Good morning I hope you're all well welcome to The Scoop from a School Librarian
webinar this is part of our School and Public Library Partnership series this
fall my name is Beth Yates and I'm the Children's Consultant from the Indiana
State Library's Professional Development Office I'll be your host and your
question moderator today and our speaker today is Robyn Young she is the school
librarian at Avon High School as well as being the current past president of the
Indiana Library Federation and we are really thrilled to have her here today
I think she's gonna provide us with some really great insight into what school
librarians do and how we can connect but Before we jump into the content of this
webinar I do have a few announcements from the State Library first of all to
register for other webinars available from the professional development office
and our partners including the two other School and Public Library Partnerships
series webinars that I have planned for this fall please visit the Indiana State
Library's events calendar which can be found on our website at www dot IN dot gov
slash library for a full list of our current in-person training topics please
see the Continuing Education page of our website
today's webinar will be archived and will be available to access and share on
the Indiana State library's Archived Training page within 30 days the Indiana
State Library has many ways we try to stay connected to library staff
throughout the state for weekly updates on upcoming trainings and to learn more
about what's happening in libraries across the state please subscribe to our
weekly e-newsletter the Wednesday Word we also offer a blog which provides
information about the Indiana State collection features interview spotlights
on library staff from across the state and is a good source for information
about upcoming events at the Indiana State Library now on to technical issues
if at any point during the webinar you experience any sound issues please see
the sound issues box just below the chat box on the left side of the screen
if there's a global sound issue meaning others are experiencing the issue also
we'll announce it in the chat box just like we did a couple of minutes ago if
you are unable to resolve the sound issues you're experiencing please be
reassured that we are recording the meeting and you can watch it offline
after the meeting has ended again if there is a global sound issue we will
make an announcement in the chat box at this time we are not any longer
experiencing global sound issues if you have a question for our presenter during
this webinar just type it in that chat box on the upper left hand side of your
screen I'll be watching and we'll get your
question to Robyn as soon as there is a good opportunity there should also be
time near the end for questions but Robyn did say she'd love for this to be
a dialogue so please as you have questions go ahead and type them and
I'll do my best to get them to her in a timely manner now the last thing on to
LEUs this session is one hour so you'll get one LEU for today we have a
new procedure for webinar LEUs today to get your LEU certificate you'll need
to remain on the webinar until the very end and there will be an opportunity for
you to download a word document that you can actually type your name directly
into again you should remain on the webinar until the very end and you'll
receive your LEU then I will not be sending out certificates as we've done
in the past although if you have any trouble accessing it feel free to email
me directly and I'll put my email address in at the end for you if you
need it okay that is all I have so now finally without further ado I'm gonna
turn the presentation over to Robyn okay thank you so much I'm really excited to
be here with everyone today and we're gonna be talking about what a school
librarian does how we can collaborate with one another and form partnerships
and how specifically the public libraries can help or work with the
school librarians so um and again as Beth said please feel free to ask
questions throughout I love the dialogues that would be great
so a little bit about me just real quickly I started
as an English and social studies teacher and I did English and social studies for
10 years before I went back and got my MLS from Indiana University then I've
been in the library at Avon High School for the last 17 years the school that
I'm at has 3100 students and is in a suburban area we're a suburb of
Indianapolis so that's kind of our location where we're at I have about a
hundred and fifty faculty members and other hundred staff members on top of
that so we are a rather large High School where the tenth largest high
school in Indian Indiana so there's always a lot to do so that's good um
we're gonna start with what does a school librarian do all day and you
notice in this picture that I have here that there's not a library in sight and
I put that for a specific reason school librarians think of ourselves
rather differently than a standard a public or an academic librarian and that
is that we think of ourselves as teachers first and foremost so the
reason that I have this picture on here is that about two weeks ago one of the
things that all the teachers do is that we take the junior students on a Junior
Day of Caring and we go into the community and we do community service
and so this is just a really great opportunity to meet students in a
different way work with them in in different ways and and that's one of the
things that I just love doing every year sometimes it includes being a school
