Thoughts on shelving and student input....

Lucy and Ethel have found that in our media center, opening up the shelves by rearranging books, constantly weeding, and even purchasing more shelving has increased our circulation of books, especially in the non-fiction section. We try to put as many books on display with fronts forward as we can. I, Lucy, am a weeding fanatic--I have no problems throwing away books that either haven't circulated in several decades, that are nasty looking, have ugly covers, etc. If you have trouble weeding, or need suggestions, check out Florida's amazing Sunlink site! They also have a new book out on weeding. If you have problems throwing away a book, get your teachers to do an altered book project with some of your undesirables! If you don't know what an altered book is, click here. I have purchased several books from Amazon on making altered books--my teachers beg me for my discards, we are keeping books out of landfills, etc.



If you're like Ethel and me, you have at least one library pet peeve--one thing that just drives you nuts. Ours pet peeve is when some darling teen walks along our shelves, and slams all the books to the back of the shelves! (Isn't it amazing what can annoy a person?) If this is your pet peeve, try the solution that Ethel came up with. She has had our techs save every bit of the white Styrofoam packing material that comes with computers. She then placed it behind the short books on our shelves and now our books can't be pushed to the back, nor can a darling student throw books behind the others! It also keeps the stuff out of the landfill. Ethel is thinking of some way to make these more attractive--when she comes up with that idea, I'll post it!

Slam Board help!

In an earlier post we explained our Slam board. This weekend, Lucy and Ethel and 2 other friends went shopping and found Teen Tabletopics at this super cute store. It has provided us with a whole box of topics to use. You can buy them online--and there are boxes for adults as well!
Go to http://www.tabletopics.com/ for more info!

The Goddess of YA Literature

Lucy says...if you haven't been to The Goddess of YA Literature, you are missing an amazing opportunity to explore the world of YA literature! It is like taking a YA lit class featuring the best of YA literature with honest reviews! I have ordered almost everything she has recommended for my high school crowd! She recommended Before I Die, I bought it, and it is flying off the shelves! Three cheers to Professor Nana!

Free Rice

We want to explain our link to http://freerice.org/, and how we have used it in our media center. Our students can come in to the media center during their lunches (we have ). We started teaching our walk-ins about freerice.org, as a way to have fun, learn something, and contribute to society (we don't let them surf the net or play online games). Ethel had the idea to pull out computers from our mobile lab cart during the lunches (if it is not being used by a classroom), and let the students play on Free Rice during lunches! It was a hit--especially with the guys.

Curing the Overdue blues..Lucy and Ethel's December scheme

We have quite a few overdue books because we circulate a LOT of books! To bring them in, Ethel came up with two successful ideas--we used them last year, and they do work! We have a contest each nine weeks where we randomly draw a class--the first class we draw with no overdue books wins a party of some kind. Last nine weeks, we drew through third bell classes, and the class won a ice cream float party. This nine weeks we are drawing for a Christmas party catered by us (we are doing hot-dogs). We have had a huge response to this--it is in the announcements, and kids are renewing more than ever! We also are having a contest called the 12 Days of Christmas. It starts December 5th, and runs 12 days prior to getting out of school. Each day we randomly pick a student name, and if that student does not have an overdue book, they get to come to the library and pick out a prize from our prize box (which we replenish with Dollar Tree items and Target's dollar items). Yes, sometimes we do pick a student who has never checked out a book, but it was rare last year, and the student did have to come through our doors to claim the prize. The winner's name is announced each day on the loudspeaker as well! They loved it!

Contest Flyer

Bringing kids into the LMC--with a Slam Board

Remember back in the day when we had Slam books--those composition books that had one question per page, and you wrote your favorite singer, or cutest boy, etc. on each page? Well, Ethel adapted this idea to our media center board, and it is a hit! We have an blackboard our reading area. We've made it a slam board--each day we are posting a different question, and the students run in to put up an answer (using sidewalk chalk)! So far our questions have been: what is your favorite candy? what superhuman power would you want? who is your favorite teacher? what makes you LOL? what's your middle name?

Lucy and Ethel firmly believe that if we get students to love coming to the media center, we'll eventually get a book or magazine in their hands!

Native American Heritage Month

Lucy says..while helping a teacher design a research project for her 11th grade U.S. History class, I ran across these terrific sites I thought I'd share.

Smithsonian American Art Museum's Campfire Stories with George Catlin

This could serve as a springboard for the assignment--have them select an image in this collection--a chief, an image in Ancestral lands, Catlin's quest, the Western landscape, to find more information about--composing not only a 2 or 3 page narrative or reaction paper with more information (from various sources that are cited in the works cited page) about the image, but within the narrative, describing everything they see in the image that gives clues about Native American life at that time (they must choose and image of Native Americans, or Native American life, not images of Catlin and his party). Within the paper, they could also investigate this question--can you find how encroaching movement from East to West affected the life of the person, or the image? Can you find a picture of this area, or a person from this tribe today?

Here are the lesson plans from the Smithsonian site:
http://catlinclassroom.si.edu/lessonplans/contents.html

Also, I love, love, love this activity:

It has them search through primary source documents, and other websites:

Library of Congress

http://www.edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=268

http://edsitement.neh.gov/monthly_feature.asp?id=133

There are many more out there--just thought I'd share these! Feel free to discuss other great sites you've shared with your teachers!

What are Lucy and Ethel doing in the land of blogs?

First, who are Lucy and Ethel? My name is Mary Simmons (aka Lucy), and I have worked as a library media specialist in Virginia and then North Carolina for around 20 years. I have been at all levels--elementary, middle, and high school. My co-author is Beth O'Briant (aka Ethel), and she is my library assistant (as well as my neighbor and good friend). I got my B.A. in history at the University of Richmond, then took what seemed like one-million library classes at ODU, where I received my masters degree. I was very well schooled there to always remember PR, PR, PR (public relations) no matter the level I served. Beth is the creative genius at the library--and together, we are always plotting and scheming new ways to entice students into the media center (that is where folks started calling us Lucy and Ethel--and because we are kind of zany!)

We want to tell you what this blog is..and what it isn't. This blog is not a site where we will wax poetic in educational mumbo-jumbo about the grand scheme of all things library related. Our sole purpose is to share with other high school library personnel practical ideas we have used to bring high school students to our media center. They don't always come in to check out a book--but we both strongly believe if we ever once lure them in, and they visit us often, we will eventually connect a book or magazine with that student--even if it takes us years! We believe our library is for our students--and we try to keep in mind what will make them comfortable. We want our kids to come to the library--even if it is just to be their refuge from the larger world of a big high school. We want them to have fun, read, and maybe just learn something in the process.

We want this blog to be a forum for sharing ideas -- if you have tried something that worked to bring students in to the media center--let us know!

Remember, not all of our ideas may work for you in your situation--but we hope you can find something we do that may work for you! If you have a problem that you'd like us to help you solve--we'll be glad to try and help you solve it!