Marking Shelves

They were doing the ASVAB in the library this morning until 11, so I worked on moving around the Biology books to make room for new ones and the new set of Physical Science with Earth Science. When we got back in I processed two teacher magazines and a Newsweek for the library. Checked out a class for the new Physical Science with Earth Science and made sure the whole science department knew they were available. Ordered two more boxes of the Bienvenidos workbooks. Worked on the 60 new Algebra Connections Vol. 1 we got in today. I printed up barcodes, then split them between the three of us because they really need to be covered before we hand them over to students (they're paperback). Ms. B wants them before 3rd period tomorrow, so that shouldn't be a problem. Off to my last PowerPoint class!

Broken Doorknob

I put my key in the back workroom door today and it's not working! The whole doorknob is off kilter and looks like someone kicked it or maybe tried to crowbar the handle off. Mrs. H has already looked into it, sending an email to custodians Mr. B & B. I finish up the processing of the Physical Science with Earth Science and send back three that are damaged to Central Stores processing and also send out the Auto Fundamentals books to McNary. I process the Java 2 books for Mr. R, and a teacher edition of the Biology book for Mr. W. He is very appreciative of the work we do. Mr. C from Follett comes back and since Mrs. H had told him to go ahead and buy the old Cest A Toi books (level 1), he locked in the books last night and came back this morning to pack them up and ready them for shipping out to their warehouse. He had a check all written for them and ready to go. He also took on consignment some of the level 2 books. I straightened up the rest of the surplus books. Mr. W gave permission for the Biology books to be loaned to another school, but they had already gotten them from somewhere else but really appreciated the offer. Mrs. H and I also sent out the request for more of The Sixties books. I had gone through my emails and just checked with her to see if they were ordered and when we checked, they hadn't yet! So we got them ordered and set up a system for us to keep on track to make sure things got ordered. I will take in the orders, check on the prices, print up the prices off the appropriate website and hand all that over to her. She will write up the official request and then give all the copies to me to file for future reference. Mr. B comes in and begins to work on the doorknob and tells us that last night when he was cleaning the floors outside in the hall, he heard a thump as he went by the textbook window and thought he'd hit the outside counter lip (which he does all the time), but he guesses that this time he whacked out the doorknob! So, no one tried to break in after all! Mrs. H and I talked about the new calendar for October and she thought we should do one on cancer awareness. We have a book by Lance Armstrong and I look for it, but it's not there. Mrs. H says to look at the regular shelves instead of the biography section we have and it's there, along with about five other biographies, so I properly shelve all of them. We have a lot of books that deal with cancer, so we will heighten awareness of breast and testicular cancer for our young ladies and gentlemen. I'm thinking pink (breast) and violet (testicular) ribbons for the A/B days.

At Last!

I had dropped and broken my camera at Yellowstone this summer, so I went to Mr. R and Mr. A and asked to use the tech camera to take a picture of my bulletin board for September, so they made sure I wouldn't drop it by using the neck strap! Then a nice student tech uploaded the photo and I posted it to the first day of school (New Oly Day). Very nice! I got a call from tech services and I have access to the main frame again. Mrs. H is doing her page in our school paper, The Torch, and asked me to write a little blurb for National Novel Writing Month. I host the blue computer lab from 2:45 to 4 pm every school day for anybody that wants to try and write a novel in 30 days. I love doing it! So I wrote up a small paragraph and it will go in her 'Hot off the Shelf' page. I processed a People and The New Yorker magazines. Answered emails - one from our science department head who needed a count of Biology, Physics and Fundamentals of College Physics so he could be prepared for next year. Another question from Mr. H on the materials from Mr. M. He wants to send some of the texts back (Mr. M had 6 pages of texts checked out to him!) and keep some so we will work that out. I look for The Art of Racing in the Rain, one of our new books I had seen on our 'New Books' rack, and it's not anywhere I can find in the library and supposedly it is in! This week is Banned Book Week, so I throw up a quick bulletin board about banned books on the board by our workroom door. We get in our borrowed copies of Bien dit! and more Foundations of Algebra Year 2 Vol. 1 and I process those in and let the teachers know. Then we get in the new set of Physical Science with Earth Science books. At last! Mr. W ordered 90 books to cover the rest of the freshmen class. I know of one class that didn't get any, so I emailed them first to come and pick them up after I processed them. I spent the rest of the day working on them, found 3 copies that need to go back and am holding off printing more labels until I've finished breaking in the rest of the books. We also got in our tech books that we are getting from South since they were just going to surplus them and our Follett rep came by and wants to buy 50 of our Cest A Toi Level One books. So we left a note for Mrs. H since she was in a meeting.

