Yes, we check out Magazines!

Several years ago we did away with the periodical room. For one thing, nobody here still uses a print magazine index, now that we can our state database, NCWISEOWL (and don’t forget Google). So now that we are not a museum for old magazines, here is what we do. The current issue of a magazine goes out on the magazine racks as normal. We slap a barcode on all back issues and let the students check them out just like a book. We tried using envelopes with a temp barcode and the envelopes came back mangled. We find that it works best to put a barcode on the front cover and let it go just like that. Yes, some magazines come back mangled as well and we just delete them. That keeps them weeded and pared down. We do not keep more than 24 back issues and most magazines don’t even have that many. Our RIS (in-school suspension) classes come in about twice a day to exchange magazines. Remember, boys especially love short pieces of non-fiction and information like magazine articles. Struggling readers enjoy short magazine articles as well. We put the majority of our magazine budget into student magazines—we get LMC (Library Media Connection)—and that is it. If departments want professional magazines, then they can buy them out of their budget. In this media center, we focus our money on students (Lucy learned this after spending many years wasting money on professional magazines that the professionals never read).

We purchase about 40 different magazine subscriptions for our students.