librarian includes supervising basketball games or football games or
being in the hallways on duty making sure that students are behaving properly
and there's just a lot of different things that we do that would be
different than a public library I would do would do I would imagine so we're
going to talk about that about what a school librarian does all day depending
upon your school I'm gonna address my school but I'm also going to talk about
schools in general as well obviously to hopefully help you help you in whatever
situation that you're in so one of the main things that we do is that classes
into the library for direct instruction and I had a prime well this happens
every day in my school so but an example is something that's happened this week
is that I had a teacher who came in to the to the library and we're working
together it's a freshman class we're working
together on the the I guess information literacy skills so I'm sorry it's a
little disconcerting to me not to have like people in front of me so the
direct instruction for information literacy skills so where students come
in I've created a survey for them to take where they provide a little
information for me about their reading habits and how often they read each day
and what genres they like and then I provide direct instruction for them on a
variety things sometimes it's how to use databases citation use how to we did a
fun one how to write emails cuz the kids have no idea how to write emails that
was our last one and the teachers have said that they've already had a huge
improvement in that area so we do direct instruction all the time the classes
will come in depending upon what the subject is we'll talk with the
teachers beforehand and we'll instruct the students today I actually was out of
the library and went to a classroom where I was teaching students how to
research and so we took the topic of Indiana basketball and which is very
near to near and dear to most Hoosiers and we learned about how to research the
history of Indiana basketball and we went through accessing their prior
knowledge and determining what keywords we would use if we did a general google
search and we did website evaluation where we were looking at the different
websites that came up on our google search and which ones were appropriate
to use and reliable and which ones were not appropriate or reliable to use and
so I'm not always in the library there are a lot of times where I am out in the
classroom working with the students because we are a one-to-one school
meaning all of our students do have laptops
and so that makes it so that I find that I often go into their classrooms we it
may be direct instruction on some sort of technological use so we've got
students right now that are doing movie trailers as part of their English
classes and so I'm instructing them on how to use the camera and set up their
shots and we have a green screen in the library that they're using and we set up
projectors so that they could project and act like they were on the news and
different backgrounds and so just a wide variety of direct instruction that we do
on a daily basis we also as part of that have to collaborate with our teachers so
when a class comes in it's not just an on-the-fly type of thing where they're
coming in and we're going oh what are you learning about there's a lot of
planning that has to go ahead of that and so that's where we collaborate with
teachers extensively and that might be meeting before school after school during
lunches sometimes it's chatting in the hallway it's just trying to figure out
what it is that we're going to be doing with our students one of the new things
that I've been doing with our classes are what are called breakouts and many
of you may be familiar with that there's a movement called Breakout EDU similar
to our escape rooms that have become real popular around the country these
are focused on specific curriculum that we want to teach them and so to break
out they have to have knowledge of the curriculum and learn content in order to
breakout or unlock the boxes that we have available for them so that takes
extensive collaboration with our teachers and requires a lot of work
before the kids come in and actually do the breakout we also have situations
where I was working with a US history what's called a professional learning
community so all of our teachers get together and meet who teach the same
content area and I go to those meetings just to listen and usually I'll find
some way that the library can enhance what they're doing so last week's
meeting they were trying to get their students to increase their
reading comprehension and we all know that in order to increase your reading
comprehension you get them to read that's the best way to do that is to
practice but our that our history teachers weren't aware of that
information and so what I'm going to do with those students is create kind of a
webinar kind of what we're doing now they're going to get information from me
on a reading analysis and how to go about reading appropriately reading for
meaning questions that you would ask all of our junior US history students will
be shown it'll be a YouTube video or something here's the way I usually do it
but I'll help them with that reading analysis and that wouldn't have happened
without me being in that meeting so it's really important for that library space
to be staffed in some way so that I can go to the meetings and work on
collaborating with our teachers another thing that we do is help teachers
understand their digital resources that are available to them and that might be
