ALA Conference Experience: A First-Timer's Experience

ALA Conference Experience: A First-Timer's Experience

   April 11, 2019       rHL

---

ALA Conference Experience: A First-Timer's Experience

~contributed by Carmen Moser, Southridge Senior School

Day One

The inaugural day of my conference experience got off to a rocky start: a change in planes, then a mechanical issue, followed by a delay, rounded out by a less-than-impressive Lyft driver who, at one point, was driving on the wrong side of the road which I politely pointed out - very Canadian of me - all meant that I missed the opening session talk by Melinda Gates. It was something I had really been looking forward to and, not surprisingly, I was feeling fairly defeated as I plodded up to the preregistration table of the Washington State Convention Center.

My melancholy was soon tempered as the exhibition hall opened and the wonders of what lay in wait were revealed. To say that it was overwhelming would be a vast understatement. I didn’t really understand what the purpose of all of these vendor were: no one was actually selling anything. Fortunately, soon it became clear. These booths were all about promotion and publicity. There were companies with software I could play with, publishers with early copies I could peruse, and authors autographing their books. It was glorious. Ultimately, while I still felt like I had a little deer-in-the-headlights about me, I walked out with a number of pamphlets, some interesting ideas, and thirteen pre-released books, included a manuscript copy of Ruta Serpeys newest novel. I’m pretty excited about what tomorrow will hold.

Day Two

I got off to an early start which quickly rolled into a very busy day. There were sessions and presentations galore, so much so that I was not able to make all of the ones I wanted to as time slots overlapped. I began by listening to a panel discuss their work in library research - that is, doing research about libraries. My big takeaway from this session was the need to continue to do research. As education evolves and the role of the librarian adapts to best support that change, we need to make sure that we’re documenting our value in meaningful and thorough capacites.

From there I joined the Independent Schools Section (ISS) as they discussed their needs moving forward. Their two most pressing concerns were communication, both for members and for those who might benefit from their knowledge, and diversifying their member pool. While I was able to identify with the need for fluid and timely communication (maybe two meetings a year isn’t enough?), the piece on diversity hasn’t come up in the ISABC meetings.

The last major session of the day had me sit in with people invested in the development of the physical space of libraries. There were a whole host of people involved: architects, designers, university librarians, state librarians...and then there was me, with my tiny little 800 square foot library. Interestingly, the needs and concerns were concepts I could identify with: usage of space, durability of materials, budgets, longevity of the vision. It was very interesting and gave me some perspective.

In between the sessions I tried to get to the Book Buzz Theater as much as possible to learn about new titles dropping in the next few months. I also pursued the exhibits floor some more and was able to limit myself to seven pre-releases today.

Day Three

Today was the culmination of an amazing weekend. Rick Steves - a personal hero - was one of the final auditorium speakers, and he spoke first thing in the morning. While some might question the connection between travel and libraries, Rick was clear that whether someone travels from place to place in the physical world, or via the pages of a book, they’re broadening their perspective, and this world needs more of that. He was very engaging, highly relevant, and I left an even bigger fan than I arrived (if possible).

Like the previous days, I ran from session to session, having to leave some early to make it to others. I learned about new EBSCO products, strengthened my understanding of what students need as they transition to university, met with vendors, and listened to many talks on books. And I’ve finally surrendered to the fact that I will indeed need to send all of my swag home via post. Even Rick Steves couldn’t fill all of this loot into a carry-on bag.

While this was an exhausting weekend and filled with more than I could ever hope to attend, it was invigorating. Being surrounded by like-minded professionals is so rarely an option for me and many other teacher-librarians, and I felt empowered by knowing that there are so many of us out there who want to do good work. I am so grateful that my school was able to provide the opportunity for me to go and I hope to be able to attend future conferences as well.

Read More

Favourite Books Introducing Young Students to the School Library

Favourite Books Introducing Young Students to the School Library

   February 12, 2019       rHL

---

Favourite Books Introducing Young Students to the School Library

~Contributed by Heather Middleton, Aspengrove School




At the beginning of the school year, Kindergarten and Grade One classes read What Happened to Marion’s Book? by Brook Berg; illustrations by Nathan Alberg. c.2003. Marion, the main character is a Kindergarten student who loves books so much that she wants to be a librarian when she grows up. The reader learns proper book care through Marion’s misadventure with her library book. 

Introducing Grade One’s to writing their own stories is made much more interesting when reading the delightful story of Library Mouse by Daniel Kirk c. 2007.




Grade Two and Grade Three classes navigate the nonfiction areas of the the library stacks as they begin their research topics. The Shelf Elf Helps Out by Jackie Mims Hopkins; illustrated by Rebecca McKillip Thornburgh. C.2006. explains the Dewey catalog system and how to locate a book using the call number as an address on the book spine.

