Realidades

Huzzah! Our Realidades came rolling in today and I got 175 all broken in, processed and ready for checking out! I started working on my October calendar when the boxes came rolling in. I managed to get some of it up, but still have more to go! But books come first! I had to help check out diversity books this afternoon after Mrs. M left for the day up at her desk for about 45 minutes. Then we had a great book on a bully come in yesterday, so I checked our union link on the library info page, and since one was already logged in, I could just call in and get a barcode number for it so it can go on my shelf tomorrow! I got the barcode and spine printed up, so just need to laminate the cover! Yeah! Had two of our Spanish teachers come in before I left looking at the new book so I got a bit hung up talking with them. They will bring classes in on Monday to check out the new texts. Then I turn around, and the German 1 books came in! A wealth of books is always good!

Finishing Up

Finished up all the Deutsche Aktuell we had in today and loaded them on the shelves. Worked on a book order for Ms. M. Worked on the calendar for October. Did the usual checking in/out, $ in print accounts.

Grinding

Mrs. H had left an old hole punch on my desk, so fiddled with it to see if I could get it to work and within a few minutes, decided to take it down to Mr. L and the shop kids to give them a crack at it! Mr. S came and wanted a class set of Sentence Combining, so we got those checked out to him and off he went! Then in between the usual student helps, I processed in all the german teacher resources and remembered we had some preview stuff in the back so I got those all processed in as well. Processed in the year 2 student texts and the year 1 workbooks.

Aktuell

Heard from South HS that they didn't want the Dime books, so I packed them up for surplus. I also took their isbn #'s and three other texts and e-mail Follett to see if they would like to buy any. Did the usual check in/out, $ into print accounts. Got in a box of resources I had no idea whose they were, so I e-mailed the office manager, found out who ordered them and they were almost immediately picked up! Did a repair on a biology dictionary. Then we got boxes, lots of boxes! I was so excited! Hoping they were our desparately need Realidades I checked the labels, nope! They were our new German books - Deutsch Aktuell. I sorted them out. Texts, workbooks, teacher resources and checked them off. Let the World Languages IL know they were here. She came and looked through them and I will catalogue and barcode the teacher resources when I come in the morning. I worked on breaking in the new DA level 2 books after Mrs. M and Mrs. H had left for the day up at the main desk. Sent in a life ring request to see if I can get Trac-it transferred with my login when I have to trade desks. Heard from Follett that none of the books are anything they need at the moment - oh well!

Disgruntled

Had a phone call from a disgruntled mom calling about why we didn't have any Geometry books there. She offered to go out and buy a book so I gave her Bookbyte and told her they had some available and she told me that we should be over there buying them, not her. I could feel her frustration. However, I did use that to contact the loaner school again and get things going. They responded immediately and by 1:30pm we had the books in and were checking them out. It's often too bad that it takes a complaint to get things to happen. Made up the outside bulletin board for banned book week. I had some stuff from last year so I used that and added to it. I think it turned out good! We had our first advisory today and I worked with the sophomores checking personal information and getting classes entered. Checked in and out individual books. Put money on print accounts. Got a box of Algebra books sent back to South since they had run out. Checked on the PO for our back-ordered Realidades books. Mrs. H was hoping we might be able to get at least the on-line access codes for them. Sent an e-mail to central stores to return some of the books we had purchased that had defects.

Fractured

Mrs. M came back today and was really hurting. She had fallen Sunday night and fractured three ribs, and she was back at work! We still had boxes of reference books that needed to be put back on the shelves and I took those over and had our aides help me unpack the boxes, break them down and load the books on carts. Since we were going backwards, starting from the end, it was a bit different to read the shelves! But we got them all out, all done and that part of the library all cleaned up and functional - I know Mrs. M would have slipped out and tried to do that herself but Mrs. H and I already decided we wouldn't let her! Got in the extra IPS books and processed them in as well as some High Point resources for another teacher. Processed those in and had an aide take them to her. Processed four magazines for us and one for a teacher, checked out Street Law to a class. When Mrs. M went home, I worked up at her desk until school was over. Processed in some new Journal of Finn Reardon's that were given to us and did a quick check on the CIS lab I need to run tomorrow.

