The daily life of a Middle School Library Media Assistant.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Wasting Time

So today, I have my pile of misshelved 921's and the boys responsible. Last week, they were given these books to shelve, and they walked to the backside of our rolling shelving and basically dumped all the books there. In my best 'mom' voice, I let them know that I went over to shelf and personally picked out all the books that were out of place. It was a waste of my time, not to mention a waste of their time and the time of someone that might be looking for those particular books. I had a list, and when they were done, I'd be checking each book to see if it was done correctly. (play 'Jeopardy' music here...) I went back over them, and the boys had shelved each book exactly where it should have gone the first time and they promised never to misshelve again! So I gave them each a mini 3 Mint Musketeer bar since I had some with me. Most of today I worked on repairs, did some checking in and out and money into print accounts. Cleared some billed books off the main frame for a student, gave another a '2 texts out' slip to take home. Clicked a couple of the kids out of the gaming they were doing on the computers today and straightened up and closed up the library today since Mrs. H was gone on a field trip with her son.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Flying Pig

Processed in four teacher magazines and three for the library. Since we don't have many more new books coming in, I suggested we each pull about 20 books from the shelves that are new and put them out for the kids to see and check out, so Mrs. H agreed and the racks are full! Checked in Witness and two class sets of Algebra 2 V1. Checked out two class sets of Algebra 2 V2 and a class set of To Kill a Mockingbird. Along with other check ins/outs. Money into print accounts and yes, the ongoing repairs to The American Experience. One of our students has been carrying around this huge stuffed pig (he's very soft, about the size of a 24 pack of pop) and as he got tossed to the floor in the library I picked him up for safe keeping. He was very cuddly and soon reunited with his master :)

Monday, April 25, 2011

Submissions

One of our students who loves to write, came and asked me about how to get something published. So I showed her a magazine website (Teen Ink) and showed her that most magazines have a submission link and gave her some advice on that. It was really exciting to see this young girl who is actually a good writer decide to try out publication! Another student today was in on the computer and when I asked him what he was doing, he said he was doing a job search, so I let him know that Trader Joe's is getting ready to hire next week, and he immediately went over to their website. Funny how you can touch the lives of two completely different people in two different ways :) Processed in two magazines for the library. Checked out two class sets of To Kill a Mockingbird (one more tomorrow!). Tried to get down to the shop class to see about materials for next month's bulletin board, but they were busy so I left. Then spent the day working on repairs. Did more checking in and out and money into print accounts. Had to look up some students for billing since they had turned in books they had been billed for and make sure that they were cleared of those charges. Then back to the repair grind! I love it when a book comes together!

Friday, April 22, 2011

Good Friday

Today Mrs. H called in sick - she's been fighting a cruddy something for awhile, so good for her to stay home. Mrs. M ran the Advisory today and I helped out just a little bit. We talked about the SAT tests and I brought over some of the SAT books we have on the shelves. Processed in four magazines for the library. Relabeled some more Spanish reading books that were just on the regular shelves. Checked out a class set of To Kill a Mockingbird. Then I mostly worked on repairs for the rest of the day and closed the library up for the weekend.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Created Equal

Today I came in and Mrs. H brought me the German books we had sent in to get processed, but they were all spread around Dewey wise, so we decided to mark them all in as a set like we've done to the Spanish books. I took care of that. Got a cart ready of Night for Mrs. G. Processed in one magazine for the library. Our aides had bullet speed in shelving the 921's, so I went over and read the back side of that section and pulled about 15+ books that were incorrect. I took them all up for Mrs. M to give to those students the next time they are aides to try again. I also wrote down all the titles so we can check up on them ;) We also had our Created Equal display up front still and decided to put those back into our regular collection. Mrs. H made new labels and as she left, brought the cart over for me to resticker them. We had a box set of materials that I left the box up on the shelf, but took all the materials and put them in a different box up front. So when they come with the box, we can inventory all the different materials and reinventory when they come back in. Checked in and out, put money into print accounts. Closed up the library since Mrs. H took a half personal day.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Things Fall Apart

As I worked on a book to repair today, a student came up and looked at the book and said "Do you have things that fall apart?" I chuckled and told her that yeah, we have lots of things that are falling apart! Then I looked again and realized she was talking about a specific book title! We had a good laugh at that. Yes, we did have the book and she checked it out. I checked out a class set of First Aid books to Mr. G. Mrs. M came and needed figures on how many American Experience and Literature and Language books we have, so I got those for her. I checked in and out books and put some money into print accounts. I fixed a leg on one of the new chairs that was coming loose. Most of the day I worked on repairs, doing some of the repair list, but ended the day bringing out most of the American Experience books out that still need repairs and gluing their hinges. They are all lined up setting tonight on the back counter.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

More repairs today. Did some great work on Brit Lit. Processed in 6 teacher magazines and 8 for the library. Sent out an e-mail to the teachers who are having issues with Channel One that he will be back on the 29th to work on the problems with automatic turning on issues. Checked in and out books, put money into print accounts. Helped out a bit with some new books we got in from our last buy at Borders. The vote came back today that it was voted down. So, back to the bargaining table for the classified people. More notices were sent out to the district people today, but I didn't hear of any in our building.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Vote

Today I started with helping Mrs. M get all the rooms for the overdue notices we did last Thursday so they can get delivered tomorrow to the teachers and to the kids Wednesday morning. I also checked in a cart of books from Mrs. A and got her the list of all the books she still has out. In between repairs I checked in and out, put money into print accounts. Our union presented a Memorandum of Understanding for us to vote on about our contract next year. So I went off and voted after work today.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Billing