Follow up lessons include YouTube tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bV_sI8XQdI and cooperative activities with partners in library hunts for books in favorite categories such as cooking, animals, and Mine-craft, using call numbers and the categories shown on the library’s book shelf signage.

 

As children begin to research on the internet and write their own papers, the book When Marion Copied by Brook Berg; illustrations by Nathan Alberg. C.2006., discusses plagiarism.

Read More

Blind Date with a Book

Blind Date with a Book

   January 21, 2019       rHL

---

Blind Date with a Book 

~contributed by Rayna Hyde-Lay, Shawnigan Lake School

A few years ago, I spent the best part of the start of the year planning a few fun events to encourage students into the library, and entice them to try something new! I found many ideas from the library community on Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram but one that seemed the most interesting was Blind Date with a Book. Students found the idea captivating and for the past three years we have offered Blind Date with a Book in February, to coincide with Valentine’s Day.

How it works:

A.) I pre-choose books in a variety of genres which have either been popular during the course of the year, or have interesting fun titles or ones which I think have been overlooked and need consideration. Because it is February I try to include as many light and positive books as I can. I also enlist the help of a variety of students at different grade levels to choose a book they would recommend to their peers.
B.) Books are wrapped in regular brown paper. We try and save packaging from book orders as well as use paper bags, and other materials as a reduce and re-use initiative.
C.) This is the fun part! Each title gets a description of the book. Not a summary but rather a little personal ad, or bullet points of intrigue, or sometimes just a drawing. The title is never mentioned and the details are intriguing but intentionally vague.

Then I put them in a prominent spot in the library and students come in to choose a book, without judging it by the cover. I usually start with 20 or so books, then add to it as they are checked-out.

Tips:

I have learned that this works best when they do not use the self-checkout so that they cannot see the title until it is unwrapped, which I encourage them to do at a later point. Also, write the barcode on the back of the book if your barcode label includes the title or author.

The adventure is in choosing something which might be different from their usual reading but, based on the description students think they will enjoy. Many students have come back claiming to have read something they never would have picked up if it hadn’t been wrapped in paper! After our first year a student wanted me to wrap every book in the library in paper so we couldn’t judge a book by its cover! Although I haven’t gone to those lengths, it is always a good opportunity to have the conversation about making assumptions and judgments.

Let me know how your Blind Dates go and be sure to post any tips your library has for this fun activity.

Read More

Genrefying the Fiction Collection

Genrefying the Fiction Collection

   January 17, 2019       rHL

---

Genrefying the Fiction Collection

~contributed by Pam McMartin - Southpoint Academy

Two years ago, we completed a major weed and inventory of the fiction section of our K-12 library. During this process, we noticed how there was a group of titles (largely series) that were frequently checked out and many titles that were being overlooked by the students. In some cases this was because the titles were old, or not relevant to our student body and needed to be weeded from the collection, but many of the titles were hidden gems that were being overlooked by our students. In reflection, we realized that the word hidden was key to why these titles were not getting checked out and we began to wonder if the current organizational system in our library was hindering students from discovering many of these titles.

There has been significant interest in genrefying the school library in recent years and I have read numerous article on the topic and have attended numerous Pro D sessions and webinars on the topic. While genrefying the collection may not work for all libraries, for us it seems to be solving some of our circulation issues.



What Does it Mean to Genrefy a Fiction Collection?

Our Fiction section in our library used to be sorted simply by reading level (E (Early Reader), Juvenile, Young Adult, or Mature) and shelved alphabetically by author’s last name. When a library is genrefied, the books are shelved in genres, similar to a how a bookstore would operate.

Why Did We Decide to Genrefy our Collection?

One of our main reflections after analyzing our circulation statistics was that students may not be checking out books because they were not discovering them. They were often defaulting to series because we knew the series. We found that students were more likely coming to us asking for book recommendations based on genre and not on authors (the way our fiction system was originally organized). When students asked us for a recommendation for a good mystery book to read, we often defaulted to the first titles that came to our mind because we could find them on the shelves and many great titles were being overlooked. After genrefying our collection, when a student asks us for a great mystery read, we can direct them to the Mystery section where they can browse the shelves and discover titles they may not have discovered before. This plays on the browsing philosophy book stores employ - organize the books by genre to make it easy for patrons to browse based on their interest in a specific genre and discover books on their own.

How Did We Genrefy our Collection?

The process of genrefying our collection was quite a long one and took several months.

1.)We completed an evaluation of our collection and weeded titles that were damaged, outdated, or no longer needed in the collection - this allowed us to know how many books we were dealing with.

2.)We decided on our broad genres. For the purposes of our library we decided on the following genres:

• Realistic 
• Historical
• Biography (not technically fiction, but we felt the biographies and autobiographies would get more circulation if shelved in the fiction section).
• Fantasy
• Sci-Fi
• Action
• Mystery

3.) Once we decided on our genres, we developed a system of labelling we felt would work for our students. We assigned each genre a colour, purchased spine labels in each colour that we would put on the book spines of each books so students knew which genre it belonged to and so people shelving would know what section to put the book in and ordered signage for the library with the genre names in the appropriate colour.