from databases and public libraries have a lot better databases in school
libraries do they're usually you have better funding so often plus we have the
Indiana State Library sponsored to INSPIRE of course I have to plug absolutely absolutely
I appreciate you bringing it up because we do use that a lot and so helping
those teachers understand that we're not googling everything that sometimes there
are a better places to do research and teaching the teachers how to use those
digital resources is really important because they I can't get into every
classroom obviously with just one of me and in all of those students so teaching
the teachers how to use those digital resources and how to teach those to
their students is is a really important thing that Indiana basketball research
that I was doing is interesting because I came here today to do that research
but I'd already co-taught it with the teacher several times today and so she's
teaching and finishing out the day on her own because she feels comfortable
with that and now she's got the skills needed to be able to help her students
understand those digital resources it could also be things like apps
I pulled together a bunch of apps for that movie project that kids could
record or record video on their phones and do some editing on their phones or
just a wide number of digital resources anything that's out there they rely on
me to explain or teach them or if I find a new website or a new app that would be
really good for their classes I share that with with our teachers then of
course we just have classes in to use the library space so there are sometimes
with so many students in our classes we have on average about 30 students per
classroom and with classes needing to move around and do different activities
sometimes just coming into the library space is really nice I've been really
blessed with having a large skylight in our library it's a very open very
welcoming environment the kids love just going in there to be there so sometimes
the classes just come in to use the library space yesterday I think I had
four classes in there at one time it was very crowded I'm a lot of students in
but it's great that they have that space just to kind of get a change of pace not
always be in the same classroom that's there
we are also open during lunches and between classes so students will have
that time where they may not want to go to a crowded cafeteria but they want to
come check their email print out a paper do a little homework and they want to a
quieter more of a study environment and they do come in and do that during
lunches grab a quick book between classes so we're always busy there are a
lot of days that we want to stay open during lunch for our students which
means we often don't take a lunch ourselves or we eat it at our desk that
was what happened today for me and tomorrow so I have a question this is
from me so when you mentioned getting out being able to get out of your
library to go to meetings and do other things so who's who's working in your
library great question so I am lucky that I have a part-time assistant now I did
start like I said 17 years ago and at that time I had two full-time assistants and
two librarians in the building we have changed dramatically with financial
climate and the changes in education but I am lucky enough still that I have one
part-time assistant that works that works with me I have had to close the
library on quite a few occasions if I'm in a classroom and I've been working
with that teacher on an assignment then I'm going to go in with that teacher and
we're going to close the library I'm the sad thing is is that then the library is
closed to all of those other 33,000 students and they don't have access to
the library because I'm in a classroom teaching and that is of course one of
the challenges that school librarians face I say I'm lucky to have one
part-time assistant many many many schools don't have that at all and many
schools don't have a certified school librarian at all and so that is a change
and we'll be talking about that in just a little bit do you have any students
who work in your library - when I was in high school I was a media aide during my
study hall you know I tell my student assistants that I could not run the
library without that yeah my student assistants will keep track of
all of the students who come in and out with passes and ID cards and make ever
sure everybody is doing what they're supposed to be doing and then they're
also the ones that check the books in and out for me and they shelve the books
as well so if I didn't have them I would be stuck behind the desk checking books
in and out and shelving books and doing nothing else right exactly so it is very
important that I have those student assistants as well and because they make
it so I can do everything else thank you yeah no thank you for the questions like
I said if anybody has questions please continue because I love the interaction
um I will add one more thing and this is just kind of a silly thing um I have a
library Advisory Committee and in my library Advisory Committee is made up of
students staff and parents and one of the things that they determined last year
for me was that they said gosh wouldn't it be really cool if you could serve
like coffee or hot chocolate in the library and I was like oh I don't know
like that could be cool I don't have to find
out about it and so I did a little searching and ended up buying a Keurig
and with that Keurig we've been able to offer coffee and hot chocolate and some
