LM_NET: Library Media Networking
This is a VERY long posting. I am NOT sending it as an attachement, since
I know from experience that not all NET users are proficient at
downloading, and I want all to you to benefit. I also tried to catch all
the spelling mistakes, but I am sure I must have missed a few. (No, I do
not have a spell chek on this computer)
The response to this TARGET has been very varied, helpful and I can see
that there are many good actions taking place out there. Thank you for
sharing them, they will be so helpful to all of us. As I was reading
them, I could think of so many more projects that could be started,
publicity ideas that could be done. Pace yourself. You may want to set
up many of the following suggestions, but you should consider maybe doing
just a few at first. It is better to do a few well than to mess up on
many. Target either one group, like teachers, parents, admin, or pick one
idea from each of the listed goups.
I am sure that if one idea is not practical for you, you will come up with
a variant that is just the thing appropriate for your school or area. If
you do, please feel free to send it to me. As chair of the advocacy
committee of the Manitoba School Library Association, I can forward
information to all who ask. (My address is <mlarose@minet.gov.mb.ca> and
it will be the same until the end of August) If indeed I get more info
from you all, I might just post another HIT in the months to come. THANK YOU.
Keep in mind the following:
-Terms like Teacher-Librarian (TL) and Library Media Specialist (LMS) are
used interchangeably
- Terms like Library and Library Media Center (LMC) are used interchangeably
- Not all LMS are teachers. In Canada, a Teacher-Librarian is an
experienced classroom teacher, who received additional training in
librarianship before moving to the library.
- grade levels are not listed. Check for appropriateness
Rather than post all the ideas as I received them, I have edited them and
regrouped in the following categories (arbitrarily arrived at):
- COMMUNICATION. This refers to how you can let administrators, school
boards know of your needs and your accomplishments
- PUBLICITY. This includes ideas on how to promote your library / media
center as an invaluable resource and a place of action
- RESOURCE. This shows how the teacher-librarian / library media
specialist can be a resource person to colleagues.
- PUBLICATIONS. Ideas for written resources you can provide:
bibliographies, lists, articles, newsletters...
- SPECIAL EVENTS. Any special events held as part of your library program,
or hosted by the library, in conjunction with a classroom teacher
- OTHERS. These don't seem to fit in any of the above.
_______________________________________________
COMMUNICATION
- Always keep your principal involved and knowledgeable of your work, up
to date on all that you are doing. She/He can be your best advocate,
especially when classroom teachers resent any time you have to work on
administrative library needs. This is often seen as not "working".
- Do not hesitate to become a pest at Board meeting, get to know members
personally. While I think that this is a valuable idea, I must add the
story of Nova Scotia, where TLs have been cut. One TL suggested that there
were so few of them that it looked like it was always the same small vocal
group expressing themselves. At the local board level, it is possible to
get to know the members. Show them your accomplishments, as well as
advocate. When you deal with a bigger machine like a provincial
government, being a "pest" seems to backfire, because there is no personal
interaction.
- Attend PTA meetings. Make a point of being on the agenda of at least
one, in order to answer questions that they might have, or to suggest to
them ways in which they can help the school library program. Be available
to do a demo of your latest CD acquisitions. Get students to do that.
Parents are always impressed when gr 1-2 zoom around a program.
- Speak at school board/council meetings on the success of programs in the
school library.
- Have quarterly reports that go to adminstration and school board
- Have a library advisory board w/ teachers/admin/parents on it
- If your school has a school improvement plan make sure the library media
center is written into the plan. It should be a library program or service
that can meet a goal in the school plan.
- Our librarians' group made a presentation to the school board when they
cut our clerical help, and opened their eyes about what libraries are
really trying to accomplish. Fortunately, they reinstated our clerical
help for next year, probably as a result of our presentation.(just as an
aside!)
PUBLICITY
1- Photographs.
- Keep a camera loaded with film at all times.
- Take lots and lots of pictures.
- Have the local photocopier business enlarge selected photos to 8 x10's.
( Ours charges only 99 cents each.)
- Paste pictures in the teacher's lounge on the bathroom doors, and on the
bulletin boards in the hallway. My school has purchased acrylic picture
frames, about 20x30 inches, and uses them for student art, pictures of
events, etc...
- Continually take photos of staff members and students throughout the
year. Use them in displays, bulletin boards, etc.
- Pictures prove what is happening. Pictures can show how excited the
students are, how integrated with the curriculum our information skills
have become, how technology is being used, as well as kindergarten
students dramatizing "The Three little pigs".
- Pictures can also show parent volunteers and the important work that
they do. They can often motivate a reluctant teacher to get on board and
use the library more effectively. And when he/she does, take lots of
pictures... blow those up and show what her/his students did , with
*her/his* name in large print under the photos. Keep that camera loaded
and use it often! It's worth every penny you will spend on film.