4.) We then started the task of sorting each book into a genre - which took months! For some books it was easy, but for other books it was more difficult (I am looking at you Vonnegut!) For those books that didn’t easily fit into a genre easily, we went with the genre we thought would make the most sense for our student body with the caveat that we could always change it later if our decision wasn’t working. 

5.) The last task was the most time consuming. Once we sorted each of the books into a category, we had to map out our shelf space with the number of books in each category to figure out what should go where. For example, our Realistic section was quite large, but our Mystery section was significantly smaller. Besides letting us know how much shelf space was needed, this step of the process also gave us an excellent visual of sections of the collection where we need to develop more choice for students. We needed to ensure we assigned enough shelves for the number of books we had, but also allowed room on the shelves for the section to grow as it wouldn’t be a simple matter of just shifting books once the collection was genrefied and the shelves were labelled. Once we had the shelves mapped out, we added the colour coded stickers to each book, sublocated them in the library catalogue to the appropriate genre, and shelved them.

What Have Been Some of the Benefits We Have Noticed Since We Have Genrefied Our Collection?

We have found right away that some of the books that have never been checked out have started to move from our shelves. When a student asks for a Sci-Fi book, we can easily direct them to the Sci-Fi section and they are started to explore more rather than just defaulting to a popular series. Because of this, students are starting to discover some of our previously hidden gems. We have also found that students are starting to explore the library more and are challenging themselves to explore genres they may have never considered before.

What Have Been some of the Challenges?

The largest challenge for us seems to be what to do with authors that write across genres and we decided we had to deal with this on a case by case basis on what would be best for our students. For some authors, like Roald Dahl, we decided to keep all of his books together in the genre the majority of the books were written in. We did this because our students were more likely to ask for Roald Dahl books based on the author because he was one they were familiar with. For other authors we decided to break their books up across genres because the students were not recognizing their books by the name of the author, rather they were more likely to recognize them by the genre they are in. Making these decisions took some time and we likely will have to make some adjustments as time goes by.

Overall, despite the large amount of work involved, genrefying the fiction section of our library has been a worthwhile endeavour that has revitalized sections of our collection and has allowed our students to explore our collection and to find their next great read with greater ease.

Read More

VR in the School Library?

VR in the School Library?

   January 15, 2019       rHL

---

VR in the School Library?

~contributed by Marc Crompton St. George's Senior School

Technologies come and go. Some stick around like the eBook and AudioBooks seem to, and others, like filmstrips, eventually go the way of the Dodo bird. What is hard is figuring out which technologies have legs and are going to have something to offer our collections and readers over the long-term. One technology I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is Virtual Reality(VR). VR is not new new. It’s been around in various forms for a few years, but not until recently have I started to wonder if there are opportunities that aren’t addressed in other ways that would make sense standing next to our books, videos, and databases.




Let’s start by defining VR and looking at how content is delivered in this realm. VR is distinct from AR (Augmented Reality) in that VR is a medium that separates the user from their surrounding environment both visually and, perhaps, aurally. AR uses a camera to situate VR elements in your surrounding environment or to identify elements of your real environment and provide information about them. For example, a VR experience might involve you being transported to the International Space Station (ISS) where you float about on the station and interact with that environment. There is no connection to your real surrounding environment (outside of maybe seeing your house pass by from the window of the ISS). You might be wearing noise-cancelling headphones to cut you off sonically from those in your environment talking about how weird you look moving around in something that they can’t see! In an AR application, you might simulate putting the Rosetta Stone on your living room coffee table so that you can walk around it and view it from different angles. Here, you are merging your real environment with other objects or information. The Google Glass product that proposed to project information about your environment on the inside of your glasses is another example of AR.




So why VR in a library? VR has the ability to let the user have an experience that they would not otherwise be able to have in a way that feels very much like being somewhere that one could not otherwise be. The International Space Station example is explored by at least two content developers currently. National Geographic has a video with footage from the ISS that makes one feel very much like they are floating at near-0 gravity through the habitat. Not only is the footage taking us somewhere that we would otherwise not be able to go, it is altering our perception of our environment to make us feel like we are really there. Magnopus, another VR developer, has an experience that simulates being in the ISS in their app, Mission:ISS. While the imagery is less realistic than the National Geographic film footage, the ability to interact with the environment is much stronger. You can float through the station under your own control (not as easy as it sounds), click on things to get explanations of the objects in the environment, and even conduct “simple” missions such as docking a supply module and going for a space walk.