cappuccinos too they love the French vanilla cappuccino let me tell you um
what's been interesting about this is that the first week I did it I had kids
coming in saying you know this is just so nice this is the library is such a
nice place it's so cozy and I said just because we're serving coffee and they're
like yeah yeah that's it like it's so cozy now and what I've seen is that I've
developed a different relationship with students with your patrons because they
are coming in for a purpose but they're finding out that the library is a pretty
cool place to be and so now the teachers when they come in for either that
instruction or to use the library space they're telling students hey you can get
coffees or hot chocolates or cappuccinos and you're welcome to use them you know
drink them while you're studying and that has just been a really nice thing
and they always thank me thank you thank you so much for having this coffee thank
you so much for the hot chocolate and I think it's really interesting because of
course I'm making some extra money for myself in the library not for myself or
the library for the students but what I've also done is I have gone to
whatever money we make the students determine how it's being spent so I
provide them with some opportunities we are in need of comfortable seating areas
we were primarily a library that just had a bunch of tables and chairs and
we're really switching over to that comfortable seating is I I know that the
public libraries have done years ago which is really wonderful um well we
didn't have a lot of comfortable seating and we've already bought some tables and
some chairs and some seat covers for some old chairs that were ripped with
that funding and so when the students got to pick I'm like okay do you want
this cafe table or this comfortable chair and they would pick and choose and
then I would order what they recommended because of course I want them to
use use the facilities so I let them have a say in what it is that we were
purchasing we actually have three questions oh my goodness um the first
one they just want to know how much do you charge for drinks oh so I get most
of my K cups on Amazon or I look for good deals on them but I determined that
it costs me about ninety cents to a dollar for an eight ounce cup of coffee
or hot chocolate and so I charge a dollar fifty and my students again we're
in a suburban area so they often go to Starbucks before school where it's five
or six dollars and a dollar fifty is cheap for them now I'm not making loads
and loads of money don't get me wrong I probably could have charged two dollars
and the kids would have been willing to pay that I felt like I wanted to keep it
as low as I could but over the course of the past school year like I said I've
been able to get some comfortable seating areas but the biggest the most
important thing to me is that the way their view of the library has changed
and that it's now a place to go and sit and hang out and get your homework done
and not necessarily just a place where your teacher makes you come check out
books and so I really like the way that has changed almost kind of you know
public libraries they always say we strive to be the third place like the
place you want to go if you're not going a home or school or work and it's kind
of like you're starting them off thinking of it in that way when they're
still in school and then maybe when they get older yes
and one of the things as as a past president of the Indiana Library
Federation i've been lucky enough to go around the state and talk to people from
all different types of libraries and i've been able to see really how similar
we are becoming to one another and that the school library still has
that teaching aspect of it that i know that not all public libraries do
although the academic libraries are very similar as well but we do we are trying
to make ourselves that destination and that we want kids to come there we want
kids to enjoy the space and we're really switching we'll talk
about that in our challenges that we've really switched how we use things I'm it
used to just be that classes would come in I would teach them research
instruction and then they would leave and that would be about it and it's
really my role has has definitely changed in the last 17 years so the
other two questions oh maybe okay so the first one was what
type of training do you do with the students to ensure that they shelf
correctly oh oh that's always a good one isn't it we take each of our students
and assign them different sections of the library I do have a genre-fied
library don't kill me I know the controversies with that I genre-fied
a couple of years ago I was dead set against it but my library Advisory
Committee thought that it was needed and I told them that I would give it a try
and that if it didn't work we would always go back to the old way and the
kids have loved it they've absolutely loved it the genre fiying and I don't
get questions like where are the scary books anymore where are the romance
novels where are the mystery stories where are the sports but I don't get any
of that I've only genre-fied the fiction
collection but each one of my students will have an area for which they are
responsible and we've taught each of them as as you know through the course
they're there every day so we've taught each of them how it looks what they do
we check it for them are they doing what they're supposed to be doing in terms of
shelving and that has worked really well for us we also have a little chart where
they sign off when they check their shelves so they're responsible for also
