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Ack! I mislabeled my previous post, having confused "target" and "hit" (which is yet another reason I probably won't be asked to join any archery teams!) Sorry for the mistake. Here it is, again, and at least this time, it's correctly labeled as to subject. My original post asked if any of you have school libraries that offer summer hours. I noted that one of our local elementary schools offers this service and that it has been given high praise by many parents. I further asked what hours you are open, if your administrative folk are supportive of the effort (i.e., do you get paid), and how you advertise the program. As always, the replies I received were helpful and gave me much to think about. An interesting "e-conversation" ensued regarding summer hours at school libraries and potential impact on public libraries. That text is included after the initial replies. Ronda Y. Foust School Media Specialist in Training, UTK rstansb2@utk.edu Oak Ridge, TN LM_Netters' Response on Summer Hours at Our School Libraries Our elementary school does. Last summer was the first. We had about 30 children patrons over the summer. Children checked out books, read and took Accelerated Reader tests on our computers over the summer. They received a certificate of summer library participation from me in the Fall at an assembly. For 6 weeks on Wednesdays, from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m. PTA pays me a stipend to operate it. When we can secure grant money to pay for this, yes, we are open in summer. However, the powers that be don't get their act together till SO late in spring that I have never been able to do the kind of promo/programming job that I'd like. The pay is what is paid teachers for after school / extra-curricular activities. Generally we are open 2 afternoons each week, from noon to six. Unfortunately the grant money was spent differently this year. Hope this helps. Our upper/middle school library is usually open but we are getting some much needed renovation done so we're closed. Our lower school library is open on Wednesdays from 9 - 2. We went to a 1 day a week schedule because we weren't getting enough business to warrent the 3 were used to be open. We have summer school and are open from 9 to lunch time 4 days a week. That's about it. Yes the administration is very supportive. I don't have formal open hours during the summer, but I'm open when I'm in and if someone comes by I will check out books. I get four weeks off in the summer which I spread out over the ten week summer break. I have told lots of kids and parents to call or drop by if they need books. I haven't asked the administration - it's my call, really - but I know I would get support for this. The one I worked at did 2 days a week, for about 6 hours a day. It was nice, kids from the neighborhood could come and check out, and often times babysitters could walk the kids over. One day we had activities planned for the older kids that didn't have a structured summer school program, so that was fun. Good Luck! We've had libraries open during summer school, but not otherwise. Of course, we're in a different situation than most in that our buildings are out in the country, so we have no one that would walk or bike to the school (we're actually right on US 65, and traffic is moving between 60 and 65 mph). When the libraries were open during summer school the librarian was paid from summer school funds. I'm on an extended contract so I'll be around during the summer anyway, so I've arranged with the HS science teacher that she can schedule (in advance, please) times for her Forensics class to come to the library for research. We are a private school and therefore open five days a week, from 8:30 -12:30 daily, and 5:30-7:30 on Wed. evening. No additional pay. Last year right before school ended, my principal came to me and asked if I would like to work on an extended contract to have summer library hours. I told him I would let him know (because I was getting married and wasn't sure I'd be able to get all the hours required done in time). Then he came back and told me he was letting the guidance counselor do summer library instead. She didn't use the circulation system...she just wrote down who took what and marked them out when they were returned. It wasn't advertised that I know of...I think only the kids who come to summer day care at the school participated and the hours changed as the guidance counselor's schedule changed. He hasn't mentioned it at all this year, but another teacher told me she hear we were having it, so I have no idea who is running it. We're trying something new with our high school library this summer. We're open three morning a week for summer school and we'll be allowing non-summer school students to visit us to check out books. We'll see how it goes. We've never allowed student checkouts during the summer months and thought this might be a nice way to reward our kids who like to read...at least to encourage them to continue reading! In the past I have always opened the library for a few hours a week during the summer. I would pick a certain day, but I would alternate morning and afternoon hours in an effort to make it more accessible to everyone. In the middle school, there was not a whole lot of students coming in, but I was glad to do it for even one that would come. My principal allowed me to do this, and did give me courtesy time (time that could be swapped out for non-mandatory workdays on a one-for-one basis for the number of hours that I worked). However, I am sorry to say that the library will not be open this year because I have so much on my plate at this time. I am trying it this summer for the first time - Wednesdays only, from 9:30 - 1:30. Our small town library closed this month so I thought this might help. My principal is supported but I'll be an unpaid volunteer. I've advertised on our newsblog, told all the students several times, and today posted signs around the school. Yes, we offer summer library service in ONE of our libraries. It is for 2 hours, Monday - Thurs. for 7 weeks. The clerk is paid. We advertise by flyers in the community, bookmarks to each child with the times (we encourage them to put them on the refrigerator) I sure hope noone is doing this without getting paid!!! Just had to put my two cents worth in. I'm in a small school system in TN. We have summer library in our elementary schools. We're open 35 hours during the summer and we get paid $500.00. We can set our own hours so I am open 3 1/2 hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays (with adjustments for special events and my trip to New Orleans for ALA). I will start June 1 (school is out this Friday) and finish July 13. (school starts back for teachers on July 27!) I've been the media specialist at a 5th-8th grade charter school for three years. The media center is open August 1st through June 30th and I am paid for all 11 months! However, school libraries with summer hours is a fairly new concept in our area. We had