While leaving Earth’s surface is certainly going places that most humans currently don’t go, there are many other experiences on Earth that are explored quite effectively through VR. BBC, Al Jazeera, the Economist, and National Geographic all produce content in VR that situates the user directly in the environment that is being explored. I have been to the North Pole with Al Gore to look at polar ice cap melt. I have visited a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh. I have been taken on a tour of a village in Africa to explore how a factory has rendered the local water supply completely undrinkable. While all of these stories have been told many times via traditional 2D media, there is something about being in a VR environment that makes one feel much more connected to the place and people. There is also plenty of animated and digitally created content that tells stories of historical and cultural relevance such as the BBC’s Nothing to be Written exploring the letters written home in WWI, and Sesqui VR’s Meridian telling stories of and by Canadian Indigenous artists and musicians.




I could go on quite some time about the content that is emerging for this medium, but why now? What has changed that makes VR something worth exploring in our current school library collections? Of course, technology is always getting better and cheaper, but what has shifted my thinking is the release of the Oculus Go by Facebook and Samsung. Prior to the release of the Oculus Go, the most common ways of delivering VR content was the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive. Both of these devices required a dedicated grid that required a few cubic feet of space to set up and required a stand alone computer in addition to the viewer itself. You would need to spend a couple of thousand dollars for a system that was, for all intents and purposes, limited to being used in a specific physical space. Along comes the Oculus Go which is a completely independent system costing about $350CAD for the high end viewer (more memory). While there are differences between the Go and the Rift in the way that one can interact with it (one can move around in virtual space in a Rift or Vive where the environment moves around you in a Go), the experience is nearly as effective at less than a quarter of the cost. HTC has announced that they are also releasing a stand alone VR viewer which should be better than the Go in that it is much closer to the Vive and Rift experience, but no word on price or release date as of yet.

It is entirely feasible that a library could have one or more Oculus Gos available for borrowing at the current price point. They could be loaded with content the way one administers a Kindle and loaned out or available for use in the Learning Commons space. There would be cataloguing and other administration issues, but nothing more complex than what we have dealt with regarding iPads, Kindles, or other devices which content is loaded.

The biggest issue from an educational perspective that I see is that VR technology is highly individual in nature. Because one is manipulating their own environment to some extent, you can’t put a class down in front of a VR movie and expect them to share the same experience. This is good and bad. Facebook, being Facebook, has developed a number of social apps that work with the Go, but I have yet to see anything that allows students to connect well for educational purposes around a subject. I’m sure that that is coming. But maybe this is the argument for putting these devices in our libraries. No two people read the same book, at the same speed and get the same thing out of the experience. Maybe VR documentaries and stories are more like books than movies are in this respect.

Thanks for reading. Please feel free to comment. But for the time being, I’m jacking back into the Matrix...

Read More

The Reluctant Reader

The Reluctant Reader

   January 11, 2019       rHL

---

The Reluctant Reader

Contributed by Maureen Belliveau

They stand glass eyed looking at the book spines, a zombie state has overtaken them. They are frozen in the process and do not know how to navigate out.

The library is not a welcoming environment, to the reluctant reader, it is more of a jail sentence, it is Superman’s Kryptonite. The question is how do you as the librarian make reading an enjoyable experience? How do you get the reluctant reader to want to read and love reading?

STEP 1 - Read the books you think the Reluctant Reader may want to read


STEP 2 - Graphic novels are easier to read, less intimidating


STEP 3 - Make a connection with the Reluctant Reader and ask what kind of TV shows or movies they like to watch. (Give examples - horror, comedies, science fiction, fantasy, romance etc.)


STEP 4 - Show many books for them to choose from


STEP 5 - Recommend books - Sell, sell, sell.


STEP 6 - I usually recommend books I have read and I make a promise that if they do not like the book I will buy them lunch. ( I have never had to purchase lunch)


STEP 7 - Check in with the reader to see how they are enjoying the book






Ask yourself:


Why such reluctance?


Is there an underlying problem?


How can I be the bridge to help this reader?


Do I need lower level readers? (Hi interest, low vocabulary)


Do I have the a variety of options available? ( audio books, online)






Engaging the reluctant reader is a challenge and a rewarding experience at the same time.

Read More

   December 27, 2018       rHL

---

Killin’ It: The Library Orientation Murder Mystery

Contributed by Gloria Piovesan, Collingwood

The Fifth Annual Halloween Murder Mystery inspired six rotations of English 8 classes to introduce themselves to the library while they solved the murder of Headmistress Asil Snave (our Head of School Lisa Evans spelled backwards!)

Eight clues led students to check out the physical collection, use the catalogue, and discover a variety of work-space options.

Students were thoroughly engaged and invested, and are now far more comfortable with their library.

Oh, and if you are wondering who did it? Of course it was the teacher-librarian. If you would like more information, email morvenlibrary@collingwood.org

Find the Investigation sample here.

Read More