not only shelving that area but checking that area to make sure that all of the
books are in proper order and pulling out any that aren't in the correct order
and that is we've done that for a few years now and that has just been been
really well received the kids do a great job with it it takes them 10 or 15
minutes a week to check ski-in their shelves and then shelve the books as
well and then the other question that Katherine has
she had two of these questions was how did you go about establishing the
library Advisory Group is it a group of teens or students or is it adults or I put
out a call actually I have a call out right now to parents um it we have a
parent newsletter and so in our parent newsletter I put a little blurb out
there about we've got a library advisory committee if you want to be part of this
please let me know I put it on our school announcements for our students
and we also have a training a classroom management system there we go where I
can message all of the students so that has gone out to the students and then I
send an email out to our teachers to see who wanted wants to be involved with
that as well last year I had about 15 people who are willing to be a part of
that we had two parents I had six or seven kids and the rest were faculty
members I try and make sure that every department is represented so I did go
out and you know if science nobody responded that science department as I
go to our science department chair and say hey is there anybody who would be
interested in being representative to the library Advisory Committee they help
me with everything from purchasing they're also in place in case somebody
challenges there's a challenge in place regarding one of our books knock on wood
I haven't had those but that is in place and partly because we do have full
procedures and policies in place for that and again they just provide me with
ideas about what we could do in the library to make a library a more
inviting space I do appreciate with that library
Advisory Committee that they understand some of our staffing woes and they have
tried to be advocates for us in terms of hey we use the library all the time we
love the library what can we do to help you get additional staffing and so
they'd actually mobilized some volunteers for me to come in on a
regular basis and they've just been really instrumental with that and then
you know if we do something like coffee or hot chocolate
well it wasn't I didn't come up with the idea it's not my library it's the
library Advisory Committee I talked with students about what
they think that would be and it's my patrons library for me to make like they
wanted today so the other is we have a couple more questions
so someone wants to know Deb we will answer one or two more questions and then
we'll keep going ok so somebody was wondering would a public librarian ever
fit on such a Advisory Group at a school like would you ever consider having one
of your public librarians absolutely yeah and I'm smacking myself right now because why
didn't I do that so yes I will be contacting my local library to get we
have a teen librarian and I need to get that teen librarian involved and that
was just Thank You Katherine Thank You Katherine that is wonderful yes
absolutely there's definitely a place just like vice versa there's if you have
a library Advisory Committee there's always a place for your school librarian
as well and that would be wonderful if you would would extend that invitation
to them because again we'll talk later about our collaborations and
partnerships but that's a great way to do that is there a chance that or is
this something our Advisory Committee something that a lot of schools have a
lot of high schools do for their libraries or is it pretty unique to you guys so our Indiana um
evaluation rubric for our school librarians does put that there's a
library Advisory Committee in there great um and I was lucky enough to be
part of the development of that evaluation rubric for us our teachers
all have evaluation rubrics but because the nature of our job is slightly
different than a classroom teacher we did create a rubric specifically for
school librarians that schools may choose to use and so that was that is a
part of that evaluation so yeah okay let's forge ahead okay so I just
like to share pictures because who doesn't love pictures of kids so this
was an activity that we did as part of our makerspace where our students made
stress balls and I will tell you I also did this with our parents on
back-to-school night and the parents loved it as well so I could definitely
see that this would be a really great activity to do in any
setting any kind of library because who's not stressed these days right this
was a developmentally challenged class who was working on practicing their
directions skills reading different directions and following those and so
they were so excited to have those stress balls and make them but also for
the group of students the stress balls that that touching of the rice that's in
the balloon is really what is they love that feeling so making those was just it
was a lot of fun and something that could be easily taken to any library
situation and here's something we'd like directly stolen from public libraries so
thank you very much and I always thought it was kind of funny because Legos I
always thought of as being for elementary schools or maybe middle
schools but somebody said to try it in your high school and oh my gosh I'm
picking up Legos all day long because they love the Legos
they love building and creating and students high school students don't
