Still here – still in the library – priorities changed a little.
Still here – still in the library – priorities changed a little.
Filed under Poetry
A question from my administration, briefly and poorly answered in the rush of ‘clean-up day’ has led me to take a closer look at our circulation statistics. Rather than giving a realistic impression of our library usage, I inexplicably ended up promoting our fantastic partnership with the local public library! Thinking on my feet, especially when my mind is overflowing with unrelated details, is not one of my talents.
The question was about reference materials, by which I believe was meant nonfiction in general in this age of the Internet.
Yes, reference material is truly a thing of the past in its traditional form and a few attractive volumes decorate the unreachable shelves in the library. When it comes to nonfiction in general, it’s true that many topics have been superseded by online resources. However, there are still a great many areas that are relevant and well used. A quick look at this year’s circulation stats and anecdotal evidence show that, with careful collection development, we are still in the business of promoting reading for pleasure and information.
In my K-12 school of under 200 students, 6,802 books were checked out from the student collections in our library this year.
Elementary classes love books. Up to Grade 6, virtually every student checks out books every week. Fiction and nonfiction are equally popular. By junior high, they are more selective and by grade 9, only about twenty percent of them check out books. I don’t see the high school students regularly and only a few continue to borrow books.
It is always a challenge to keep the collection up to date and to anticipate demand, and there are areas of nonfiction that are I no longer collect. Anything that is quickly outdated and is more likely to be ‘Googled’ is no longer purchased. For unanticipated or rare requests, I use interlibrary loan or direct students to the public library.
There is still a need, however, for as much as we can practically purchase and shelve. In the classroom, teachers appreciate supplementary materials for curriculum units from The Needs of Plants and Animals in Grade 1, to Sky Science in Grade 6 and the Aztecs in Grade 8. Provincial directives have recently lead me to analyse and develop the collection for diversity. Character development is another perennial topic.
It’s also still important for students to be given the opportunity for discovery among as wide as possible a variety of materials. Browsing, a skill I promote, can open up doors that students never knew existed. A few from many possible examples will illustrate this.
We all know that children have an innate sense of curiosity, a natural thirst for knowledge, the wonder at and obsorption of which is at its most powerful when the discovery is made on their own.
I wholeheartedly believe that students need to become comfortable with the public library for potential supplementary and summer reading, and life-long learning. We have a very effective partnership with our local public library, which is doing a fantastic job of getting the kids in the door. Through local sponsorship, all of our students and staff get public library memberships, through which we are able to direct our students to online resources including ebooks and audiobooks.
However, it’s clear that our school library is still providing the primary resource for reading and the discovery of new interests, especially since a large majority of our students are spending so much of their free time at home on digital devices. Our collection, while necessarily changing, is still relevant and important.
Filed under Education, Library Management, Reading
I haven’t posted for a long time, but I had to share this. It is from the funniest book I’ve read in a long time: A Bad Boy’s First Reader written by Frank Bellew and published in New York by G.W. Carleton & Co. in 1881. I got it from a archive of 6,000 historical children’s books digitized and posted online by the University of Florida’s Baldwin Library, which I discovered at Open Culture. Check it out, it’s wonderful!
Filed under Books, History of Books & Libraries, Humour, Wisdom
Brian Joseph Davis uses law enforcement composite sketch software to create images of literary characters.
After emails from teachers and librarians, asking for images to use in lessons and programming, Davis has provided a zip file with a non-commercial Creative Commons license for download here.
See Davis’ Tumbler here and read more about it at Mental Floss.
Because:
Books give you a way of decoding this crazy muddle of life. They will give you a way of describing the world, a way of finding your way through the extraordinary and the everyday. They are also a much needed refuge and escape. There are books for the break ups and the break downs, the make ups and the get downs.
and
Avoid people who proudly say they don’t read. Unless you want to poop on them. That is allowed, nay, encouraged. Well, at least while you’re still in nappies.
and the rest: A Father Introduces His Newborn Daughter to Books at Book Riot
Recent productions like a bloody staging of Titus at The Globe in 2014 are restoring the gore in Shakespeare’s work, and The Complete Deaths will leave audiences with little doubt that Shakespeare’s culture was as permeated with representations of violence as our own—and it was as much, if not more so, plagued by the real thing.
I would have loved this as a kid – heck! I’d love it now! Only I’d need it to be just a little cushier for the ‘more sensitive’ bones…
This is just one of a great collection of reading nooks over at Buzz Feed. Wonderful way to encourage kids to read at home. Wouldn’t it be great to create a few of these nooks in the library?
Filed under Uncategorized
I’ve always been a fan of Brian Dettmer and really appreciated hearing him talk about his work.