Bildungsforum

Discovered this new word today! It's a book genre! Check out the definition and how to pronounce it here: http://www.answers.com/topic/bildungsroman. We were lucky that Mr. J, our german teacher, was in the library and he told us how to pronounce it! I did a new book review since I hadn't done one yet this year and worked on my book talk list since Mrs. H said Mr. C was asking if I'd come and do one for his sci-fi/fantasy class. Pulled The Martian Chronicles and Ender's Game for that class as well. We had an unexpected fire drill and that took some time since the school had to track down what had happened. Shipped out the rest of Working with Young Children to South and asked them about some Dime books a teacher had brought in. Withdrew the Reading and Writing Sourcebook and sent those over to Mrs. D. Had a teacher request a resource on Kandinsky, and we thought it was a book, and I couldn't find it. Then I realized it was a print and found it in our poster collection and took it to her. Learned that we needed to e-mail our freight to Mr. C to get picked up. We had been able to leave out a box or two to get picked up, but this year they said no, we need to e-mail every box for a pick-up. Checked on getting a teacher edition, put money into print accounts and did more individual checking in and out.

The Knack

I went through our texts and found books that no one had checked out in a few years and today one of the teachers requested one of them! Getting the Knack they decided to keep and use so that was nice to see it go out today. Processed in the rest of the AVID resources and put them in Mrs. H's office. Also processed in bits and pieces of things teachers have brought in over the last few weeks and I had piled up! There was also a big pile on a cart and in two boxes of books that I went through and found some books that needed to be checked in and some teacher resources that hadn't been processed, so I did that. Boxed up all the old stuff that we won't be using to get ready for our next surplus book pick up. Processed in five new issues of magazines. Processed in the new French encyclopedia's and took them down to Mrs. B's room. Checked out a class set of Chemistry books and got ready another set - but Mr. S came in after school to say that they didn't need to come, the kids already had their books! He felt bad about it. Got in 40 extra copies of Algebra Connections V1 from other schools, got them processed in and sent out an e-mail to the math department they were here so the students that didn't get one can have one now!

Western Garden

Got all the magazines from the summer all catalogued today and out on the racks - glad that project is over! In between doing that, I checked out two classes of Biology, had an aide come in and pick up 25 Western Garden to check out to Mrs. S. Mr. C came in and took a class set of US Government and Democracy in Action. Withdrew some old Working with Young Children and packed them up to send to South HS. Fielded a book request since Mrs. M wasn't in today for Where the Red Fern Grows. Judson is sending us a copy. Checked out a student who is withdrawing, checked in and out individual books, put money into print accounts and helped a couple of students get onto computers. Ms. F wanted to check out some more AVID materials and I hadn't barcoded them yet, so I got them ready, checked them out to her and took them to her to make sure she didn't need anything else for their meeting tonight. I finished up the day getting the rest of the AVID stuff all stamped and barcoded. Will just need to finish that up in the morning - another project almost done!

Slogging Through Magazines

Today was all day cataloging in the magazines. 13 different issues of Sports Illustrated alone! I got most of them done, just have Time, Newsweek and The New Yorker to go, but the other 21 magazines with multiple issues (thank goodness some are monthlies with only 2 or 3 issues!) are all done and out for the kids to see and check out! Still checked out books today, and helped individual students. I looked back through my check out records and I have logged in requests for 235 classes, and that doesn't count the teachers that just came in or e-mailed with 'can I bring in my class in 5 minutes to get XXX?' So, probably more like 250 or so! An impressive number!

Mandatory

Finally today I got time to do my mandatory 'training' on the district web site and fill out all my paperwork for the year, and turned all that in! Lots of individual students, a few classes came in. E-mails sent for books and we'll be getting some math from another school! Yeah for sharing! Got all the magazines out to teachers today and started barcoding the pile of magazines in the back. A teacher had some old texts and wanted to know if he should just throw them away, I said 'No!' and had him bring them to me for processing out and to box up for surplus. Barcoded some new AVID resources and a found teacher edition of our 10th grade lit book. My repair on a lit book yesterday worked fabulous and the girl came in and was very happy (since I didn't have any copies to replace it). Heard a student and a teacher talking about his love of writing and asked if he knew about Nanowrimo, and he hadn't, so I showed it to him and the teacher asked for me to send the link, so I did. A very good day!

Helping a Student

As I worked through my stack we had a book that had been donated to 'a student that needed some help.' So I printed up the report and took it into the bookkeeper and she indentified a student that could use help on their bill due to financial circumstances, so we took that off her bill and I processed in that book. More classes in, lots more individual students. We had the first two rows in the computer lab suddenly all turn off. So I hopped over to the computer techs and Mr. R was right there and had access to the room with the breaker boxes and flipped the breaker back on. We are short books and the math department was looking for extra books, so I sent out a few e-mails. One school did a 'permanent' loan on Geometry books, so I asked if we could get some back. Another school offered to loan us books until we got in new books. Looked for prices for Mr. S for a grammar book and worked a bit more on getting things back in some kind of order in the back room. Blew the video announcements this morning, Mr. C came dashing in and we had to find the remote for the player and played the Monday and the Friday for a few seconds until we got the Wednesday one loaded! Argh, I hate to blow that!