often have the opportunity to do that and so just providing that opportunity
again providing that that destination for them has been really a lot of fun so
they do like that we have several other areas as well we have again similar to
public libraries so you guys know all this already but in school libraries
it's a relatively newer thing we should have learned from you a long time ago
but we have a puzzle area we have a coloring area with the adult coloring
craze we blow them up on our poster maker and and do that kind of thing with
the puzzling craze we have electronics so we have Little Bits and Snap Circuits
and we have those out for our students as well for them to just kind of play
with and then we just have a bunch of other stuff in our maker spaces well 3d
printing pens we don't have a 3d printer I don't I haven't gotten the money for
that maybe if we sell more coffee I'll be able to do that but and just even
anything from duct tape to cardboard building structures um in our makerspace
we do try to put out a different activity every week and then the kids
can choose to do whatever that sometimes it's button making that was a
fun one a couple weeks ago and I'm just gonna add a comment that I would
encourage public libraries to reach out to their schools and find out what
they're doing by way of makerspaces because that's a potential collaboration
or partnership absolutely absolutely definitely okay they're on it even
activities and we'll talk about programming in a little bit but even
creating those activities with all of those other things that we're doing it
becomes hard to do that aspect of it to put the makerspace activities together
but you may have better ideas than school librarians would on how we could
put things into place well there's more if you thought we were done there's a
little bit more cuz I still I was just trying to cover the basics but book
talks we do I know you do that individually with patrons or you might
do that with a group of children maybe later to go into schools and do it to go
into schools and we always need it because I'm always struggling trying to
figure out what I'm gonna say next Friday I've got a huge I've got 150 kids
coming in at different times of the day to do book talks and I've got to make
sure I have enough books for everybody on different subjects so that's great in
just general book checkouts you will have a lot of librarians who are on
especially at the elementary levels who are on a fixed schedule which means that
the classes come in weekly sometimes every four days to check out library
books their teachers leave them it becomes a prep period for their teachers
and the librarian is solely responsible for those kids for forty-five minutes to
an hour and that's a different setup they do a lot of book talks they do
different activities they do book checkouts but that would be something
that we would need to that we would love to have help with in terms of what do we
do with those students if you're on a fixed schedule so if public librarian
wanted to get into a school and do book talks do you have any recommendations
for I know it's different at every school so sorry we'll keep going
so um say that again I apologize we have somebody come in so it's okay
so book talks do you recommend they talk should they talk to the school talk to
the school library yes absolutely so again I'm just gonna go through this
next part relatively quickly but we're going to curate rep resources I have a
website where I pull together all sorts of information for our student classes
um we order all of the books and other materials that go into the library this
may include ebooks as well um which I know that's one way that I partner with
my Public Library I process all the books I do the creation of the maker
spaces which I talk about and we also deal with technology which I know a lot
of you are dealing with as well with troubleshooting or helping to print or
anything like that um this is just a picture of my students doing one of
those breakouts that I talked about where we've got clues and information
and they have to try and figure out how to break out or break into the box I
guess as the case may be and these are the Little Bits that I talked about with
circuitry in the makerspace so challenges that school librarians face
with which we need help um this whole transition to a digital
age with our students being one-on-one with their computers and we are looking
to try and figure out well if we don't have people coming to us for research
anymore what do we do how do we get them into the library so this is a great way
that my goodness you know the public libraries have been doing this for so
long that we need help with even even how to set up the library boy that's one
thing I'm really struggling with right now I'm getting the furniture and the
things that I want to have in place but I'm just kind of throwing it every which
way and not not having a formal plan of what should this look like and what
should my different spaces and areas be like and I know that the public
libraries have just done such a great job with that so that is definitely the
way public librarians could help with that situation our staffing is an issue
since 2008 in Indiana I can only speak to Indiana about this because I know
some other states have requirements that every school have a school librarian
Indiana does not have that but a majority of our school
libraries are staffed with instructional assistants without any library training
at all and I do want to mention staffing for just a second because Beth and I
