You can’t design a library space and program that meets the needs of your teachers and students if you don’t know what those needs are. It’s hard to develop an effective library collection if you have no idea what genres and books your students want to read. Using surveys with your teachers and students can … Read more
How I Organized My Fiction Collection by Genre At the end of the 2017-2018 school year, I genrefied my school’s fiction collection. This section of the collection is relatively small at the moment (about 2,000 books). I intend to grow it a lot, so it made sense to me to get started in my first … Read more
Good signage is vital in a learning space. Ideally, your students should be able to walk into your space, look around, and find the things that they need without having to ask for help. Realistically, I know that this isn’t usually what happens, but it’s the goal to aim for. In general, I would say … Read more
Our libraries are no longer solely the silent, individual study zones that they used to be. More and more schools are recognizing the value of collaboration, and the library can be the perfect place to support it. But traditional library environments (think heavy wooden individual tables, tall, imposing stacks, etc) don’t really provide a collaborative … Read more
It’s a new school year! Some of you may already be back, and some of you may be counting down the last days of summer. Either way, a new year is a fresh start, a chance to change things up and make your library program better. Here’s some things to think about as you get … Read more
If we expect our students to become lifelong readers, we need to model that in our own lives. There are so many different ways we can share our reading life with students. One-on-one conversations are always ideal, but it can be difficult to talk with each and every one of our students In my post on … Read more
I love the power of social media in libraries. It’s an amazing way to share what you’re doing, promote your programs, and reach out to students and community members. Being a visual learner, Instagram is definitely one of my favorite platforms. It makes it easy to share striking visual images with as much or as little text … Read more
I was a media specialist at my previous school for seven years. A TON of things changed there during that time. But they didn’t happen overnight. I built things up piece by piece. I experimented and tried new things. There were plenty of failures, to be sure. But there were also great successes that my … Read more
I love weeding. A well-curated library collection makes me happy. But weeding can be difficult. We attach a lot of emotion to books. Others don’t understand why anyone would ever want to get rid of books. We have to hide our weeded books for fear of misunderstanding from teachers, parents, students, and administrators. Weeding can … Read more
Banned Books Week Banned Books Week is one of those ALA events that I always wanted to participate in, but never got around to. Now that I work in a 6-12 school, and with the current political climate that is making it easier to ban books in Florida, I felt like it was more important … Read more