Access Prohibited

We are on Advisory Schedule today so right into the computer lab and turn on all the computers. My scheduled sophomore class will be here right away and none of the computers are on! I spend the advisory with Ms. K's class getting them into the CIS website, updating their personal information and working on the Skills Assessment they are doing for today. The computers are slow, but at least they are working today. I got an email from Mrs. S this morning if we could send down 37 World History books down to her room, so I load them on a cart, check them out to her and get one of our aides to take them down in the elevator to her class. She needed them by the end of 2nd period. A student asked how many books he had out so I looked that up for him. Got in ten Foundations of Algebra Year 2 Vol. 1 and processed those in and let the math department know they are here. Mrs. H brought over my NaNoWriMo workbooks for this November. I can't wait to hand them out. We only got ten, but that should do us. I reset the new workbook prices for the year, a couple had gone up and took the email from Mr. M on how the Spanish workbooks match with classes that are a bit easier to figure out. Contacted McDougal publishing on the status of the French books we had ordered to see how far we've gotten on the back orders and hopefully they will be in week after next. Processed a Sports Illustrated. I got the billing info for a damaged DVD and when I went to bill the student, I was told "Scheduled Terminal Access Time Expired - Access Prohibited". Hummmm. I sent in a tech request on that one. They called later and had no idea what was going on and will check with someone on Monday as to what that possibly meant. Handed out a lot of Chem Lab Notebooks today and unpacked two more boxes of them to put on the shelf ready to go. We had a student in with these amazing rainbow pants. I had to say something. I asked if he did reading rainbow and he said he hadn't thought about it! Withdrew the rest of the Cest A Toi books and teacher materials. Packed them all up and labeled for surplus and cleaned up the Trac-it base once they were all gone. Mr. H asked me to send him the check-out record for our retired Mr. M so I printed it up and put it in his box. Wrote up a workbook request for another Mr. M. Talked with one of the librarians at another school about how we label our magazines. One of our teachers wants to have five of the books that another school is getting rid of so I sent the request and they will send them here instead of to surplus. I love it when we can share! I asked some questions to Ms. M about Trac-it since she was one of the people Mr. A used and got feedback from when he created the program. I asked about deletions and could I also just delete books as well as withdraw them. I also asked about the 'Repair and Compact Data' tool. I had never used it and was kind of afraid to do it, but she said that she did it about every four months so I clicked and it says it worked! I finished up the day reorganizing teacher materials. We had a lot of space on the east side of the rack and the west side is jammed and overflowing to our magazine rack so I started moving materials and using the space more efficiently! Happy Friday! Off to take a nice walk in the afternoon sun!

I Had a Good Title for This One

Got in today and we got in new books! Introduction to Health Science Technology, so I processed those and made sure the teacher knew that they were in. We had two aides during that period and I showed them how to break in the spines and stamp the books, they loved working on them. Cleaned up emails today, filed some, deleted old ones. Sent off 15 Mathematics with Business Applications to McNary. Boxed up almost all of the Cest A' Toi level one books today (there was a lot!). Our surplus pile in the back is growing. Checked out a student who is moving out of state. Asked South if they still needed Geometry books, since we just finished checking them out and we did have extras, but they are fine. We had some extra help today so we set her to work on reading shelves. I knew where our last help had ended, so she took over from there and let me know where she had finished. Handed out workbooks to students that had purchased them, checked in and out textbooks, put money in print accounts, looked up login numbers for students. Sent a request for a quote on a damaged DVD for the sign language class. I close up the library again since Mrs. H was sick today. Nite, nite Library!

