Yikes! Asked to give an in-service day....

[Jennie Ver Steeg <C60JEV1@WPO.CSO.NIU.EDU>]

I have been weeding and making recommendations for a small school's
almost-library collection this fall. For those of you who don't follow
my e-mail avidly, it is a very small K-8 school which has never had
either a librarian or a library budget: it just sort of grew. The
principal (yesterday) asks me to give a seminar of sorts, at least a
couple of hours, to his teachers, on January 3 on their professional
day, to tell them: "what the library should be, how to select books and
other materials, why you were doing all that work to the
collection--generally bring them up to speed." Ack! If I had not been
asked /told just yesterday, I might be a bit more upbeat about the whole
thing. Given a non-librarian group, and a group which has NEVER had the
benefit of a real library or library services, I just am having a hard
time calming down and figuring where to start. I can certainly tell them
what I've been up to, what I have found, what I recommend they buy or
do, but as faculty members, they have a more important role, I think,
and that would be to develop a healthy dissatisfaction with things as
they are and start agitating for a librarian on staff and a couple thou
a year to make the collection usable. Any suggestions? Merry Christmas
indeed!

Jennie E. Ver Steeg
Education Liaison Librarian
207 Founders Memorial Library
Northern Illinois University
De Kalb, Illinois 60115
voice 815-753-1351
fax 815-753-2003
jversteeg@niu.edu
floodhover@hotmail.com

Compute-Ed: an electronic journal of learning and teaching with and
about technology. Find it at:  computed.coe.wayne.edu
____________

"Many are cold, but few are frozen."

Joy Ver Steeg

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