1/26/16

More work at the circulation desk, which I must confess I enjoy. A lot of the students are shy, but I love seeing their faces when I make a comment about a book they are checking out. This two girls came in, one of them was checking out a book about reptiles that had an ugly lizard on the cover and I made some disgusted face and joked with her about ugly scary gross animals. She kept smiling in a proud way J

I also enjoy shelving. It gives me a chance to explore the collection. Too often I find myself just standing by the shelf reading excerpts of the books before I shelf them. It’s interesting to see what books interest middles schoolers.

1/21/16

There is SOL testing today. Ms. Gratto is out and Ms. Schell and Ms. Ward are proctoring. So I am by myself at the library manning the circulation desk. It is very quiet…

1/20/16

Ms. Gratto showed me how to add copies in Destiny (their cataloging system). We went through the whole process from getting the book, adding the copy, assigning a call number and barcode, and printing the labels. I also put plastic covers on the books. (see pictures!).

Since I was already working in Destiny, Ms. Gratto showed me how to edit the existing copies to add “series” to the call number of some of their more popular series. She is doing this to make it easier for the students to locate the books in a series (popular series are also shelved separately). Today I added “series” to the call numbers of A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Printing Barcode Labels

Add New Copy

Adding plastic covers to paperbacks

Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a VERY popular series!!

1/14/16

Today I worked at the circulation desk and did some shelving. I also observed Ms. Schell give a lecture about non-fiction, where to find it in the library, and the basics of the Dewey Decimal System. This was a very short, to the point lecture to introduce the topic to the students. Ms. Schell said that in the next few weeks they will keep doing short activities related to non-fiction books at the library.

1/13/16

My first day at the library included a little bot of everything. First Ms. Gratto gave me a tour of the school. We then spent a good amount of time at the library talking about the collection and the some of the ways they do collection development.

That morning Ms. Schell had received an email from a concerned parent who wanted to know how the school deals with challenged books. This prompted a long and interesting discussion about challenged books and how to deal with parents who want to have specific books removed from the library.

Welcome

Welcome,
I will use this blog to share my experiences and reflections during my Directed Fieldwork (DFW) at Gildersleeve Middle School.

Stay tuned...