Auto-Motivation

Today I got busy with packing up all the two full book cars of auto shop books that Mr. L had asked us to withdraw. Mrs. H is going to ask if anyone would like them before we surplus them out. They are withdrawn and ready to go, either to another school or off to surplus. I also worked on the C'est A Toi books that have been replaced. I cleared all the level two and three books today, withdrawing and packing up. I worked on the damaged Biology books, cataloguing them and charging the students as well as an Economics book. Processed in some Snow Falling on Cedars that were donated by a teacher, 2 hardback books and two teacher resources. Ms. M had asked another school for Ordinary People and they sent us an entire class set, so Ms. L-D is very happy she won't have to purchase any. I got those all in the system for her class to check out tomorrow. Helped a lot of students with their computer log-in numbers today, and put money into print accounts. Checked in and out texts as well as handing out workbooks. We each need to talk to our supervisor about our personal goals and school climate goals for the year, so I sent an email to Mr. W to set up an appointment with him. Mrs. B asked when workbooks would be coming in and I sent an email saying that no workbooks had been ordered and attached an order sheet. Closed up the library tonight since Mrs. H had a meeting to go to, shutting down lights, letting the students know we'd be closing up early. Found a binder from a student and he came in to study, so I brought it over to him, he was relieved we had it. Then off to my PowerPoint class at West.

Main Frame

Today we packed up boxes to send back. We had received a box of books from a publisher and Mrs. H decided not to even look at them and send them back, with books to return to other schools we sent back 9 boxes. We also packed up some Accounting workbooks to send back since they weren't the right set, along with some other accounting workbooks as well. That department is going to do all their workbooks online now and save the paper. Processed ten new issues of magazines and got them out on the display rack. I sent an email to North HS about a Teacher's Edition of Developing Child. I apologized and blamed getting asked if I'd like a senior discount last weekend, but I couldn't remember why we were getting it and she called to ask me to send it back! We weren't supposed to get it! We are running out of Spanish workbooks and Mrs. H, the head of the international languages department and I talked about what was going on with those. I took my list of students to bill from damaged textbooks and discussed with our bookkeeper how to do this. She asked if we could just take care of these and log them into the Main Frame. She just didn't have time. So I spent the rest of the afternoon on the Main Frame billing the students $5 each for time and materials to work on them. Mrs. H put my blog and hers on the library web page (yeah!), and of course, checked in and out books individually throughout the day and handed out workbooks that students had purchased.

Documentation

A student came to me this morning and said that there was a girl in the bathroom laying down on the floor who wouldn't respond. I immediately called the office to report and headed to the bathroom. Ms. H was in the bathroom with the girl and said she was breathing. Security came and called the paramedics and they made the decision to transport her. A great working together of the whole body of the school. I hope the student is doing all right. I worked on the excel spreadsheet I started for charging the students who came back with damaged texts. I went through the Trac-It system and also added in all the comments for each text. I handed out workbooks students bought. I asked for more Physical Science with Earth Science texts. I sent an email to a department head about a text, revisited the pricing for that text. Asked Ms. M to borrow Ordinary People from other schools. sent Mrs. H the PDF file for the NaNoWriMo workbooks. I processed some teacher magazines and talked with Ms. M about that she has magazines from a family member that could be used in our detention room. I showed a student how to log into our search computers and use them. He wanted The Bourne Identity.

Magazines Done!

Glad to have all the magazines from the summer all done, catalogued and on the shelf with the older new ones on the check out rack. All magazines off to teachers and all that stuff put away. Put money in print accounts and picked up all the extra change this afternoon before we left. Notified our math department that we have begun to run out of certain texts. I had to turn away a couple of students late today, our freshman class is larger than when the texts were purchased, and with lost or missing books, it makes the problem worse. Helped a student look for a book on the art from the Berlin Wall. We didn't have anything and she said she'd look at Salem Public Library (an excellent resource). I updated our card catalogue of teacher purchased magazines so we can keep a tab on what and when we get something in. Checked out a few second texts to students. They have to fill out a form and have a parent sign that they are responsible for 2 copies of the same title. We have a few students that due to certain conditions keep one copy in the class and one at home. Checked out textbooks to a few more classes, checked in and out regular library books. Another great week in the library!

Doubling

Thursday, September 17th:Came in this morning to a request for a class room set of American Government books, and got them on a cart, checked out to a teacher to discover that Ms. M had already taken care of all of them! So, I checked them back in. Good move on her part to be sure that they would be ready for 2nd period, but a bit crossing of wires on that one. I'm sure we'll get better as we work together more! I finished up withdrawing all the Century 21 Accounting books and have them all boxed, labeled and ready to send out. We also talked with the other school and they are buying 10 of our workbooks as well, so their bookkeeper and ours are transferring monies to appropriate places. Did more magazines today, more texts in and out, workbooks picked up. The day just flew by.

