scheduling for the main area of the library, library lab, and 4 mobile labs available for check-out. Nan from Rhinelander High School shared her format for digital scheduling, and I loved it! You can check out here site here. So I took her idea and ran with it:

You can go here to see my live form with the Google calendars below. I think once the teachers get used to filling out the form, they’ll really like the ability to schedule whenever they want from where ever they are. I’m going to be looking to drum up some business and do some collaborative projects. Exciting times ahead!

As tough as this week was, I really felt the love at both schools. CMS is very happy to have me back and they have made me feel so welcome. TES let me know how much I’ll be missed, which really made me feel good and made it hard to leave at the same time.

So here’s to the next phase of my library career! I can’t wait to see what it holds.

Top 5 Posts of 2010

I wasn’t going to do this, but curiosity got the best of me. So here are my top 5 posts of the year! And yesterday’s post is number two on the list, but it’s one that I shamelessly advertised to my Facebook friends, which I don’t normally do 🙂

5. Story Snoops – In this post I shared my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE resource of the year, storysnoops.com. Share this resource with teachers, parents, librarians, bookstores…it’s good stuff, I’m telling you!

4. Compiling and Sharing Links – This post was about my explorations with Only2Clicks and Symbaloo as tools for compiling and sharing resources with different groups. I’m hoping that 2011 will bring the capability to embed Symbaloo’s Webmixes. That would be really snazzy in my wikis.

3. 5 Favorite Christmas Stories – So this was a carry-over from my old blog, so it wasn’t TECHNICALLY written in 2010, but it was close, so I’m listing it anyway.

2. Middle School, here I come! – This was yesterday’s post that I talked about above. Lots of pictures of my fancying up of my MS library.

1. Stop the madness! – The title pretty much sums up the theme of my blog this year – MADNESS! But it’s mostly been the exciting, fun kind of madness.

I look forward to more professional growth, learning from my PLN, and becoming a better, more effective blogger. Have a happy, safe New Year’s celebration!

Middle School, here I come!

BEWARE: This post is basically my excitement bubbling over…side-bar notes in (parenthesis) and exclamations !!! are abundant.

It’s been a busy week decorating and snazzing things up at my new (to me, it’s really old and smelly) middle school library! When this opportunity first came about, I wasn’t planning on making any changes since we’re (supposed to be) moving into a brand new school (HOLLA!) for January 2012. The building that we are currently in is ancient, falling apart, and pretty much full of asbestos and mold. (In fact, it is the middle school that I attended in 6-8 grades. I was even a student library worker there, so this is really like coming home.) Since the school is so icky and old, plans for a new school have been in the works for a while and it’s FINALLY coming to fruition.

So despite the fact that we’ll be moving to a new school in the very near future, I couldn’t keep myself from doing a little sprucing up. I mean, I’m going to be spending the majority of my waking hours there. Most of the things can come with us to the new school. And I went with trendy — zebra print, bright blue, neon green, and pink. So do ya wanna see it?? Here are some pictures:

The wood on the front of the circulation desk had seen better days (and those days were long ago), so we covered it with this cute green fabric. Spray adhesive is AWESOME! We also added some little circle mirrors from Hobby Lobby. And of course, I had to put up my favorite Go!Animate characters who will be appearing in lots of videos…I’ll be able to change their word bubbles frequently.

There were some pictures and columns already in the library. We spray painted the frames and columns. The zebra in the picture is fabric and the letters I cut out from scrapbook paper. I think this came out SO CUTE! 🙂

We stenciled some great quotes about books and reading:

“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” -Richard Steele

“Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” -Margaret Fuller

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.” -Earnest Hemingway

“A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life.” -H.W. Beecher

“Books can be dangerous. Some should be labeled: ‘This could change your life.'” -Helen Exley

Quite a few hours went into the stenciling, and I REALLY appreciate all of the help from my mom and friend BJ. They are the best volunteers I have (not just to this, but for everything) and I am so thankful for everything they do.

And those curtains are really shower curtains that I found on sale at Big Lots — SCORE!

There was a cheesy poster (sorry, Marie) to mark the Student Publication Center, so we stenciled there, too.

I’m really proud of myself for putting together the great zebra chair my mom got for me! And the lamp…isn’t it groovy?

I’m so excited and ready to get back to school and see the reactions from students and teachers. Hope the reaction is a good one! I know that they will miss the retiring librarian. She’s one of my mentors and a wonderfully sweet, patient, and compassionate woman. They’ll be getting something a little bit different with me (HA!) but I can’t wait to see what the next few weeks have in store.

If you are impressed with my (and mom’s) mad decorating skillz, leave me some love (as in a comment)!

A different kind of reflection.

While completing my undergrad program, I hated writing reflections. We were forced to “reflect” on everything, meaning we wrote a page or two of complete and total bull in order to appease our professors. Upon graduation, I looked forward to no longer having to “reflect.” My crew even put a snide reflection comment on our graduation t-shirts. Yet here I am, well over a year into writing this blog, and I am reflecting on my practices at least once a week. I do this because my internalized reflections are so constant that I need to put them into writing on a regular basis.

