Great Kid

Came in this morning to see one of my favorite students come into the back with some laminating, so he and Mrs. M and Ms. A all got talking. How wonderful to have such an amazing student. He's off to Harvard in August and will be missed! The three of us all stated that if he ever ran for President, we'd vote for him! Processed in one magazine, Orion. I love that magazine, just my style. Finished packing up all the rest of the boxes to go to ECHS - I had to let her know there were 11 boxes coming, and be prepared! I also broke down and asked XXX for their back door report on barcodes and book numbers from the old Trac-it Program. Until those old books are replaced or weeded, we really need a way to quickly and efficiently find the old books on the shelf. As the new books get into the back, we'll of course, not need the old numbers, but for a system that will work, we really need it (shuuush! don't tell anyone we have it). Worked on renumbering the Prentice Hall Literature Gold. Replaced old falling apart copies with some replacement books we had purchased last year and I had on the shelf. No sense in just letting them sit there, time for old books to move on and new ones to get into use. Moved up to the front counter today after Mrs. M left. Mrs. H had a meeting at one of her elementary schools so I was the last library assistant in the building. Made every one of our 7th period release kiddos sign in on our tabulation sheets and collected over a page of signatures from them. Dealt with front desk duties for the rest of the afternoon and an issue with our bookkeeper and a student. Cleaned up the library for the night, put out our screen and an InFocus machine with a DVD player for the group that needed it for a meeting tonight.

Packing for a Kat

So, it's really Kathleen, but she calls herself Kat and she had sent a list of unused textbooks of ours that she wanted. So I transferred, 80 Cannery Row's, 40 Antigone's, 30 Awakenings, and 178 Human Biology books for Mrs. H to take over to her on Friday. She ended up with 12 different titles and 701 books! Yeah! More room for new stuff to come in! I boxed most of them up before I had to leave today. Did the shelf resetting for the Prentice Hall Gold books and pulled To Kill a Mockingbird for Mr. G, but Mr. C came and got some for his class.

Jumpers

Had two boys today jump the counter from the hall into my area! I made them both go out the door and back around to the front entrance. Silly boys! Don't they know only graduating library aides get to do that??? Pulled 50 Prentice Hall Lit Platinum books for a teacher and another 35 Out of the Dust checking those out to the teacher. Finished up the Fundamentals of College Physics books classifying their status. Processed in four magazines. Talked with another assistant about some billing problems in Destiny - the books were put into the system as 'damaged' instead of 'lost' and now if we check them in, it won't take them off their bill because they were put in as damaged. That's a problem. Sent out my unused textbooks list to the other schools and already have some notes coming back of what other schools want me to send their way.

Step Ahead

So today I was awaiting my new list results (hearing from teachers) and one of them came storming in with boxes to make sure we didn't get rid of her novels that she uses and we were already one step ahead :) I had already pulled her books and had them on a cart and she only had to pull a couple more to get all that she wanted. Then Mrs. H and her came to an agreement, so I withdrew all those copies and we gave them to Ms. O. She will really get good use out of them, better than them sitting on a shelf in the back. She had some students pull out of the back room an old bookcase and was so excited that those books would now be available to her students right then and there. Then she pulled in our sports history teacher and we pulled books for him and withdrew them and let him have them for his class. It was a good busy day! I was so excited to see these teachers really charged about having these books available right in their rooms! And so excited that the books will be out in the world getting used! Also processed in four magazines for us, one for a teacher. Checked out a class set of Technical Writing books to a teacher and transferred 60 old language books to another school that Mrs. H will take over next Friday. Checked out a class set of First Aid books as well!

Ficus

Just got back from donating my three ficus trees to the Sprague drama department. A young gentleman came from Ms. L and asked if they could borrow our library ficus for Curious Savage that starts tonight, but we had gotten rid of it last year before the bond work. So I offered my three ficus trees that we are getting rid of and since the play starts tonight, I drove them down to their new home. I'm sure they will stand in their places well and I'll get to see them for years up on stage :) Checked out a couple of extra books to Mr. C today for a student, checked in and out books. Sent out the Lit books list for people to look through. I pulled all the titles that Ms. O has on her 'Reading Through History' class list before I sent it. Now I just need to do the list for the titles we had more than enough copies for and give that to Mrs. H and we'll be about done with weeding those out. A very busy day in the library but well worked!

