Withdrawn

Today I went through the two sets of books we were considering for withdrawing. I looked through a whole cart and a half of books that my volunteer had pulled. I probably ended up withdrawing about half the stuff she pulled, so that made me happy. Had a lot of interest in my 'post your favorite Dr. Seuss book' so I hope the teachers all enjoy it on Monday. I posted my fave, The Sleep Book so we'll see how many get posted out of class. A lot of teachers too are planning on reading Seuss on Monday morning! Very nice. My supervisor came over today and took some of our everybody books I was withdrawing. I had one nice moment. A class was taking a test and when they got done, they were just roaming the library, so I took a bunch of our fables (398.2's) and put them out on a table in the computer lab and they just went crazy over them. It was nice. Cupboards were bare, so my hubby brought me a Subway sandwich for lunch. That was very nice!

Vandalized

Really sad today. Someone carved into one of our brand new keyboards FUCK U. All I can think of is, that is one angry kid. And on a brand new piece of equipment. That makes me so sad. :(  Had our lovely tech Mr. E in today and so nice to have someone there who knows what is going on and what to do. Made my day to see him here, and to see him working with teachers and students on the new computers. Showing them how to get around and do stuff. Really very nice. Makes me long for the days when we had techs assigned to our building and they could waltz in, wave their magic and ta-da! All was right with our technology. Had my volunteers work on the Language Arts Inventory. As well as weeding out the old stuff in the 300's. Had teachers in the computer lab all day and all morning we were closed for the 8th grade transition meetings, getting them ready for heading on into 9th grade next year at South HS. I had my aides in the back mark out the Leslie mark of the books I'll withdraw. Kept them busy. Worked more on my Dr. Seuss stuffs for Monday. Sent out all school email for everyone to put their favorite Seuss book by their door. My 3rd period aide finished off her Lorax and did an amazing job! I am so impressed by her! We think we will add the Cat in the Hat fish down on the other side of the board then I will post a pic of it. 

The Doctor is In!

Yes he is! Read Across America day is coming so I worked on a new bulletin board for that today. My one aide started doing an amazing Lorax that we'll get into the board too! Can't wait for her to finish! I must admit, that I am more of the 'copy, paste, color print, cut it out' type of person with artwork that amazing! Though I think I made a really good Seuss-type tree. Had guys come in tonight to rig up the other computer labs and borrowed a lot of my carts for that. Checked in and out more books today. Had our OBOB kids meet in the library during their lunch. Had a few decide to quit today. My one strong team is going for it all the way though! Took a look at what I need to have my volunteers do tomorrow. Pulled up garden books to focus on the garden they have outside the windows. Might pull all the Newbery books onto the rack and put the garden books up on the non-fiction shelf up at the front of the library. Busy day tomorrow!

Pallets, Phone and a Plethora of Students

Crazy day! At one moment we had a whole class in the computer lab, another class exchanging science books. Garten had called to deliver pallets and I had to get the custodian to open the locked area, a student needed help with the copier! Yikes! I can only do one thing at a time! Had three classes come in and exchange science books today. Got my pallets. Helped a teacher get a student changed over. Learned about a new attendance system and registered for that. Got a quote from Escape Fiction on some stuff I need. Boxed up the History Alive books that go to Crossler. Worked on fixing up a couple of graphic novels. Laminated stuffs for teachers. Got my everybody books sorted, which ones I will just withdraw and which will go to LMSS for the elementary's to see if they want. Had our DLC kids come into the library just to look at books. And wonder of wonders, I actually caught a glimpse of Mount Jefferson out the library windows today! I knew it was out there somewhere, but thought it was behind trees. Today it was duskyish out and as I was pushing in chairs for the day, I noticed that this white line stretched up, maybe a cloud formation? But then no, I moved to another window, and another, and it was the mountain! Exciting!! Now if they would just chop down a few trees over there.... Met some of our other middle school library media assistants over at the Ram for our sort of monthly PLC. Again, a great time and a great sharing of information!

Looking at Books

Worked today on cleaning up emails. Didn't really feel good, so good to sit in a chair and plod through making new folders, deleting, wondering "did I take care of that one?". Checked out four classes of science books today. Had my aides work on old math books, separating them into what was good, what was bad. Had my boys put away science books and put them in order on the shelf. Started to look at the inventory we need to do with our textbooks and pulling up the subject to see how much was on it. I got out the 6th grade Junior Great Books and checked them against the copies 'available' and I was missing two from the 1st semester. None from the 2nd semester, but for some reason the 2nd didn't come up on my Language Arts search. I will have to let Mr. C know about that. Talked to Garten about our surplus books. They will leave me three pallets and I will have to load them. Hopefully the weather will be good and they will come to pick them up when I call. We have no place inside to put them and nowhere outside with any covering, so all should work. I'll just have to pick a day when it will be nice to do it after we get approval. Got science books ready for pick up tomorrow's check outs. 

New Books

Today I got in my Scholastic order and my new books! Super awesome! I let my aides unpack them and check them off the list. Added in my Books are Fun books and typed up the list to send to LMSS for processing. Too much fun! Stamped them all as well. Got all our books shelved today, the aides were really good about making sure things got shelved. It was pretty quiet today, ready for the weekend!

All Day Volunteer

Today I had my all day volunteer come in and help out. She did amazing and worked hard all day! First I had her pull Ireland books since President's Day is over and Saint Patrick's is around the corner. She got a bunch pulled and displayed. And we all know I love Ireland!  Then she took my over full cart of books that needed to be stripped and got the whole cart done. She really rocked it. I took all the books I repaired the other day and checked to see how they did and probably about 3/4's of them were ready to go back out on the floor. I've tried just checking them in, but they really need to have their status changed to be 'in' so I did that. I had two graphic novels that were missing pages, so I emailed over to Sprague since they had copies and asked them to make copies of the pages and send them to me and I'd tip them in. Maximum Ride #5 the manga she said didn't have anything, but will send me the pages for Ghostopolis. I tipped in a blank page and noted on it that someone had torn out the page, nothing was really on there, and how sad that someone had done that. Had a lot of kids with long missing books and quite a few said they were in their lockers, so I sent them back to go and get them before I gave them a new book. Did some laminating. Had a student bring in a beautiful new copy of The Lightning Thief graphic novel he had missing, so I laminated the cover. He did a great replacement job! Got in four books from Books Are Fun. They bring in items every month or so and give the library coupons for books based on what our staff buys, what a deal! Got four new books for the library! I think I've worked out how to redo the math books with the new sets we got in and still keeping most of the old. Learned today that Garten would like us to only use one size of box to ship out our books. Great, I have like 40 shades of boxes! So, I will give them an option - 54 boxes of books or 12. Their choice. 

Smoke

A fairly normal day today. Mrs. C had her students in the lab and came to tell me two of the computers weren't working, so I messed about with one of them and got it to start booting up, then over to the other and got the screen to come up. Just a minute or two later a student came running over saying the power supply was smoking! I ran over and quickly unplugged it. I didn't see any smoke, but there was a horrid smell going on and the power box was very hot. I took it into my office to keep an eye on it for a bit to make sure it wouldn't burst into flame. That was a crazy start to the day! Had classes in checking out books. Found a couple of lost books today. Changed the call number on some of our oversized books so they could go on the Everybody shelves. They fit there! Had a girl come in and tell me she had turned in her Child Called 'It' book and so I went over to see if it was there, found one. No, wasn't her copy, looked over to the 921 A section and there was a copy of it there (should be under Pelzer) and then went over to the fiction section and there was a copy over there, at least it was in the 'P' section, but in the Pi's, not even in the Pe's. I really rounded on my kids for that. How embarrassed I was that someone I was trying to help, thought we looked crazy because I couldn't even get her book in the right place and I was telling her she was wrong?? So, I think 6th period got the message. I'll tell the others tomorrow. Got in one book of my Scholastic order. How weird was that? And sent off a box of Junior Library Guild books to LMSS for processing. Got all our Dr. Seuss books ready for Read Across America day, Mrs. V is going to check them out next Friday for her classes. Ordered some boxing tape with the help of our lovely Ms. Z. 

Repairs

The library was closed for the day because of NAEP testing. So I had all my aides back rooms trying to work on a few projects back there. I however when not trying to get my aides to properly work, I pulled out all my repair books and set to work putting them back together. Most of them needed spine work, a few tears, a few needed knitting needle repairs. I hope they come out fine when I come back in tomorrow. Did some laminating then attended a Language Arts meeting talking about our lit sets of novels. Gave away some old High Point novels as well. Better to be used than stuck in a box in the back. Get those novels out there!!

Everybody Wins

Went through our old High Point book bins today with our Instructional Coach and took all the books out and sent off the list to our teachers. We will be meeting Tuesday after school to talk about what to do with all those lit sets we have. Had a sub start to weed our biographies. Pulled out books in wrong places in the aide sections again today. Done with our Blind Dates with books and filled that rack with our Newbery books. Only had four blind dates that were left hanging. Had a fire drill this afternoon and I had a group of the science kids in, so they all had to sign their names to my tally sheet with the teacher name and we probably took the longest time to get our tally count in. Went through our 5 packed shelves of Everybody books and weeded them out. Went from five overpacked hard to move books to three and a half nice but wiggle roomish shelves and I could display some of them on the top shelf as well. Got one piece of candy for Valentine's Day from an aide and one card from a student. Dumped the trash tonight. Shut down all computers. Closed up the windows. The library will be shut down on Tuesday for NAEP testing, so the aides will have to keep busy in the back rooms. Thank goodness we have three rooms back there! Three days off!

Broken Glass

That's what I walked into today in the library. There was a meeting going on, and I came in the workroom side, and when I got all my stuff put away, came out to get the computers up for the day and behind the main checkout desk was glass everywhere. It looked like some kind of drinking glass and some of the shards you could definitely see Pinocchio on. I went and let our principal know and he said to find our school security guard. I took some pictures on my phone and went down to the cafeteria. Heard that it had happened last night and our assistant principal had called the evening custodian to come and clean it up, but I sure would like to hear what happened. My first thought was one of the windows had shattered, but no. That cup would have had to hit something really hard to shatter the way it did. Won't be taking any shoes off today! Worked my aides shelves today, flipping out the books that were improperly shelved. Contacted two schools that I had some of their old stuff we are sending to surplus with the barcodes. One school said she would delete them and for us to go ahead and put them in with our surplus. Did some checking in and out and that was fun. Usually I have so many aides and they really love to check out, so I let them. Sent out our lit book list to the Language Arts teachers today and they started to have some great conversations about what to do with all those books. Ran some Least Used reports to begin weeding on our district plan for weeding out old books. Some of them have never been checked out, so we start with those first. Why? How long have we had them (if it's a new book, of course it might not have enough data...), how many copies do we have, is it still relevant or have some significance. It's quite the process. So I gave the lists for 100's and 300's to my lovely volunteer and she started working on it. Deleted out some of the surplus books off the records. Had some more of our Newbery's get checked out today! Last day for Blind Dates with Books tomorrow!

Pikas!

I love pikas! They are adorable! The first one in the wild I ever saw was in the Grand Teton National Park. I've seen a few since then, but I love these little haymakers! I used up about every box I had to pack up old textbooks and in a box, on an old cart under all the boxes I had stockpiled were magazines and one of these had the cover picture of a pika and then an article about them! I was so excited! I put the magazines up for grabs (after I took the cover pika picture and article) for teachers and Mrs. P came and took nearly all of them, huzzah! Glad they will get some use. Had an assembly today, so the periods were shorter than usual. Check out three classes of lit books. Did a little speech on the Blind Date books and our Newbery books. Packed up more textbooks so I currently have 54 boxes ready to ship out. Went to the assembly with my aides and one of them was complaining that they were boring and didn't have anything to do with him, and I had nominated him and a couple of other of aides last semester to be recognized for using their own time to help out in the library! He was really excited and we high-fived when he sat back down. After I cleaned up the boxes, I put in their place some of the book holders off the racks I had taken off. I also sent out a request for an old high cart and a broken TV and another small AV type cart to be picked up from cartage and hauling. Got in the new toner for the student printer (and they all said 'amen'). Ordered a new set of books off Scholastic ($700 worth!). Wrapped more books for our Blind Date books. Only two more days of them. Pondered in the textbook room how I was going to work the new math books in with the old. 

Newbery Award Books!

Today I worked with my aides and we rounded up a ton of our Newbery Award books! I made little signs for each year to 2005 and then we put up a bookshelf with other Newbery books at the end and I made a sign with all the winners since 1922 and highlighted all the books we have in our library. We had one from 1923 The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle. It was great. We really had a lot of fun finding them all and putting them out. I cleaned up all the Native American books from Mr. B's unit and thought, hey! Let's highlight our Newbery's since we had this year's winner The Crossover. Stripped books today, redid our Native American section since it was a bit out of whack. It was fun to shelve. Put out some more books about our presidents since it is President's Day on Monday. Caught a student on Facebook today. She tried to exit out, but the computer wouldn't let her. Tsk, tsk. I let her teacher know. Picked some great books from our Fun with Books display up in the staff room. They had four books I'm asking for this time. Have I mentioned I love my job??

Boxing Day

So today I decided since I have so many aides, to unpack the boxes I already did, run the books through the computer to make sure there weren't any that had fines from a student and repack them. I think I repacked about 50 boxes, but I feel better that the books that are in them are clear and 'available'. That was most of my day. I'm tired and probably will need some aspirin in the morning! But most of that is done. I need to pack up about 12 or so more boxes and that will be most of the unused books in the school. I'm very proud of getting that all done! Had a student come in after school and work a very hard hour to take $10 off his account for lost books. Watched the amazing storm out the windows on and off all day. Lots of rain, a slew of wind fluffing the trees all day. Glad I don't have to stop anywhere on the way home!

Last Order

Put in my last book order for the year and hopefully it will drain out my account so no one can say 'hey, you haven't spent it, you don't get to!' which has happened in the past! Came in this morning to our beautiful new redone computer lab! It is gorgeous! Flat screens, new computers, all pretty and ready for the classes that came in today. Huzzah! I spent most of the day on my order, so not much else to report! Got the approval for discard, so I did pack up a few boxes, shelved the last books, rolled up the carpet (not really!) and off for a nice weekend :)

Blind Dates with Books

What a fun day! Decided to do a suggestion that another librarian is doing and have kids have to choose a book they don't know what one! And they must check it out at least overnight! We wrapped just about all day long! And the books went flying off the shelf. When we first started in the morning, we couldn't wrap fast enough. We would wrap a book and put it out and the next student in took the book. I started to put up classics and one student picked A Tale of Two Cities, so I went and talked to him a bit about the book and he was 'oh, yeah, I've heard Dickens is a good writer" so hopefully he will read it. But yep, wrapped all day long for the most part. Reset shelves since I have ten aides now. This was actually yesterday since I messed up the post and deleted it....  2/5/15

SRA

I remember the good old SRA boxes. You would read a little story, answer the questions, then get to move up a level in a color. Then you would move up to the next color, back further in the box. Ah, those were good times. Well, we have two of those boxes and I wrangled one of our Language Arts teachers into taking them. I hate to surplus stuff. Most of it is good, just old. She even said "the kids are going to laugh at these" but still, good stuff! So I helpfully pulled up a cart, gave her the elevator key and said, 'Here! They're light!' and so she did take them to her room. Started packing up World Geography. Had two science classes come in and get books today. Had two Language Arts classes come in to trade old books for new. Had aides sweep out the computer lab today. Traded a teacher a document camera. One of the maintenance men came in and worked on my double door. It wouldn't latch top and bottom on the one side, so we would put a door stop on it, which kind of worked, but not really and he took the door off and got it all working nicely again. Asked if we could get the library workroom door to go off the automatic lock and our office manager came down and said they think it's just wired into the main library doors, nothing they can do about it. Rats. Maybe I could cut the wires... Had my OBOB kids in and we have three good teams with two extra boys. Gave them all questions today and a match up of title to author. Had them make bookmarks to use as passes. Laminated them so they can use them as bookmarks and a pass to get lunch first. Made up an attendance sheet, and a 'books I have read sheet'. Worked more on my books to purchase sheet, halfway there. Want to get that done before the weekend. Sent an email in response to one of our counselors who is putting another student in my first period class as an aide. That would make four. I gave a detailed response and didn't hear back from him. What to do now? I told him with three aides, all the fifth graders who come in the morning, and the kids who come in from South to wait for second period here, I was a pretty busy gal with everyone here. Not to mention if she just gets to sit and do more of a study hall experience, is that fair to my aides who work and get a pass/fail grade. Not to mention how that would look on her transcript? Maybe she just needs to be in study hall then. I'm sure she will be there tomorrow, nothing I can do about it. A busy, but productive day. 