2- Scrapbook
- prominently displayed. It has sections for (1)special activities in the
media center,(2) daily activities, (3) author visits and school-wide
programs and (4) parent volunteers. Parents often stop by and look for
their child's pictures. The scrapbook has been a big success, and it sells
the media program to parents and visitors as well as to administrators and
schoolboard members who happen to drop in. (Does anyone ever happen to
stop by when something wonderful is taking place? Nope!)
3- Video program
- featuring activities in the library and showed it during our PTA Open
House in the fall. We placed the TV out in the school lobby and it ran
continually, so parents didn't have to even come in the library to see it.
4- Bulletin board
- display work that students did in the Learning Resource Center (our
name for the library) and then label it as an L.R.C. project. Teachers
will rarely turn you down if you volunteer to help with this and it
provides good publicity for cooperative teaching without obligating you to
do the board all of the time.
5- The press
- When catching a teacher or student in the act of doing something
terrific, call the local newspaper and ask the local reporter to do a
story or feature about it.
- Send press releases for events coming up (See special event section
below). Incl: author visits, special display, school exchanges, Book
fair (featuring student works). About 1 week after you send it, follow up
with a phone call to see whether they will come.
- Write an article for the press if they don't come. They might publish it.
- Consider writing a column in a local newspaper. It could be on new
children and Young Adult releases, on how parents can help their children
read...
RESOURCE
- At beginning of year, give teachers/admin. a "survival kit" with things
like library policies for students and teachers, book reviews and
booktalks, coupons and bookmarks, copyright law info, forms teachers use
to request research material for their classroom, etc.
- Give a "Welcome" or "Goodie" Bag to either all staff members or to new
ones at the beginning of the school year. Include in this bag: bookmark, list
of periodicals available in Library Media Center, list of
services of LMC, ideas for incorporating technology or information skills
into curriculum, publicity about Book Fair, list of new materials,
brochure about the LMC, ......the ideas are endless.
- Send teachers any articles of relevance to them
- Bug them about team teaching, patiently and consistently
- Send teachers/admin. regular memos about what's new, what's up, ideas, etc.
- Find out what they need in the way of resources, and give it to them
FAST. That really impresses them! Give them forms at the beginning of
the year that they can just fill out and drop in your mailbox.
- Learn a new skill that they absolutely must have (like the Internet!)
and teach it to them
- Send each teacher a "WANT LIST" or "DREAM LIST" in the spring upon which
he/she will list materials she/he needs or wants. Request that the items
be priorized, of course!
- Keep a camera loaded with film available to loan to teachers, for use
when special events are happening in their classrooms.
- My top priority would have to go to working with teachers and their
classes so closely that they could not imagine themselves carrying out
their most interesting and rewarding projects without your involvement at
every stage -- designing, finding materials, assisiting during the
project, evaluating parts of it, etc. In my experience, the best allies
you have on staff are (in order) the Social Studies teachers, the English
teachers and the Science teachers, particularly at the Grade 10 and 11
levels. I might add that at the elementary level, I find that the primary
teachers are most interested in cooperative planning and teaching.
- Try to attend grade level planning meetings. If you have students at
the time they are held, find out what the outcome of the planning meetings
might be. Then plan your library lessons around what the teachers are
doing in the classroom. This might be a way to show everyone that the
library and classroom activities are related. Better yet, develop a draft
for a cooperative unit you could teach TOGETHER, they might be thrilled
and jump in.
I would add, don't just do this, but make them AWARE that you are doing
it. Tell the teachers that you will provide them with information,
etc..., then follow through fast. And let your administrator know that
you are doing it. (ie: send her/him a copy of the proposed project you
will be doing)
- I distribute lists of ready-made cooperative teaching units to all
teachers (we are a grade 4-12 school, about 450 students), and point to
them how I can help in teaching it.
PUBLICATIONS
- Have your OWN monthly newsletter. Even 1 page is great, because it puts
you on the map. It serves as a constant reminder that you are involved to
your eyeballs.
- Bibliographies for distribution to students with suggestions for
appropriate reading levels and short annotations work well whenever a
particular all-school theme like multi-cultural ed or African-American
history are undertaken. They are easy enough to do from some of the
catalogs that give very brief annotations. You must, however, know the
books well. (Of course, as the TL, you can be the coordinator, and the
library becomes the perfect display area!)
- I post reviews of new books/video on a door in the teachers' lounge,
which I use as a bulletin board. If I don't have a review I photocopy the
cover of the book/video.
- Put a list of services that the library media center provides in the
student handbook and the faculty handbook.
SPECIAL EVENTS
- I hold a noon hour D.E.A.R. Club. That's Drop Everything And Read. I
handle the students by groups of levels, ie: 1-2, 3-4, 5-6. At the end of
the year I also do Kindergarten. Even though they come only half days,
parents bring them in early to participate. I get help from another
interested teacher at those grade levels. We read stories, share our
favorite book. Gr. 4-6 are asked for a project: skits, writing a short
story, making a mural representing a section of a book, etc... This term,
3 girls made plasticine models of Bunnicula, the biggest was about 1 1/2
inches. I was so impressed, we are doing an interactive story on the
computer, and we will scan their models for the illustrations. This is
using a program similar to HyperStudio (Macintosh).
