I did it because the catalog needs some work – and if you mess with the catalog you have to mess with the library. If you looked at the piles I made, they mirrored what was happening in the catalog, where many of the books’ electronic records are jumbled. Part of this is a result of an error during the migration to Infocentre, where hundreds (as far as I can tell) of books “fell out” of the catalog/got extra zeros/lost zeros/etc. Their records may be there, somewhere in Infocentre, but their barcodes/copy IDs don’t work, so they can’t circulate. I am trying to hunt these down in the library to get them all entered – hence the piles.

I really have one goal in all my piles, and that’s to make what’s happening in the physical library the same as what is happening in the online catalog. I want the two to match. That way it becomes really easy for students and staff to look up books by subject, author, title, etc, and then locate them on the shelves. It will help them become familiar with a typical catalog search interface and with traditional school/public library organization systems. Then the skills that the students learn while navigating their elementary school library can be easily applied at the Jackson middle school, in town – where the students will eventually go – and also to public libraries, and can make for a more seamless transition into using the different libraries they’ll probably experience in their lifetimes. (LC aside!)

The library organization and interface pieces are also a part of my curriculum. I am responsible for teaching students different library standards in each grade, and the standards all include searches in Infocentre, using the Dewey Decimal Classification system, and other principles of library organization – so it helps my classes to have the library and the catalog in sync.

The good news about the mess is that it’s much better after today! I stayed after school for a few hours and got it into shape so it can be functional until I can dig in some more. Here are the “before” and “after” pictures:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

BEFORE: (what a mess I made!)

AFTER:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

AND A BEFORE:

AND AFTER:

Many of those books still have to be dealt with, but now they’re at least ready to go.
The BEFORE:

AND AFTER:

MORE AFTER:

We are weeding older and outdated/no longer accurate materials:

Due to this weeding, we now have a new space for biographies. They were across the room near the fiction section, which is currently over capacity. There has been no more room on the shelves for new fiction books and they have ended up on the shelves above the non-fiction, across the room. Due to the new space in the reference section, we could move the biographies away from the fiction and open up that space for new fiction. Ta-da!

Mac has been shifting the fiction section into this new space to allow us to update the whole section and get those new series the kids are begging for. This is where it is happening:

We ran a weeding report in Infocentre and are looking at what books in fiction and non-fiction may need updating. We found a lot of records but the catalog can be misleading. Many could be old records that were never deleted or have been duplicated – so some of the “weeding” will be removing electronic records that have no print copy attached to them. They are like phantom records. It will be a big process for inventory this year – as I’m sure it is everywhere – but Mac is getting us right where we need to be to take stock of the collection as a whole.

To this:

These were cataloged and partially processed yesterday. A sizable number! The printed sheets are spine labels that need to be attached to the books during final processing (mylar covers, etc).

We still need to work on:

…and…

…and…

For now…

At Wilson, the 3rd grade is studying genre. This month it is historical fiction; last month it was mystery and the month before, realistic fiction. We did partner booktalks today, and here is our (mussed) historical fiction table for the day.

In the 3rd-5th grades we’ll be looking at reference materials throughout the year (print and online), including encyclopedias, atlases, and almanacs. I got a good poster for the “horseshoe” area at www.reallygoodstuff.com – I ordered a few and finally got to unpack them today.

Another poster from reallygoodstuff is this one. I have a “coming” and “going” poster with clear directions and today, with the 2nd graders to start, I appointed a class captain to make sure all six coming/going are taken care of. I will use a new student each week for this – they seemed to really enjoy it today. It helps to give them a stake in state of the library, I think.

In that same order, I got some write-on dice to use with grades K-2 when we do readalouds, and grade 3 for genre. I will read a book or a passage and we’ll roll the dice to see what questions the class will discuss. (Behind that are library jokes, which I pull out from time to time, especially on those days when everyone seems tired. Some are riddles and some are just knock-knock jokes.)

In other Wilson news, thanks to the fabulous Patty Krause, we’ve got our new Follett order out and on the shelves! We have spent the last few weeks on this order, trying to update the many, many series in this library. It’s nice to get a big fat update order in and get the records into the catalog and the books out, as we’ve had kids asking after them every day and putting slips in at the “recommendation station.” Some books are backordered but most came in and Patty is working on the order of A.R. tests from Renaissance Learning.

We are reading the Buckaroo Award books in grades 1 and 2 right now. We have read “Dogku,” “Move Over, Rover” and “The Day Dinosaurs Came with Everything.” The kids get to vote – “dinosaurs” is winning, at the moment.

In less glamorous news, I worked on divvying up my materials into bins for the different schools. I really don’t have a perfect system for this yet, but I’m getting closer. The idea is that instead of keeping everything in my car all the time, I can just keep one laundry basket of stuff with me at a time for each school. Maybe? Maybe. It leaves more room for groceries…or the inevitable books…in my trunk.