Lost Tuesday

I was so busy last night, I didn't post! Another day of checking out a lot of individual students. We had classes in the blue computer lab by me and I helped quite a few students in there. Got some more books condensed down onto less carts and had our aides start putting them away. Had a tech call to see how the Main Frame and I got along yesterday and I said 'great' and I logged in while I had her on the phone, and Huzzah! I was in two days in a row! Started working on my back shelf of 'things that need to get done when I get time' since I also needed the Main Frame for that and got about half way done with that. Replaced books, a book was lost and they went out and bought a new one, so I had to take care of the old book, rebarcode the new one and check to make sure it was off their bill. I did check out some classes, got to help a student pick out a book since Mrs. M had gone home for the day and Mrs. H wasn't in. I loved it!

Steady

Today was just a steady all day checking out. Not quite the fast and furious of last Wednesday and Thursday, but still a grind all day. We ended the day clearing off all the tables from books and getting all the extras on carts to start putting away. Did a lot of individual check outs as well, AP English came in pretty steady all day. Tried to do our mandatory training and couldn't find it, so I'll recheck the e-mails about it tomorrow to get that done. Did good in running the video announcements and Channel One. Took the rest of the book covers up to the main desk to get to kids that want them. I had saved them for the new books, though some of the books were too big for these covers. Checked out a set of books to the LRC class by name and have them for the teacher to pick up tomorrow. Yeah! Mr. C in technology got me onto the Main Frame so I cleaned up all the kids who brought books in and let Mrs. S know what I'd done.

Breathe

At least we got a few moments to breathe today! I even got up the numbers for the calender on the bulletin board for this month, finally! Though nothing else has been done, unburied a few books in piles. Talked to tech services about again not being able to get into the Main Frame. Did about 1200 checkouts today and got ready for Monday morning. Had some student help today and that was very nice. As the class sets slowed up a bit, we started to get in all the individual requests. One boy dropped a class, brought back his book, then decided to go ahead and take it, so back to get the one book checked back out to him! Others were students that didn't have their card with them on a certain day and we have to hand pick their books for them. Other kids drop a class and get another book for the next one. A few kids are bringing back books from last year and they have to get checked in and off to the main frame to take those books off their bill (except for me since I can't get on, hopefully it'll be fixed by Monday!). It just takes a lot more time, but the kids are great and we get them taken care of!

21 Hundred

That's how many books we checked out today. I knew I'd need to finish processing in the new American Government books, so I did that and had enough ready just in time. Talked to some of the tech people about how we use the Trac-it program. Rumor is that they may create a new program for us. Pulled more books, got ready for tomorrow.

Checked Out

Just checked out books all day and brought out more books for tomorrow. Answered some e-mails and scheduled in some more teachers that hadn't checked in with me yet. Had a new aide and he did a great job getting some books loaded on carts for me - I hope he stays with us! Got all the books ready for the first two periods tomorrow. Talked with Mr. C and the video crew about the video announcements that start tomorrow and I'll be in charge of showing.

50 Classes

That's how I spent the day, pulling books for classes. I had 55 e-mails when I got into work today and finished up the list for book pick ups and started to pull the books for tomorrow. I plan on each class taking about 30 books, and there were a few that were double that so I pulled at least 1500 books today and put them on tables or carts for pick-up tomorrow. Today was freshman only, so a bit of a reprieve before the big rush to get students supplied with the texts they need. I think I may be a bit sore tonight! (I actually took the calendar pic on the 21st, it's kind of lame, but serves the purpose! The bookends up at the top hold string with the orange dots and some sparkly pompoms on them so they waft in the breeze!)

Heading South

Since the South HS people were out of their building early for the remodeling and bond projects over the summer, we returned the hours and favor by spending the day helping them unpack. Mrs. M did a lot of processing of new books and I spent the day unpacking all the textbooks they needed out of their boxes for checking out next week and arranging them on carts and tables. Whew! That was a lot of boxes!

Job A-Like

Today was our opening Library Media meeting. So this morning we spent up at that learning about the changes they've made over the summer. Went back to Sprague and barcoded the new leadership texts, scheduled appointments for textbook pick-ups, answered e-mails. Worked with Mrs. H on the floor plan of the library - do we want to get rid of more tables? Or not? Helped out Mr. J to print some stuff. Talked to various peoples on what we have for textbooks, teacher materials and novels for classes.