6 Tips for Creating Effective Digital Surveys for Schools

6 Tips for Creating Effective Digital Surveys for Schools: You can't make appropriate changes at your school without all the data, and using surveys with your teachers and students is a great way to gather it. It also gives an opportunity for your stakeholders to have a voice in your school

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

Genrefication: How to Organize Your Fiction Collection by Genre

Genrefication: A Guide to Genrefying Your Fiction Collection - In this post, I share what I learned from genrefying the fiction section of my library and offer tips and advice for your own genrefication project.

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

Too Much Information: 3 Frustrating Problems With Signage

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

How to Create Collaborative Spaces in Your Library

How to Create Collaborative Spaces in Your Library // Here are five different things you can do to create collaborative spaces to support your students in your library.

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

Be Intentional: Why Slow Change is Good for You

Be Intentional: Why Slow Change is Good for You | When changing something (your library space, your classroom, your life) quick, sudden change can be jarring. Being slow, deliberate and intentional can have power and make changes longer lasting.

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

AASL Post: How to Weed by the Numbers and Clean Up Your Collection

How to Weed By the Numbers and Clean Up Your Collection | Weeding can be emotional and hard sometimes. We attach so much to books. But if you focus on the data, it can be so much easier to clean out your collection.

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