Checked out a class set of Algebra 2 V2 books. One of the boys back in my lab had on a tartan today! He said he wasn't Scottish but was looking for a clan to belong to! Helped Mrs. M change the very overdue books to lost and to bill them. An Admin was looking for a girl in a pink parka and I looked around and there was a girl in a pink sweater so I gave her name to the Admin. I did a tech submit on two boys that were suspected of remotely turning off computers. Had to get the InFocus machine on for a teacher. Checked Channel One and it didn't record so I sent out an e-mail to let the teachers know. The camerata came in and played today. Processed in two magazines for us. The Channel One tech came in and I got all his information for him to check out on the TV's that won't turn on automatically. He will be back on the 29th to get them all fixed. Late this afternoon Mrs. H got a call that the teacher librarians for the K - 8 grades were all told that their jobs would probably be eliminated for next year. She was crying. Chances are, one of them will bump her out of her job. We are all quite shell shocked.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Keyboard...

Worked a lot of repairs today. Had a student come into the lab to work and someone had pulled up the letters off the keyboard and put them back to say 'F*CK' in the center of the keyboard. It's so sad when another student or anyone else has to see something like that. So I got my trusty screwdriver and pried off the letters and put them in their proper places. Checked in and out a lot of books, money into print accounts and put the excess bills in our money box today. Got through most of the books on our repair shelf, so now I'll start working on the 11th grade lit books for next year since our big class hits that pile in 2011/12. Lots of classes in today, at one time we had three classes in sharing the labs with another class at the tables, it was crazy, buzzing and exciting to see all the students getting down to working! Mrs. H loved it!

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

School Board Meeting

Tonight I went with Mrs. H to the School Board Meeting in defense of the library program.I was important for us to go and support the program. I worked mostly on repairs today. Checked out a class set of Algebra 2 V2 books today and checked in their V1 books. I glued and taped and set books for tomorrow. Mr. B our custodian came and put in a screw so we could hang Mr. Sprague's picture above his library collection. It looks really nice.I took it to Affordable Framing and just paid for it myself. My donation to the library. Dealt with money into print accounts, helping kids to print. Checked in and out various books. Helped get the library ready for the SIOP meeting this afternoon. One of our teachers asked for an answer key, and when I went to check, it had never been opened. So I contacted a different person, and asked again for an answer key, so hopefully they will send us one since I never got a response on the other e-mail. That would work for Mr. M!

Monday, April 11, 2011

Carousel

Mrs. H and Mrs. M were both gone today. Mrs. H was home with a sick kid and Mrs. M was just leaving for an appointment as I came in. So, I was the only regular here today! I started helping Mr. C get the split screen ready for live announcements this morning. I was the model. I moved up front and needed a bit of help getting my programs up and running on a different computer, so Mr. B helped get that all set up. I had our aides pull up some books for classes. I checked out two class sets of Witness and one of Colored People. I checked in and out all day individual students, helped with print issues and putting money into accounts. Dealt with computer virus, checked the AP testing for one of our administrators, processed in three teacher magazines and five for the library. Checked out a withdrawing student. I had our subs work on repairing Algebra books. Did I even get to breathe today? Maybe, once or twice :)

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Repairs, Repairs and more Repairs

Oh, my! I need to get this updated - but mostly, a lot of collection maintenance! One of the things I got to do during these three days was a student commented on my screen saver (from my snowshoe trip) how she loved the outdoors. I commented on her shirt (I have one just like it in brown from North Face) and she said she loved Dick's Sporting Goods. I asked if she had read Gert Boyle's book, One Tough Mother (Gert was the head of Columbia Sportswear) and she said she hadn't and checked it out. She brought it back the next day and said she couldn't stop reading it and loved this amazing strong woman. I love it when I get to suggest a book that a student falls in love with and comes away with a great lesson on life.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Repairs

Did a lot of repairs today - but I'm missing one book on my repair list. Will have to track that down! Got in three class sets of Wild Children today and checked in and out bunches of books to individuals. Put money in print accounts. Got a call from one of the EGC support staff to watch for two of their kiddos that were sent down, they were not to be on the computer. So I find them hiding back behind our search computers getting on the internet - so I asked for their pass, and when they showed it, it said 'no computers' so I told them to go elsewhere and besides, the search computers were not for surfing except for books.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Meeting the Wave



Top picture is my poetry bulletin board outside our workroom, and below is Mrs. M's fabulous painting she just whipped out. She is an amazing artist. I wrote to our office manager today about my personal philosophy on the coming cuts and that I would be prepared to head into the wave. So, one of the decisions I've made is that if the libraries are mostly shut down, I want ours to be prepared, so I'm making a focus on getting the textbooks as much as possible repaired and ready for next year. So today I really cranked out the pile of Prentice Hall Literature Gold books that I've been working on and they were just at the edge of being finished, so I got them done and ready to go back on the shelf. Checked in and out students today, put money into print accounts. Contacted Channel One on the amount of TV's we have that are not automatically turning on when Channel One is turned on each morning. The tech called and will be out next week. We also got a new copier and I took in a brief meeting on how to operate it before I left for the night. Ms. O came by and loves my April calendar!

Friday, April 1, 2011

No April Fools


Checked out another class set of Geometry books today. Checked in and out lots of math books from individual students. Put money into print accounts. Did patron assists for converting and some virus attacks. Did the bulletin board outside the workroom 'Poetry Lives' for National Poetry Month. Mrs. H talked with Mr. C this morning (the head of Library Media Services) and he told her that the cuts in the library programs were worse than her worst nightmare. We were all very down today, but work goes on, for as long as we get to work here.