People & People

Spent today again dealing with many individual student requests. Checking in books, checking out books, picking up workbooks, a pretty constant flow all day. Checked out more class sets of books, but on a much smaller scale. Worked on more magazines and got all the teacher copies put out for them, and it seemed like I worked all day on People magazines cataloguing all the copies since June. I also worked with South HS with our old accounting textbooks. We received a grant and got new copies, so our accounting teacher told us to go ahead and surplus out the old edition. When I got a request for 10 - 20 of the old edition copies for South, I let them know that we had 65 we were getting rid of, and would they like them all! We got a very nice, Yes! A good chance to share resources with other schools. I withdrew the first lot this afternoon, boxed them up and sent them out. Got a request today for Beowulf to be checked out tomorrow and Geometry Connections. I'll be able to get other work done! We also got in our Demco order and can begin repairing books! Ms. M took a whole cart of Prentice Hall Gold and will start on them, a good thing! We have plenty of repairing to work through all winter!

212

That's about how many class sets of books we've checked out in the last 5 days and over 6,000 texts have gone out to students. I finished up cataloguing the Physical Science with Earth Science texts and moved on to getting up the magazines that accumulated over the summer. I've gone from Asimov's up through PC World. Had a lot of individual student requests today. Dropping off texts from classes that they dropped to checking out texts for classes they picked up, or didn't have their ID with them when their class came up. I love that Ms. M had her students write up reviews on books and she was placing them around the library this afternoon like what they do at Powell's. Very nice!

Cataloguing Damage

Today we checked out books again all day long. We were running out of Physical Science with Earth Science and I started cataloguing all the damaged books so we could check them out. We still have a class to go and only about 20 books left. Mrs. H helped me today to finish up tagging all the books so the last class could check them out today. I thought an hour would be fine, but ended up checking out so many classes that I needed the extra hand. We had some great aides in today that helped putting class sets together and I think we have mostly Biology books to go, with just a scattering of other books. We made it through the Prentice Hall Gold literature books, which really surprises me since we had such a huge freshman class. Had a few teachers come and pitch in when I didn't have the time to pull books, they are amazing people! Got in a lot of individual students today as well, dropped a class, picked up another so I checked in the dropped books and checked out the new class books. Put money into print accounts. Helped students get logged into their computers. Nearly back to a normal work day. I also got approved to take vacation time and just time off to visit my granddaughter over Thanksgiving! Thank you!

Scan Boldly!

Friday - September 11th: Another day of massive checkouts. Some of the students are timid about scanning their ID cards so I tell them "Scan Boldly" which was a take-off from Martin Luther's 'Sin boldly' but the students saw it more in a Star Trek "Scan boldly where others have scanned before" idea. Very cute! We also cleaned up the library from texts that are done with check outs and put them on carts in the back. I talked with our bookkeeper on the Physical Science with Earth Science texts that were damaged. I didn't have enough time last year to get those all catalogued before we left for the summer, so that will be my #1 priority on Monday. I looked for more Wir, die Jugend texts for Mr. J and added in Their Eyes Were Watching God books we had sent over for a class here. We also had CIS advisory today and my computer lab was down. Only one girl was able to log in. The techs spent a lot of time after the kids left working on reconnecting the lab properly. I will try and remember to spot check computers before advisory next time, but kids had been in before school and had no problems.

Stacks and Stacks

More and more books today. I had my monitor screen shutting down and had to stop and check the cords to find that the power cord was coming unplugged. When I put the scanner over to the library side, it rubs against the power cord plugged into the back of the screen and over time had started to disconnect it. That was a simple fix! We all worked hard today to get all the kids checked out and ready for classes. We were checking out books right, left and center (Ms. M, me and Mrs. H). I put together 4 classroom sets of books for teachers to take to their class as well as all the classes we've done the last two days. Started to check out regular library books to kids. Had to hand enter students that had just come into school. Tried to only set out books that were in decent shape. I have book piles in the back that I want to work on before I check them out. With all the repairs I did last winter and what got repaired over the summer, things are definitely better than what they were last year. I'm working to pull the repaired books for check out and keep the ragamuffin books for their Extreme Book Makeovers!

