I'm Technically Speaking

READ! How else would you follow up with "awesome bookmarks" and the like? Aka time intensive projects. Stop. Drop. And Read! 10 minutes of checkout time, 10 minutes for silent reading, and 10 minutes of buddy reading This was the best Tuesday library day so far this year!!! I was so excited to see how much the kids enjoyed the time. Some found fun space under tables.... Some found bookshelf space :) Others had chairs, floorspace, or whatever their creative minds could come up with! All were enjoying the books! Can't wait for tomorrow and the next Stop. Drop. And Read!

Thanks to Pinterest, the fourth and fifth graders have had a fun library project. This is Awesome Bookmarks: Link (and credit): http://www.creativefamilymoments.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/DSCN5174.jpg I had kids on the floor and I stood on a chair,  others laid on chairs, and some just stood.  It was fun to see just how creative they were with this. I should have had the computer to open the  pictures for better viewing. Some pictures  did not turn out as well as the student  woul d have liked and so we ended up at  Wally World twice printing pictures. It also  would have helped to have had a printer that printed photos. We could have avoided extra  library time  and the Wally World trips. The students cut around their photos, some  opted to glue the photo to card stock for stability. I  offered to laminate if some wanted that as well. I hope these actually make it home for parents  to see...

In my preparation for my next webinar presentation (that includes Pinterest), I spent some time looking around Pinterest for library ideas...maybe "some" is not the word for it my time spent. If you know Pinterest...you know that you can spend lots and lots of time. I love this image... And with Pinterest it seems that if you are looking within one specific thing, you can easily still get sidetracked. There I was looking at library organization ideas and ended up with this.... Oh, my word...is this not cute! I love this bookmarking idea! I think that I may have to try to incorporate this with my older library students. I have the perfect slogan to go with it...can you guess? "Take a bite out of reading" or "Take a bite out of good book".  We just started Book It and I would like to feature it once each month as a reminder (October to March). I thought I would do a small activity (like the bookmarks) or printable (from Book It website).  I...

This week in the library.... Here is a link to my Library Newsletter that went out this last week. The first week of library news, I started to share my news via Glogster as I shared in a past post. However, I am not sure how well this worked. I couldn't embed it in the email with our system and so it was an extra click or so.  If you know Glogster, you know that you can see the amount of times it has been viewed...and the number of views was very low. This week I changed over to using Pages and a newsletter feel. I have had really good feedback on this. Especially being able to view the library day/time of each class. The other high point of this week was a "book care" presentation I did with the Kindergarten class. If you have Mimio Notebook software you can open the presentation here . Otherwise I have also saved it as a pdf . To go along with the presentation, and keep the kiddos busy/involved, as also made these for them to answer with... If the slide in t...

Here is my how-to for Avery Labels

My new "library school" (the school where I will be teaching library) uses Sycamore Education as their management system. As a part of that they offer a library management system. Seeing as how our current system was needing to be changed I decided new librarian....new system. It was needed of course...the old system was from a company now longer in business and the backup was done in house by a tech guy whenever we told him it needed to be done. It also was designed to hold about 10,000 books, which we are holding more. All that said, Sycamore is already being paid for....so I decided to give it a shot. And by "give it a shot" I really mean that we are using it and there is no going back. We also upgraded my computer to a newer one (which had the old program on it). Good-bye old computer and old system! Hold on folks this is going to be a bumpy library ride this year! I have uploaded the books. 1st hurdle....746 books not found So I go back through our list...

Did I impress anyone with the title? :) Here are some more updates to the library.  There were some book jackets that the previous librarian had planned to decorate with.... So I put them to use for the same purpose! This made for a fun wall (if I do say so myself).

Working for a small library can have its benefits and the generosity of those that donate is one benefit. However, it can also be a negative. What do you do with donated books that are old and you feel obligated to house (at least for a time)? That was one of the first decisions that I faced as I entered my library position. Not wanting to offend anyone....especially the donor....I had to come up with something. So this is my current solution to the problem: Pictured below: The shelves below the books are now empty and ready for new books!  The older books are arranged above as decorations :)  Again another set is arranged  This set is all about birds, animals, etc and is in the non-fiction section that fits :)  Here again the books above match the section. I plan to add fun antiques or "older" looking items to go with the books and add to the decor. This really excited me as I had been looking for decorations to add. This was a no-cost decoration and allowed so...

Gutter Shelves! For this project, I enlisted my wonderful husband to help. He was more than willing to help me keep things straight (literally). I have a little (maybe big) issue with patience...in that I do not have the patience to measure, mark, measure, etc. Here is said measurement process :) First gutter row holders attached and ready for the gutter to be attached. First row complete with an example book and animal. Second row going up. All three rows in place! All rows with animals and books in place! I love this new look! before We had enough left to put three small (12 inch) to mirror the three long (5 foot) and two more in another place. I envision these three small ones to be "teacher picks/favorites" or "themed"/special occasion featured books.