were talking prior to this event that one of the things that school
superintendents or schools will do is they will think hey I could go to the
public library and just have the public library staff the school library and
that's a little bit of a slippery slope school librarians think oh wait why are
they taking my job that I want to get back into but then public librarians are
like hey the kids don't have any help there's somebody without training we
need to help them so we totally get that that dilemma there um but as you can see
and what I've talked about already we have a very different skill set when it
comes to the instruction of students and in that curricular instruction that
content area where again I think of myself as a teacher first and a
librarian second that's a very different thing so I'm just gonna mention that
I'm not saying one way to do it or not to do it but it is something that we
have to keep in mind in terms of the staffing that I'm I'm not sure that the
answer is just for public libraries to go in to take over schools and I don't
think that's a thought but that that we need to find a happy medium and maybe that is
instructing our principles and our superintendents and our school leaders
and our school board on what a school librarian does that would be very
helpful in being an advocate for school libraries someone wants to know if it would step
on toes to help with some basic training for aides likely like giving them
training in readers advisory and things like that if public library if public
librarians did that would it so that's a tough question so your question was
would it step on toes you know it would a little bit it would step on toes that
is one thing that we that in my school district I know I struggle with a little
bit because we do have instructional assistants in those
positions schools have a definite hierarchy in the way the schools work
and so a principal will be actually in charge of the library so there's a
principal in charge of me I run the library but that principal
ultimately makes the decisions as to what occurs in the library so the
principal has made a decision that we're going to have an instructional assistant
in the library and so then I try not to step on toes by even myself and my own
school district I don't train those instructional assistants because they're
under the direct supervision of the principal what is an instructinal assistant a person who works part-time
not full-time because of the employee laws and everything usually they work
part-time and their job is to help with instruction of students but not teaching
them but to help if they have questions or they don't understand an assignment
sometimes they're aides that are assigned one-to-one with students if there's a
physical disability or something like that but then it's also it's it's a
school title for for an assistant position so I would think it would be
like a circulation clerk okay would not have full library training right except
for what they got on the job and so it would be similar to a circulation clerk
who would then sometimes be expected to instruct students though on library
knowledge um funding funding is a huge issue that challenge that school
libraries face and I've got to tell you because this is one way that we need
help last night one of my friends was on Facebook and posted something about how
she wishes that she were able to get books about States into the hands of her
students but she didn't have the thousand dollars that it was going to
take and she's in charge of four schools she didn't have the thousand dollars
that it was going to take to be able to buy the set of books that she wanted to
give to her students that she could rotate amongst the four
schools I said have you contacted your Public Library to see what your Public
Library could help you with in that regard and she was like oh yeah yeah
that's a great idea and so she was going to contact the Public Library to help
with that that's one way there are often times um you'd be amazed at the number
of school libraries that have no budgets at all
I mean none and that is really someplace that's where they need help so it might
be if you have in Indiana we have the Young Hoosier books and we have the
Elliott Rosewater Award for high school libraries make sure you have sets of
those on hand so that if we're only able to purchase one set we can send students
to the Public Library to get more sets of books to be able to read what they
want to read that would be a huge help to to school libraries um and
then overall there's a general lack of understanding about what school
librarians do and what they face I know that there's a general lack of
understanding about what librarians do in general so I get that and that's
where I think our partnership can be so strong and being advocates for one
another so that we can make sure that we're helping one another even you know
something simple is what I just said you know hey you contact your public library
and they should be able to help you with that would be a really helpful situation
Suzanne wants to know if it would be insulting to offer weeded materials to
school libraries especially those with no budgets
it depends some schools would absolutely love that and be able to have some of
those weeded books that would be really helpful to them other school libraries again
I'm very lucky I have a nice book budget available for my students so I'm always
weeding to make sure I have enough space for for the new books that are coming in
for the students and I wouldn't be able to take them but there are a lot of