56 Sets

We shifted over 56 classroom sets of books today. We ran all day long. We got a few things done today on the side, but mostly it was all books, all day. We had a few teachers ask to come in off the list and we took care of them as well. We set up for more classes tomorrow, but not with the thoroughness we had today. So we'll really have to be on our toes tomorrow! Our American Experience books I tried to only pull the ones in fair shape or that had already been repaired. We have lots that really need a lot of care. I also put together a display box of our 'Textbook Hall of Shame' for the students to see as they came in to the library. We had tables stacked with books all over the library, carts by me to roll over for the classes that came to the textbook window. After work I had signed up for the PowerPoint class over at West Salem HS to learn how the program works so I can help the students in the computer lab this year. I'll be doing that on Wednesdays for September.

New Oly Day

Spent most of the day getting the textbooks ready for checking out tomorrow. Ms. M did a great job getting carts loaded and out on tables. I added more teachers to the list, most were going for Friday's and Monday's times so I had plenty of room for them there. We also had to complete the district's mandatory training for the year. We had to take the test at the end and I scored 100%. I also put up the new September calendar, mostly recycling the calendar from last year so it will be all ready when we open the window tomorrow. I also discovered that when some workmen were in last week they did not reconnect the power and cables to our Channel One equipment. I figured out the connections and we had Channel One and the local TV all up this afternoon. We only had freshmen today, and we went out to the freshman BBQ and mingled a bit with the kids in the Commons. I also requested getting some vacation time during Thanksgiving week to travel to Italy to see my new granddaughter. We won't have students that week at all, just conferences, and I only have 2 work days. So, I hope that it will all be approved. The big check out push begins tomorrow!

Making the List....

I finally got the final textbook pick up list all done and ready for us to load carts up on Tuesday. Checked in teachers, checked out teachers. Looked up prices and numbers of books we need to meet the demand for the incoming freshmen. Found another teacher text for Environmental Science so we don't have to purchase one. Got prices for additional teacher texts. Worked with Ms. B on her french books to see if she could get on-line access for her students. Talked with a lot of people on all sorts of subjects. Got some extra Their Eyes Were Watching God books to get sent over, and sent to them a class set of Frankenstein. Got labels printed up for the french texts and our new assistant Ms. M got all those books for processed today. Labor Day weekend approaches! See you on Tuesday!

Job Alike Meeting

A myriad of meetings! We had our all library staff meeting this morning over at South High School and covered a lot of information. When I got back to Sprague, I worked on our textbook checkout list. We have so many classes that need their textbooks right away, that we put together a list so we'll have those texts out in the library on carts and ready to go. The students come in, pick up a book, scan their ID and book barcode and off they go. It works very quickly. I had a lot of emails to go through and got them all done by the end of the day there. Talked with Ms. B about the french books, Mr. A about science books, Mrs. S on economics books, answered other emails, and I got a new chair! So Mr. B helped my put it together and it is wonderful!

Staff Meeting

Today was our opening day staff meeting and we met in library. A good meeting, (I announced I'm a Grandma!) and our new principal did a great job of bringing us all together to envision a fulfilling future. Afterwards I got all the new Century 21 Accounting Mulitcolumn Journal books processed and had to do a little rearranging to get them on the shelves in our business section. I also talked with Mr. P about 3 cases of workbooks we received because they didn't seem right, and he said, no! they weren't the right ones! So I'm glad I caught that. Let Mrs. B know her Introduction to Culinary Arts books were in and ready, and Ms. H that her ASL teacher texts were in and ready so I checked them out to her. Also Mr. L that the Automotive Excellence texts were here and he asked about Volume 2! I told him I hadn't seen them yet. Didn't know about those! Now that I know, I'll need to make some space for them before I slide the science books over. Met our new band director in our discussion group and told him to be sure and let Mrs. H know if he'd like his kids to perform in the library from time to time.

I'm a Grandma!

August 31st: Got the call early this morning (1:43am!) that I'm a Grandma for the first time! So, that made a great day at work to tell everyone that Ferynne is born! I did access our family blog because my son called and said that pictures were posted. Ferynne is now my desktop! I processed in all the teacher materials that have come in and some of the texts as well. Checked out materials to a couple of teachers, called in to the publishers of Bien dit! that we were missing some materials and they gave a rundown of all the items that are currently on back order. Our French teacher was very happy they are still coming. Still lots of texts to go!