Great All Knowing Brain:
Thanks to all for their answers to my query about reasonable goals for a
first year high school librarian...you are fantastic people!
Here is my original question and the answers:
I need to write up my goals for the year and give them to my principal.
I have a few general ideas such as collaborating with teachers as much
as possible, becoming a good resource for them, teaching students to use
the databases, starting a lunch time book club, and decorating the
library with student art. If you could send me any other ideas that seem
reasonable for a first year in high school it would be much
appreciated...I love creative ideas.
Diane Briggs
SLMS
Troy High School
Troy, NY
briggsd@troy.k12.ny.us
Is this your first year with the district and/or level? If so, I would
create a goal that reflects your beginning to understanding the
curriculum and supporting that with library resources. This could
coincide with collaboration.
=========
Your goals are ambitious. I would be careful about adding too many since
this is your first year. Don't forget the administrative duties you have
to learn also. Be kind to yourself.
============
Getting to know the faculty and students and their needs.
Learning the collection and how it meets the needs of the faculty and
students.Don't bite off more than you can chew!! I'm beginning to feel
like I have some idea of what I'm doing and I'm in my third year!
==============
It might seem as though it is a given, but I really impressed my
principal when I wrote as one of my goals: " Become familiar with the
Reference Section to enable me to quickly find resources that students
can use." That was my first year goal. Since I had to also write a 3
year goal statement, I broke up the collection into three segments and
allocated each to a year. In that goal statement I stated that I planned
to become familiar with the materials, and how those materials fit into
the present curriculum and were being used by teachers and students.
Now, for the kicker - I have been a librarian for 28 years and had been
here for two years before I had to write up a goal statement. Every year
when I did my year end report, I included a segment on what materials
were purchased and what were weeded and another on how many classes I
had in for research and how many teachers I helped. But it wasn't until
we had to do formal goal setting statements that he really looked to see
what I was doing!
===============
This isn't very creative, but you might want to set some goal about
familiarizing yourself with the various curricula so you can collect
materials which support them. Your first year, you will just have to go
through a year to see what teachers come in to do what projects. You
will have the Spanish teacher who wants the students to check out a book
on a Latin country, the various history projects, the wellness projects
on various diseases and disorders, etc., and you will want to collect
current information for them, including databases.
==================
Also, you will definitely want to encourage reading, so you will need to
work on your fiction collection to keep it up to date, with suggestions
from avid student readers.
================
When I've started in a new place, I tried to make sure I had ways of
letting people offer suggestions for materials and services they would
like the library to provide. You could make a suggestion box, create a
survey, send mass emails, or whatever gets the word out.
====================
What is the state of your collection? If you have any weeding to do or
sections that can use some updates you can include that.
Another thing I do is create seasonal or themed book displays like
Banned Books Week or holiday titles. I have a bulletin board and display
case I use for these.
=====================
If you don't have a library webpage, that is always a great goal.
Sometimes I put increase literacy by ____% then use my circulation
statistics to compare.
====================
My advice is based on Johnson's Three Commandments of a Successful
Library
Program:
1. Thou shall develop shared ownership of the library and all it
contains.
2. Thou shall have written annual goals tied directly to school and
curriculum goals and bend all thy efforts toward achieving them.
3. Thou shall take thy light out from under thy damn bushel and share
with others all the wonders thou performs.
Pretty good, huh? What do you think Old Testament prophet pays nowadays?
So these would be my goals for my first year at a school:
1. Establish a formal library advisory committee comprised of
teachers, parents, and students. And administrators if their leadership
style is collaborative, not dictatorial. Oh, get on your building's
improvement committee/leadership team ASAP.
2. I would work with this committee to establish
collaboratively-created goals and budget. You may wish to conduct a
library survey to give direction to these goals. I would also make a
collection evaluation a part of this planning process.
3. Quickly establish a formal communications effort with four main
audiences: your students, your staff, your principal and your parents.
While I applaud you for wishing to do individual collaborative projects
with teachers immediately, do not neglect a long-term, systematic
approach to developing a program that has buy-in by the entire staff.
Good luck and let me know how things go!
(I'll a blog post on this active links tonight.)
=====================
When I got to this high school, one of my goals was to increase usage of
the library. The librarian before me was not very welcoming or fun to
be around. I got a big pat on the back when usage went from basically
nothing to approx. 17,000 uses the first year, to 34,395 the second
year, to 51,604 uses last year. I don't really think it' s possible to
get better than that. Our enrollment is about 1,800 students, we have
individuals sign in manually when they get here and when they
leave...before school, during school and after school. Not when they
come in with a teacher. Hope that is helpful.
====================
He might be interested to know how you're going to update/improve/refine
the print collection. At my library it is important that I have quality
new interesting print materials that will draw the students to reading
as fun, not just a task.
Your other ideas sound good, especially those revolving around
collaboration. Good luck!
How about :
1. booktalk ___ # times to _ graders.
2. attend _________ departmental meeting.
=================================
This is my 2nd year in Jr/Sr HS, I worked 3 years in Elementary and I am
not a real librarian (I have a degree in marketing and figure I am
marketing books!) Yesterday I showed "book trailers" Actually Naomi
Bates who also posts on this board gave me the idea and I downloaded her
very cool digital booktalks: Here is her site:
http://www.nisdtx.org/120820731141528687/site/default.asp It was a ton
of fun! I had about 20 students (out of 130) give up the last 10 minutes
of their lunch and join me in the library to view the digital book
talks. I set up a projector and turned the library lights off, so it
seemed more movie theatre atmostphere. They gave me thumbs up and
thumbs down on which books our library needs. I also do book clubs. I
have about 30 students in a total of 3 book clubs. At the end of last
year I took them all shopping and let them pick out books for our
library. They did cake raffles to make about $500 to help pay for the
bus and part of the books, the rest I wrote a grant. We are rural, and
one kid said to me I didn't think the book store would be so big! We
are use to the small book section in Walmart. What a great experience
for them and for me, as we selected books they will read!!
Good luck in your first year!
Your goals seem great! I feel that when I started in high school (almost
13 years ago), one of the absolute best things I did (after actually
reading the YA books, of course!), was to set up a "library bestseller"
section where books that were popular among our students (not
necessarily NYT bestsellers)were prominently displayed. That way,
students who are either new to the school or reluctant readers know they
can find "really good books" there. It serves as a starting point for
book selection for most students. Some kids ONLY read books from that
area, but by now there are a lot for them to choose from there. Also,
sometimes I add new books that I think will become popular there -
sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. If not, after a year or two
I remove them. You can generate ideas from your cataloging program
(perhaps) with number of checkouts, but the best way is to ask students!
Our first "star" books (we mark them with a star on the spine) were "Go
Ask Alice" and "A Child Called It." Also, I think Tupac's "The Rose That
Grew from Concrete" was on that first display.
More than any other program or arrangement or project I've done here,
the "Bestseller Section" has really encouraged reading among our
students. It practically guarantees that a student will read a truly
engrossing book!
Good luck!
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