Day Five: Being a school librarian

February 11, 2009

7.5 hours

Let’s see… what could possibly be going on right now that could be an overwhelming concern for the library???? Oh yea… that little thing called a BOOK FAIR that is being held as part of SCHOLASTIC’S MIDDLE SCHOOL NATIONAL CONTEST.

My-oh-my was the library a central point of “busy!” While the book fair was not held in the library (in order to keep the library open for classes), it was the central meeting point as well as the storage location. T-shirts arrived for all the volunteers. Chafing dishes came in at different times to help hold the food. 5 Texas sheet cakes showed up late afternoon. Volunteers came in & out all afternoon to ask questions or drop off materials. It was chaos – well organized chaos.

My duties were to keep the library functioning while Lisa ran errands & worked with volunteers in preparing for Family Night. I checked in materials, shelved books, answered reference questions, helped find materials & shelved books. I felt torn that I wasn’t doing enough as I watched Lisa or the volunteers race in and out; Lisa reassured me that what she really needed was to know the library could be open and functioning.

A teacher had emailed Lisa, “Can you put together a cart of books on Roman & Greek gods & goddesses?” Lisa asked me to put the cart together. I must admit I wanted more information about the “whys” of the need. As this was an English teacher, what books was she looking for? Books with stories & myths or of historical facts about the role of Gods and Goddesses in Greek & Roman culture? During the morning I began pulling all the libraries’ Roman & Greek gods & goddesses books. I began in the 200s looking at titles, pulling books & reviewing the back cover & table of contents. Then I used the catalog to look for useful books that might be in other areas of the non-fiction collection. Before taking them to the teacher I had Lisa review the books.

The afternoon had students come down two-by-two to find books they had located on the catalog. Some students waltzed right over to the stacks, found their books and came to me for check out. A few wandered over, skimmed some books & came back asking for help. One girl came in and said, “This is the book I want.” Most of the students I knew from my time subbing so I could use some familiarity to ask questions, guide learning & then push them to think about the topic.

What today provided me, more than anything else, was a time to look at my future profession. I thought about teacher requests, stack layouts, student volunteers, information literacy & so much more.

39 of 100 hours completed