Speaking of, after school today, I went to the used book store, Book Trader, to look at books for the four libraries (now that I had all this space, you know!) I kind of hit the jackpot. I found several Eyewitness books for Wilson (high demand), as well as Wyoming animal books for the 4th grade totem animal project (a couple), a few dog books and a Star Wars graphic novel (always wanted/destroyed), Pirateology, some science fiction and fairy books, Caldecott Award books and some excellent fiction, including Lemony Snicket and The Diary of a Wimpy Kid, for Alta. The other day I got some books at the Browser, including one of the Buckaroo award books I need for Alta for $1! It was great. Even though these books don’t come pre-processed and will take more time than if we got them through a library vendor, it’s nice to find some that don’t break the bank that I know the students will really love.

Myself, I’m looking forward to reading “Love, Stargirl” by Jerry Spinelli (which I promised a Wilson student I would read if they read the original Stargirl, and we could swap stories) and “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” – to see what everyone’s talking about.

Looking for the Wyoming Buckaroo and Indian Paintbrush award books:

Checking out what’s new:

When we reviewed what we did after our “freeword” searching, one student summed up what we learned today as: “We learned that searching is fun.” That’s a success, and the right place to start. I don’t want students to be intimidated by the process, and I want them to have fun with it while learning to be critical consumers of information, from our catalog to the internet.

We used the computer lab and the smartboard to do this, but I also wrote on a good ol’ fashioned whiteboard, as well, and then put it in the library.

Then, during checkout time after the keyword lesson, students filled in book recommendations in the “recommendation station.”

Mac and I went over some Buckaroo book award nominees for the 2/3 grade lesson.

Then, a few minutes of reading, and off they went…

And I got in my “library mobile” to head to Moran library for the afternoon.

Kelly is an unincorporated township/village/whathaveyou bordered by Grand Teton National Park, north of Jackson. The population is about 200 and the school has about 40 students, in combined grades, on a 2-year curriculum cycle.

I took these pictures yesterday, when I had an inservice day and was able to spend the afternoon with Mac, the library para, and Jan, the district library supervisor, doing an overhaul of some of the older library materials and the things that have piled up. There is no more room on the shelves for new books, so some things will have to go if we want to update the collection to make it more accurate, current, and accessible. We made a lot of progress yesterday, even if we made a mess.

The library is down a set of stairs. (It does not always have those piles on the table, those were special for the work day!)

The library space is used for library, as well as some math classes, reading classes, a weather station…many things.

Like some of the other libraries, it has unique sections – like an easy reader AND a picture book section, which means the cataloging is different for each of the libraries (and so are the call numbers). Right now, at Kelly, the Easy Readers can be identified by yellow stickers on the call number which is a single letter. Picture books have a white sticker with a single letter, vs. E ABC or P ABC, etc. This is why if a book is withdrawn from Kelly because it’s a duplicate, for example, and taken to another library, it will need reprocessing for a new call number (as well as barcode) and, of course, recataloged. This is the E section:

Here is the “book drop,” where students return their books (the laundry basket). Behind it is the P section.

In front of the non-fiction section, you can see our new book cart! Lori Clark-Erikson from the high school was kind enough to give it to us – it makes a huge difference in library operations, actually, in storing and shelving. We didn’t have one there before and shelved from the tables.

Mac and Jan, training on cataloging and ZMARC in Infocentre on our inservice afternoon, after weeding the reference collection and cleaning out one of the closets, running weeding reports, etc.

Some of the piles we attacked:

And finally, here are the doves that are at the top of the stairs. They coo while I teach. I like them. Ruth V., the combined K/1 teacher and original library-starter, is amazing with animals.

Below are the binders the 3-5th graders will fill in during library class during their Big 6 research projects. Wilson is the only school where I teach single grades – the other schools have combined grades, so they work on 2- and 3-year cycles, and require unique curricula. So the lessons at each school are very different every week.

Above is the shelf at Wilson where I keep everything I’ll use to teach during that particular day. Today, I taught 5 classes, grades 1, 2 and 4.

This is the main setting for the lecture/intro parts of lessons: the Smartboard (an electronic whiteboard), book box, storytime chair (for the younger grades), my Mac for PowerPoints and Smartboards to display, and for technology, catalog and database demonstrations. Each library class at Wilson is 40-50 minutes long, with each class coming once a week.

Each of the 12 classes at Wilson has named the pink clock on the wall. It is a classroom management tool that I use every single day. It doesn’t operate, but I set it to a “choosing time” for end of class. If I have to wait a minute for the class to settle, then they have to wait a minute for me to finish up…it’s based on Love and Logic.

Gumdrop books, ready for cataloging…

Books from Alta, cataloged there and ready to be processed and brought back (no processing supplies there yet, so it happens at Wilson):

Follett books to process and catalog: