Luau!

Friday May 29th: It's Oly Luau day! I talked with a fellow staff member about our Trac-It system. She works with it for our Read 180 program and they have their own set up. She wanted to do inventory and I ran through a few things she can try. An inventory summary report and a report of all textbooks. They need to separate the 'Lab A' and 'Lab B' boooks, so we figured out how to break up the reports by subject since they put 'Lab A' and 'Lab B' in the subject line. I took off the May Calender and put up the June Calendar with all the information for finals and senior stuff. We checked in books all day. Lots of carts of books and good help with putting them all away. Since we can only sell 19 of the On Common Ground to Bookbyte I called our Follett rep to see if they wanted any of the 73 others. They aren't looking for those at the moment, but they may come up in the future so he will keep that on file. I had a student return books for him and his brother and one of the Human Anatomy and Physiology books had been damaged, front and end boards water damaged, mold starting to grow. I was very sorry, but we have to bill him for that. I gave him the ISBN number and told him to try Bookbyte rather than pay our $95 a copy we charge since the books are 5 years old, they should be able to get a cheaper copy.

Cleaning Up

We ran teacher reports on textbooks out today and came across a set of people we or the office have no idea who they are. So I checked in their books and then withdrew the books and the people. All but one who refuses to delete for some reason. I've checked the manual even and can't figure out why. Mrs. H called Bookbyte and they said they'd buy out our professional library copies of On Common Ground. So I withdrew the 90 or so copies we had, then we had to mark through the barcode, then stamp them discard. Then Mrs. H called to say they were all ready and they said they would only take 5 copies at the most! Arghh! So we will call Follett tomorrow to see if they'll take the rest. Got in lots of books and we're just under 11,000 today! Huzzah! I worked repairs in between getting books in. Scooped up the books that need work and piled them on a separate cart. We have two carts in the back to get shelved in the morning. Started working on June's bulletin board with all the senior and finals info while a meeting was going on in the library. 12 days of school left!

Frau Willer German Trading Card!

I was so excited! One of the German kids came and said he had my card! So we traded and I now have my own personal German Trading Card! That is so cool! Checked in books all day and worked on repairs. I pulled back a cart from up at Mrs. J's desk and had a couple of aides start to put books away and grabbed one just to check, and they hadn't been checked in yet! They had just come and Mrs. J hadn't even had a chance to check them in before I whisked them off! So, they did get checked in and a lot of other books besides. The Manga Club met after school for their last 'cosplay' so I was surrounded by crazy kids watching manga movies, dressed up as their favorite characters, it was fun. Processed two teacher magazines, and two for us. E-mailed a teacher on some magazine prices. Happy to see books getting repaired and on the shelves!

Incentives

With so many books still out, Mrs. H decided to try Mrs. B's suggestion to try for some incentives. Mrs. B said she'd find the money to purchase items, so today we made up slips for kids to fill out whenever they bring a book in. So I made up a sheet of slips and my aide worked on cutting them apart after we made copies. I did a lot of repairs today, with about 4 stacks of books I worked on gluing, and checked in a lot of books. Mrs. H had to leave early to take a unit back to LMSS and when Mrs. J left, I went up to the front desk and worked on checking in the books there, did some shelving of odd items and worked on finishing up the incentive slips. I helped a student make two transparencies and put money in accounts. I also purchased a set of German trading cards and didn't get mine, drats!

11,353

That's the amount of books we have checked out to students and staff as of today! Checked in World Literature books as well as lots of others. We had a student come in today and turn in a bunch of books. Five of them she's had since last year and been billed for them. So, I told her we'd be sure to get them off her bill, but she still had two more library books out. Mrs. J printed out her bill and there were 13 books on it. Six had already been turned in, but hadn't been taken off the bill. So I hunted all the copies down, and we got every book off her bill but the two she still has. Checked out more Animal Farm. Worked on repairs. Torn pages, taping edges. Mr. N came by and wanted to know the price of a text for a student that wanted to check one out for the summer. We do let students check out texts for the summer after they've paid the price of the text. When they bring it back in the fall, they get their money refunded. Processed one teacher magazine, and four of ours, Sports Illustrated, Spin, BMX Plus and Smithsonian. Got back an e-mail on Thrasher magazine that they are no longer on the Ebsco list and would have to be ordered direct. Got a price from the Trappist Bookbindery on rebounding our lit books - $25 each or $19 if we sent in 100 or more! I certainly could send them over 100! And we are off for Memorial Day Weekend! Thank you Veterans!

26 E-Mails

Opened up to 26 e-mails this morning - wow. So I replied to the ones that were applicable to me. Checked in lots of texts today. Talked to a teacher about how to return texts during finals. He wanted to have a list, check off the books to each kid, bring them down, but Mrs. H wants each kid to bring them down, so I told him that they needed to come in and do it that way. Got in some Out of the Dust and some of them were from North HS, so I checked them in, withdrew them from our database, packed them up and shipped them back. Helped finish the library book due slips for the Advisory teachers to hand out tomorrow. Checked through the American Experience texts that were turned in to see if they need repairs before they get put on the shelf for the summer. I taught one of the ladies from the Read 180 about repairing a paperback that broken out of its spine. Worked on other repairs of easy things I could just turn out and get on the shelf. I e-mailed a person who knows repairs for some of our badly spine damaged texts and he suggested we contact a bindery to see if we could get a good deal from one of them. So I contacted three local places that may be able to work a volume deal. I also found a great repair resource that has everything. It was like finding a chocolate Sundae with mint topping and chocolate curls!

"I'm a Doctor, JIm, Not a Miracle Worker"

Two classes came in today with American Experience books and one had the cover totally ripped off and a student went to her locker and found it. (Shakes head while pulling on the rubber gloves) Pitiful. I did do some repairing today. Checked in a box of Witness books and let Ms. S know she still has one floating about. Got our aides working on moving books, but it was sad. Tried to print senior texts that are still out, but the report only contained two names, so we looked up name we knew was a senior, and there was the answer, graduating class of '09, not 2009. Put money in accounts, checked in books. Even checked out some texts today. Got back in The Lively Art of Writing from Mr. H and he didn't have 30, only 24, so he's going to check around to see if anyone else has any. After we printed up the senior textbook notices out I helped Mrs. H pull the three bills per page apart and then spent the rest of the day looking up on SASI the advisors for the seniors so they can be handed out during advisory on Friday. We have over $5,300 in textbooks out and billed just from seniors that are no longer at Sprague, from either graduating early, or have left. That's a lot of bookla. I pulled carts up to the front. Mrs. J hurt her arm and she kept walking back with her other arm trying to hold books (and doing a great job of it!) so I brought out a flat cart for her to just lay her books on instead of carrying them. We found when we started doing classes for seniors to deliver notices, that we had different classes. So I went to office and found we needed to put 'No Rotation' into the bottom filter. Then Mrs. H said for us to just break them into their Advisory Teachers. This is the first time I got to seriously look at a lot of teachers and their students. I am amazed by these incredible people that work so hard and make our community such a wonderful place to work. They deserve so much more that what they get.

Still Checking Out

Mr. H said that he'd bring in the Lively Art of Writing. Processed Time and Teen Vogue magazines and two teacher magazines. A student had a log-in question and I helped her with that. Repaired a Night novel, and checked in some Night's that Ms. M brought in so her two classes today would have enough copies to check out and we had plenty. Lot's of To Kill a Mockingbird's came back in patches today. A student needed to take care of an American Experience textbook from last year so she could get her cap and gown, so I directed her to Bookbyte and instead of paying the $53.47 we charged, she got a good copy for $1.95 and was very happy! She brought the book and her cap and gown to show me. Very cool, glad I could help her. A teacher came by and asked for a price on American Scientific magazine for a subscription for next year. So, I had one price at $39.95 and another at $34.95. I checked in some returned items for a teacher. I emailed the workbook inventory to Mrs. HJ for her meeting tomorrow. Checked some books that came in and set them in repair piles before they go on the shelf for the year. Did some corner gluing to set for tomorrow, got some books ready to go back on the shelf. Ms. C came by and asked for some Earth Science books, so I got them ready and took them down to her class since school was already over and she needs them for tomorrow.

Goodbye Mrs. T (waves)

Processed People and Hot Rod magazine for the library and one for a teacher. Another teacher asked if we could get some Animal Farm for her class so I contacted another school. Ms. S's class brought some back and I loaded up all the rest of the copies we had and that got us through Ms. M's and Mr. C's class, 2 class sets checked out. When the other school called back this afternoon, I told her that we didn't need them after all. Finished up the workbook data for Mrs. HJ and just need a bit of additional that I sent emails to on prices for next year. Added in four French 2 CD's that showed up. Checked in books all day from individual students. Had a teacher ask for a book, and I looked first in the regular library, but we supposedly have a class set in textbooks - there's nothing on the shelves, not even a spot for it, but there it is on the list! Mrs. H tracked it down and Mr. H has them, so we will work out tomorrow how to deal with that. Also worked on some Prentice Hall Literature Platinum that I had glued a few weeks ago and finished some of those up to put back on the shelf. We had a going away party for Mrs. T today. She's been here for 6 years, her kids go here, and the tech department decided to make some drastic changes to implement some of their goals, and one of them was to have Mrs. T work in the downtown department. She will be amazing there, but we will really miss her here. So the library was closed this afternoon while we said goodbye over goodies.

Workbooks

Questions about how many Animal Farms do we have? Is your print account connection working? Can I check in this book? May I check out this? Can I have 28 Buen Viaje's and 33 of the other Buen Viaje's? May I request this magazine, but not that one? Can you just cancel that order? Why has the price of this magazine gone down? I worked on the workbooks inventory today, moving boxes and copies, and checking how many we have for students to check out. I also started to check on the prices for this year and formatting a spreadsheet. Helped Mrs. H checking the money she counted and signing off on it. Lots of books in and out today.