Angel Feather

For the staff meeting last night they moved the front table over to all the others and left it there. I came in this morning and decided to carpet sweep where the table would be. There stuck in the carpet was a tiny feather and it made me happy. Mrs. S came in looking for a map of the world, so I went back to my stash of the old wall mounted maps and found one, and we cut it off for her to use. Love making teachers happy! Had my first period aides put the tables back where they belonged. Then it seemed like I had stuff going all day long. Put together my spread sheet for all the discards I want to do on our next pick up. Sent that out to the teachers. Had to separate everything, get ISBN's, count them, get the district wide count, but at least it's all done! Just need official permission and we'll pack everything up the teachers, other schools or Follett doesn't want. Then I went into the teacher workroom and decided to clean up the social studies stuff. Now the three sets of shelves are all cleaned up. Just our History Alive books (Ancient, Medieval and US) there with their teacher materials and some atlases we had. It looks so much better. My amazing volunteer came in and rearranged all that for me and it looks fabulous, straightened up and neat. The Geography Alive I put back in the student store area where some old Access History books were that are now ready to be packed up. I've gotten to help students look for books a few times these last few days and it's been a lot of fun. Had a young lady wanting an adventure fantasy book so I made some suggestions and she checked out two of them! Always makes me smile. Also had students start to pull out the old math books, place in the new books. Then they took the old books and went through them to pull out the good copies so we can get rid of the old copies that aren't so good. Packed up 32 Algebra Connections V.1 books to send back to Sprague. It'll be a great relief to get this next set of books out of here, I'm actually seeing free shelves! My aides did a marvelous job today and I'm sure we all could use a great massage! I had a Kudo bar on my desk this morning for watching the gender split classes last month for Mrs. B. Glad to be of help! Also did a bit of laminating before I went home. Made up some stuff for the OBOB kids tomorrow so they can make passes which I will laminate too!

Iceberg!

Came in to find our maintenance man trying to check the library doors to see if they would malfunction the way they did last week. They worked perfectly (of course!). We talked about the next time they did that, I'd call up to our office manager and she would call maintenance and tell his dispatcher and hopefully he'd be able to make it down to see for himself. Picked up another couple of aides today and wrote to our registrar that I really only want two a period. I had an aide tear down my old bulletin board and I managed to get the new one up! Even though I had no access to our color printer (we have a new one that isn't networked in yet), so since I was doing an iceberg theme, it would be fun to just do the bookcovers in black and white. We don't have quite the books the high schools do, so the pool was a bit less on what books we do have, so I included the books that will be out in films this year as well. One of the surplus books from the last drop, Worlds Apart, I hadn't packed up, so I went ahead and packed them up today. Six boxes. Pulled all the World Geography books and had them counted up, they will go on my new list. Need to put on all the High Point books and the Access History as well. We also got an email on the old math books that have been replaced, to sort through, the good and the bad to maybe keep some of the good ones, but get rid of the bad. Put two carts out for books. One from the day before (which was last Friday) and one for the new books that had come in today. So I was hoping the old cart would be all gone today and it was except for an aide that was gone today, and my last period aide who helped the staff prepare packets for the teacher meeting today. So, generally, a success. I still have a lot of kids that have overdue and now described as lost books. Every one of them has said "I turned that in." Ah, no. Worked with one of our technicians today on the library computer lab to see if we can get everything all set for the OAKS testing coming up. We did quite a bit of back and forth, ideas, what I've seen and done in there, what he sees, it was a good conversation. I worked on the book buying list for the last part of the year. I think I'm about half way there. Made some progress on the items I worried about all weekend! So, all is good!