Lots of my favorite bloggers are writing posts in which they reflect on the past year and look forward to 2011. At this point, that would be very difficult for me to do because there is so much impending change with the start of the new year. So please excuse these scattered and possibly random ramblings.

First of all, I really wish I was one of those rock star bloggers who craft these really moving, thought provoking posts that really push your thinking. But I don’t, and honestly think that this point I can’t. I’m still in the infant stage of my career — I’m 25 years old and in my third year of librarianship, for crying out loud! I’m still a kid, geez. And I’m completely proud of what I accomplished in my 2.5 years at my fabulous elementary school. I may not have done things that genuinely flow with or push the limits of the changing shape of our profession, but I can honestly say that I built a pretty strong program that served my kiddos and fulfilled their reading needs. It’s something to be proud of, and I am.

The time to reflect on and appreciate my time spent with 2nd and 3rd graders was very brief. I’ve been in a frenzy of brainstorming and planning for my new middle school library position. I am very hopeful that this position will give me the opportunity to push my limits and become the change agent that I dream of being. But for now, I have to start with baby steps to make changes to the program so I can make it my own. Looking forward, I’m so unbelievably excited about the opportunities and challenges that await.

Even though this end of the year reflection is different, scattered, short, and a probably incomplete, it is an accurate representation of the place where I am at this moment in time. And isn’t that basically what a reflection should be?

Recent Reads

Note: This is a draft was saved from several weeks ago. I planned to add to it then post, but I’ve been in a reading funk and completely preoccupied with my upcoming move, so at this point it is what it is…

Eleven by Laruen Myracle

So I read this one several weeks ago but forgot to post it. It was a cute story – I didn’t love it – but it’s definitely something that girls can relate to. There’s nothing heavy here, just the drama and emotion of being an eleven year old girl. Winnie deals with her BFF pretty much dropping her for a new friend, so this would be a good one to suggest for a girl dealing with those types of issues. I thought it was very realistic. It made me think of how I felt at Winnie’s age and I think tweens today would also be able to closely relate to this character.

Daniel X by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge

It took me a long time to get through this one. Not sure what it was about it, but I just wasn’t into it. Daniel is an alien fighting alien living on earth and protecting the humans from psycho aliens. It sort of reminded me of a cross between Percy Jackson (think about going on those quests) and Men In Black (think gross, weird aliens). I’m sure there’s an audience out there for this book, especially since it’s by James Patterson. I just wasn’t the right person for this one.

Tales from a Not-So-Popular Party Girl by Rachel Renee Russell

This is the second “diary” of Nikki, who writes each day about her life in middle school. It’s a quick, easy, fun read. I know that middle school girls would be all over this series. I’m sure even my third grade girls would love it. And I think it would be totally fine for my girls. Good clean fun, formatted Diary of a Wimpy Kid-style. What’s not to love? Mackenzie, the resident mean girl of the series. You’ll love Nikki’s witty (written, never actually spoken) responses to her bully.

Making Plans

So I’ve basically been incoherent lately with SO MUCH going on inside my head with this upcoming move.

I really enjoyed myself these last two weeks as an elementary school librarian, having fun with my students and coworkers. As I said in my last post, there are so many things I’ll miss.

But moving forward, there is so much that I’m SO EXCITED about! I haven’t done much reading lately because my brain won’t slow down long enough for that. I’ve been working on my new library wiki and making plans. I know I have big shoes to fill — the retiring librarian is amazing and has done so much for CMS. I also know that I’ll be quite different. Where Marie is soft-spoken, composed, and has it together, I’m loud, spastic, and out there. But I hope to bring my strengths to help the CMS library continue to improve and serve students and teachers well. Here are the things I plan to throw myself into immediately:

Share my techno-love! From what I hear, many teachers are looking for new ways to infuse technology to enrich learning experiences for students. I’ll be using a wikispaces page as the library’s website and home that exploring it will show teachers and students that using tech tools is a passion of mine so they will approach me for ideas.

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Move to a digital calendar. The library operates on a completely flex schedule, which I am so totally PSYCHED about. I’ll also be in charge of scheduling checkout for the mobile labs. This is currently done on a paper calendar that gives me anxiety and causes me to hyperventilate. I haven’t decided yet how exactly I’ll do scheduling, but I know it will be different. I’m toying with using the Novell calendar that goes with our email (not a big fan, but it’s what we have), using a Google Calendar, or putting a spreadsheet on the shared drive or Google Docs. If you or anyone you know has experience with scheduling like this, feedback would be majorly appreciated.

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Categorize books by genre. I’ll be moving into a brand spankin’ new library within the next year or two, and I’m seriously toying with the idea of arranging the fiction section by genre. My first step for this is going to be to label the book using these tined label protectors from Demco:

I’ll definitely be sharing more about this in the future. I’m still hashing out the specifics, but anticipate this to be a very good thing.

I also want to move to self checkout, but that’s not something I’m going to try to tackle right away. And I know that once I get in there I’ll start making even more plans and gain a more realistic perspective on how to implement them. These are exciting days ahead, folks!