More Shift

Today was more shifting. Since I didn't shift enough really on the non-fiction, I went ahead and did the whole wall of bookcases there and it looks much better. Then I went and worked on the list for Prentice Hall Gold books and Mrs. H came and said "I have a project for you...." So I went around the library and pulled copies of books that had more than two copies (except for a very few well used ones) and then started to compile a list of our reader books that have copies both in the back and out on the shelves. We'll do another "Love it or List it" with those after I get done with them. Busy day!

Shift

Today I finished off shifting all the Prentice Hall Platinum books. Checked over all the repairs I did last week and most of them were ready to go back on the shelf. Processed in one teacher magazine and two for us. Checked out a class set of Prentice Hall Gold books to Mr. M and took them over to his class since it was just around the corner. Got ready a set of First Aid books for Mrs. W's class to check out. Asked again for the Pay it Forward books that I had requested three weeks ago, and she had forgotten! So they should be here in a day or two. Helped a couple of students with research on the Gale and JStore databases. Decided today was a good day to shift library shelves. A teacher sub came in and I suggested it, but she couldn't do work below the waist, so I decided to go ahead. Our W's, Y's and Z fiction authors are so crammed at the end of our fiction section - and since we had just weeded our beginning non-fiction earlier this year, we decided to condense down those books and bring the fiction Y's and Z's over to the next wall. So, I shifted about 8 bookcases of shelving today (about 6 shelves on a bookcase). Looks good, and there's now room for books to be properly set back on the shelves. I found several books just on top of a row because there was simply no room for it to fit in! Favorite book I came across? Never Slow Dance with a Zombie - Ha!

Love it or List it

My daughter called and said 'Let's go camping this weekend!' so I asked to come in early so I could get off early and beat some of the Portland traffic! So, this is actually Friday, the 19th. Came in early and helped Mrs. M get all the computers up and running. Spent most of the day renumbering the shelving in the back - and to tell the truth, I don't really remember what I did other than that! My mind was on other things :) I did get the OK from Mrs. H on the unused books list and sent it out to all the staff telling them to Love it or List it! If they want a title and are going to use it, I'll keep it - otherwise off they go!

Glue

Spent a good part of today doing repairs with glue! A lot of page tipping and some tear repairs. Then back in the stacks to move more books and relabel shelves to work my way up to where the books have no room! Watched Manga Club after school for Mrs. H today since she had to leave. Got a nice present in the mail, or rather from my courier son. I got a call from South HS that they had a present for me. I asked what and where did it come from and they said it was a box of Sees Mint chocolate wafers and that it had come from Mr. C at LMSS! I cracked up. Mrs. H had told Mr. C that if he really wanted to thank me it should be mint chocolates, and he did! Not sure how it ended up at South, but I had my son drive over and pick it up since she didn't want to put it through the district mail (bad experiences there!). Too much yummy fun!

Tracks

So I kept telling the air in the textbook depository that someone should really just go ahead and clean the tracks that our telescoping shelves move on. The bottom track isn't used at all, but collects all the dust and whatnot that flies around, a trench in the floor basically. But this summer, all the dust and solder splashes, tape, the ceiling tile flakes had all just collected in there and I looked around and said. "Hum, well I guess that someone should be me." Grabbed some towels and cleaned out all the tracks. It looks so much better! Glad I finally decided to woman up and do them! Worked on repairs today. Listened to one of our kids work on his speech (it was about the advantages of having a beard - he has one). It really was funny. Put away books. Made new tags for the World Literature books and put them all up nice and pretty. Got a new water bottle from Mrs. H for my birthday today. She's so sweet :)