- At the end of the year, the gr 3-4-5-6 who had regular attendance are
eligible to participate in a sleepover in our gym. We have reading
activities, make pop-ups, book marks, origami, etc... and read in our
sleeping bags with flashlights. Then we have Macdonald's pancakes the
next morning. We had 79 students this year. The parents wish to nominate
us for sainthood.
- The most popular thing I've done in several years is a monthly program
(we call our _2nd Wednesday In the Library_ 'cause we do it the 2nd
Wednesday of each month). The cafeteria makes bag lunches & sells them
right outside the library doors or the kids can bring their own. The
speakers are mostly local - and we're a _very_ small community about 40 mi
north of Houston. Out of 8 programs this year, only 1 required any speaker
fees, and that was booked through a museum about 60 mi from us. (PTA might
cover this)
We had a scuba instructor, a collector of Indian artifacts, a black-powder
rifle demo (from the museum), an astronaut (from Johnson Space Center),
and a local vet who talked about pet care & first aid (that was the best
attended of all).
Each program had between100-200 attendees, including several teachers each
month. A few teachers gave extra credit to their students who attended.
The only regular expenses were for the door-prize (usually a book, and the
scuba shop also donated a t-shirt) and for lunch for the speaker (from the
deli across the street).
- February is "I Love to Read" month in many parts of Canada. Libraries
take this opportunity to sponsor many events related to reading. We
invite parents, administrators, trustees, consultants, etc. to read to
students in library in classrooms. Tell the press about it.
- I host a book fair every report card night, and often have the coffee
wagon in the library then also. It brings people in, and I can talk to
them about what goes on here, and show them the jazzy things like the
electronic encyclopedia and computer card catalog.
- Have at least one big "shindig" each year. Last year I had a Family
Night during National Library Week, and it was a huge success.
- Bring in community members to read, speak, etc.
- Sponsor a "Welcome Back" breakfast or dessert time for staff members at
beginning of year.
- Have periodic selection parties for teachers, where you serve
refreshments while they browse catalogs and reviews.
OTHERS
- Sponsor a Faculty Book Exchange. Contribute a book, take a book! No
questions asked!
-Maintain open times for computer lab use for classes, even if locked into
a fixed schedule. I did this this year, and many teachers were able to
take advantage of it by bringing classes in. We were also able to do some
coordinated planning for lessons, which is as it should be.
- Do things FOR the community: give presentations, loan equipment, etc.
- Send a birthday message and perhaps a small gift (candy bar, red pen,
book marker) to staff members.
- Provide window space for staff members' live plants during holidays or
summertime ... when you or a maintenance person can water them.
- Subscribe to one or several professional magazines. If you do not
subscribe to Bookmark, the
journal of the Library Specialists Association of B.C., I recommend it
highly. It often includes articles which help TLs be advocates for
themselves and their programs (for instance one a couple of months ago
cited a study (Colorado) which gave statistical evidence that students from
schools with strong library programs achieve much higher than students
from other schools).
Another must is Emergency Librarian.
-Open the media center during the summer for attendance area students and
parents. I've done this 2 years, and really opens the PR doors in the
community.
***********************************************************
Thank you to the following contributors who added to my ideas:
-Priscilla Seeley, Farley Elem. School, Huntsville, Al <pbseeley @aol.com>
-Kas Jochim <kjochim@cln.etc.bc.ca>
-Eugene Hainer, Linton Elementary, < ehainer@alpha.pr1.k12.co.us>
-Marsha Rakestraw, Stafford, KS <staff1lb@ink.org>
-GAIL_SMITH@cpsnet2.cps.edu
-Mary Stallings, Poquoson High School, Poquoson, Va <mstallin@pen.k12.va.us>
-Melissa Davis, Splendora Middle School, Splendora, TX <mbdavis@tenet.edu>
-Gerry Clare, Dawson Creek, British Columbia <gclare@cln.etc.bc.ca>
-Anitra Gordon <agordon@EDCEN.EHHS.CMICH.EDU>
-Madeline L Buchanan, Barrett Elem. School, Birmingham, Al.
<DEMS105@UABDPO.DPO.UAB.EDU>
-"Sandra L. Doggett" <sdoggett@umd5.umd.edu>
-Joan McKay, AME School library, Canberra, ACT, Australia,
<Joan@cs.anu.edu.au>
-Ken Ponsford, Fraser Lake Elementary-Secondary School, Fraser Lake, B.C.,
<kponsfor@cln.etc.bc.ca>
-Linda Knight, <Linda_Knight@sbe.scarborough.on.ca>
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