How to Dream Big With a Library Space Analysis It may seem like an odd time to be reimagining your library space. You might currently have limited access or might not be allowed on campus. If you are having in-person learning, your library might not look like it normally does. To help manage social distancing, … Read more
There is a familiar sort of guilt in my life. That feeling of all the things that I should be doing. I should be reading and replying to more library Facebook threads. I should be going to Twitter chats. I should be spending more of my summer planning for a school year that is impossible … Read more
Checking in I actually had some new posts scheduled and ready to go out, but as things have changed dramatically over the past week, I realized that now might not be the time to write about finding inspiration from co-working spaces for school libraries, or how to organize your makerspace supplies. Like many of you, … Read more
Warning: Kinda personal post ahead. Because life isn’t all LEGOs and Cardboard all the time. 2019 was an up and down year for me. There were plenty of wonderful things going on – a large financial donation to our makerspace at work that allowed me to start up new programs, two keynote speaking opportunities at … Read more
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
At the end of every calendar year, I like to take some time to reflect on what I’ve learned, how I’ve grown, and how I plan to have an even more awesome life in the next year. Rather than keeping these reflections to myself, I wanted to share them on here. I think that it’s … Read more
Valuable Lessons from my First Makerspace Year In my article for AASL’s Knowledge Quest blog, I decided to reflect on my first year of having a Makerspace in my library. I started our Makerspace back in January of 2014, so 2014-2015 was my first full school year with a Makerspace, our first makerspace year. Check … Read more
What led me to become a school librarian? Let’s rewind back to the summer of 2005. I was working on my bachelor’s degree in Sociology, with no idea of what career I wanted to have. I quit my job working as an in-house roadie at a local concert/event venue to go to Nicaragua for … Read more