no more than 200 circulations last summer. I'm hoping that I'm doing a better job of getting the word out to our families this year. A new and improved school web page will help, I think. Our High School library is open 9:00 to 1:00 on Wednesdays all summer. We put 1000 books from the primary school, 1000 books from the elementary school, and 1000 books from the junior high in the high school library on rolling carts. So we are a library for all ages every Wednesday in summer. Our administration fully supports the summer library, and two librarians are paid their daily rate for those hours in the summer. We are a school district of about 2000 students k-12, and we usually have about 100 people coming and going on those Wednesdays. Ronda, I have not done summer hours before but am seriously thinking of doing it this summer. Hope you get lots of helpful replies. Please post a hit- I'm trying to convince my principal right now :) My clerk and I work summer hours, but we're not open to the public. Something I hadn’t thought about was the issue of how school libraries offering summer hours might interrelate to public library usage. The following is the “e-conversation” this topic fostered. My first question is what about the public library? If you don't have one then go for it. --Jean We actually have a very good public library children's room and children's room staff (she says with bias as she used to be one of them!). That is part of why I was curious about school libraries being open during the summer. So far, what I'm hearing is that there is room for both. Our public library does not deal with AR, while the school libraries seem to offer continued AR testing over the summer, but does have an excellent summer reading program. Many of my "regulars" at the public library also used their school library during its summer hours. It was a way to keep in contact with classmates and school staff and it was right in the neighborhood. I think there is room for both, particularly if they are serving somewhat different needs--and especially if they are getting kids (and parents!) to read more! I'll be curious to see what the other responses are. It's been interesting so far. --Ronda Ah, the dreaded AR reason. While not OPPOSED to AR, I think there should be another reason to provide this service to the students. It is taking customers away from the Public library, which is where we want our students to eventually become attached. Making the public library something that is important to their lives! We hear lots about students wishing they could read for fun, no tests, or even teachers wishing that students would pick up a book because it looked good, not because it is worth a boat load of points. Teaching our students to become life long learners, seekers of information and just reading for fun is our end goal. What can you do, to support the public library? Show the students and their parents the library is important and that supporting library issues and funding drives is important to their lives. If the public library is that close, I would take the library classes over the last week of library; introduce the public library people, have them give an orientation, hand-out card applications to the kids that don't have one and get everybody signed up for the summer program; this would give the kids a chance to feel comfortable there, know where things are and MAYBE would mean that the parents would take them in over the summer. If you give advance warning to the parents on this, you could have the applications already filled out and kids with their library cards so they could leave with a book. My 4 cents. Four paragraphs, four cents ;)--Jean I'm still not sure how to feel about AR. For some students, it seems to inspire them to read more than they normally. However, for some students, it seems to seriously damage their incentive to read. From the little I've been able to observe, it seems that some of it depends on how much import is placed on the program--by the teachers and by the administration. My son's 2nd grade class enjoys AR and it seems to be a good incentive toward getting them to move on to more challenging titles. However, I've been disappointed (disgusted in some cases) by some of the questions used in the AR tests. My big complaint about AR, and this is from the point of view of a public library children's room, is that too many times kids would come in and be interested in a book but choose not to read it because it either didn't offer enough AR points, or wasn't on the AR list for their school. THAT really bugs me. In my experience with the public library and the one elementary school that was offering summer hours, the elementary school hours did not take away from the public library usage. They simply offered different things. Different titles, more audiovisual (at the public library), the summer reading program (including events scheduled all summer). I had parents who brought their children to both places. I don't know if the school library here offered AR testing or not. I think there's room for both public and school library summer access, but would submit that the community at large would be best served if there is some serious collaboration between the librarians. I think that your idea of introducing students to the public library at the end of the year is excellent--and actually is something that my son's elementary school already does, at least with the 2nd grade. The public librarian provided storytime and an intro to the summer reading program and a copy of the summer reading program schedule. I hope that more schools offer such collaborative efforts--after all, to me, the end goal is to share with our students the joy of reading. Would you mind if I included our discussion in my "hit"? It's thought provoking and might stir further ideas for collaborative efforts--or at the very least, just some really good discussion.--Ronda After the discussion with Jean, I decided to ask one of the other respondents about the summer hours vs. public library hours. Here’s was Donna’s take on the issue at her location. Our public library is probably not affected by our summer library. Some of our "customers" go to the public library because they tell me about it. Most of the others would never go downtown. We are just much more convenient for them. Pondering it, I would say that the school's library being open in the summer will have no effect on the public library. Some people will use both; some will use only the school--but they probably would not have gone to the public library in any case; and some will keep going only to the public library because they are tired of the school collection and want something different.--Donna -------------------------------------------------------------------- Please note: All LM_NET postings are protected by copyright law. You can prevent most e-mail filters from deleting LM_NET postings by adding LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU to your e-mail address book. 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