Seemingly unavoidable circ problems

[Gayle Hodur <ghodur@REDSHIFT.COM>]

I just want to know if everyone struggles with this, or if it's just me!
I work in my middle school library 3 days a week and try to teach classes
and run circulation, as well as everything else. I try really hard to teach
students to value books and the library's organization, and I do realize
that, with middle school students, you are ALWAYS going to have a certain
amount of chaos. But it nearly drives me crazy with the number of times
that no one can find what they are looking for due to mis-checkouts,
mis-checkins, and people just moving books for the &%*U of it!

I've tried insisting that only my aide or I do checkouts and checkins, but
this is just impossible. We always get into situations where we both need
to be helping students and we are backed up at the counter, depending on
our enthusiastic student helpers for checkout assistance. They do really
try hard, but it's just not in the nature of most middle schoolers to be
very detailed. I can stand behind even my best helpers and constantly have
to say "stop," "clear that entry," "start over," etc. We also have a cadre
of people who are deliberately moving and hiding books just for mischief
and to show their disrespect of reading and learning in general. They
target our AR books in particular, so that people who are looking for them
cannot find them. Again, we watch for them, but have not been able to find
out exactly who the perpetrators are, because we are usually spread out all
over the room assisting students, or trying to stay at the desk and watch
the computer screen. We know it's deliberate, because we find fiction
concealed behind rows over in the 100's for instance, which is clear across
a VERY large room. We also have people who will scramble all the magazines
around in the magazine rack and who remove the labels and toss them down in
the rack slots where they have to be retrieved with a ruler or something.

We have come down to severely limiting access during recess and lunch.
Otherwise we can easily get 80 students in there, between the computer lab
and the library, and it becomes impossible to supervise all areas. This is
definitely the worst year I have ever had in middle school for misbehavior,
and made worse by our inability to determine exactly who is doing it so
that we can take action. The checkout stuff is just innocent carelessness,
but it results in a lot of overdues, lost books, and charges to people who
may never have really checked out that book at all.

I've begged for extra help, but I know that I will not get another aide
until next year, and then it will probably not be an "extra" aide, but a
replacement for my current trainee who will be sent to manage the library
at one of our other schools. I don't have these problems at any of our
elementary schools, so I'm really assuming it's just an outburst of
"middle-schoolishness," some of which is unavoidable. However, I would like
to keep my sanity and still be friendly to students, and both of those
traits are rapidly disappearing for me and my aide both.

*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)

Gayle Hodur                             Snail Mail:
District Librarian                      Main Street Middle School
Soledad Unified School District         441 Main Street
(831) 678-3923                          Soledad, CA  93960
ghodur@redshift.com

Pager Screen Names:
UnGayle (IM)
10682291 (ICQ)
15661301 (ICQ - this is the number for &LibraryChat, if you have ICQ w/chat)

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