schools that have no budget that that would be a great collaboration with them
if you are getting ready rid of multiple copies or yeah I mean that would
definitely be worth a contact that's a great question and it would
definitely not step on toes or no that would be great because there are a lot
of libraries that we just love that mm-hmm or she also suggests giving them
first dibs at your books at the library public library book sale yeah oh yeah
absolutely absolutely so we can talk about um I said school librarians need
your help and and we really do we we all need one another again with that concept
of libraries being so similar to one another now that we're really morphing
into supporting one another and as Beth just said with the the you know you're
creating a different space that third place and that then they're going to
know that when they go into a public library it's gonna be something very
familiar and comforting to them where they may have started that out when they
were young and in kindergarten and if their school libraries are supportive of
them and have a great place for them then they'll just morph right into as
adults or teens or you know users they'll they'll become your great
patrons and I think that that's a really great way to build a patron base is by
having that start with the school library and obviously when when kids are
really young they're visiting the public library with all of the great story
times and the books and I know I was in there constantly with my own children so
definitely um so we're gonna talk now about how you can approach the school
librarian because I noticed that several things like would it bother school
librarians or would it hurt their feelings I would it step on their toes
and I so appreciate that people are aware of that that that could occur um
so it does become difficult um school librarians we're on our own we're by
ourselves we don't have other people to work with we don't have other people who
know our students as well as we do in terms of in the within the library and
how the library works so there's a few ways that we can can approach this and
I've kind of put it into collaboration partnerships and programming and I want
to talk about each one of those just a little bit so with collaboration with a
school library and we talk about collaborating with teachers what we
really mean is that we want to work together hand-in-hand on a project with
you so that could be that as I my example here is I've got my group of
students who broke out of the breakout box you can come in and and work with us
on creating these breakout boxes it takes me hours and hours and hours and
hours and hours to create a scenario for the breakout boxes but if I have
somebody else working on it with me um I was lucky enough actually to pull
in a high school librarian in my neighboring school that's about seven or
eight miles away from me and we got together and worked on a breakout for
the book To Kill a Mockingbird because for me to do it on my own was just
overwhelming but when you start working together and you know pulling ideas off
of one another it came together rather quickly and so we were really surprised
where normally it would take us seven or eight hours to create something we
created it in about two and so just that type of collaborative nature of having
someone else to bounce ideas off of to work together is just huge and school
librarians and in our students we won't ever be able to leave the school really
to go to the public library unless you're lucky enough to be within walking
distance ours is a little bit farther away that further away than that so I
don't have that opportunity but anything you do is going to need to be within the
school itself so that would be this Public Library and coming into the
school librarian which would also mean then there needs to be understanding
from your directors that there's and I'm sure there are there is that
understanding but they would need to allow people time to come into the
library to work together on a collaborative project um so I'm gonna
put a question out there to you guys and just chime in if you can what other ways
could do you think of that let me start over what other ways can you think of
that we could collaborate with one another multiple attendees typing that's always good
while they type can I ask so sometimes sometimes public librarians have a hard
time getting in touch with their school librarian
do you have any recommendations like are there times of day tend to be better for
teacher librarians or is their phone better than email or vice versa okay so
I'm gonna speak for me sure but I think I do speak for for other people as well
um don't call me I can't ever get back to a phone call yeah I've got a phone
call right now sitting on my voicemail that I need to get care take care of and
I have been swamped from 6:45 a.m. when I get there until four or five o'clock
when I leave keeping in mind that school is out at 2:50 so you know and and I
can't ever get back to people because I'm so busy trying to create things for
the library that I don't have time to call people so email is always great the
other thing is that you know this is just common sense I guess but anytime
you want to work with someone anytime I want to work with one of our teachers I
always show them how I'm gonna make it easier for them so if you came to a
school librarian and said hey I want to collaborate with you on this breakout
project and I want you to do this this this and this the school librarians
gonna go ah no I don't have time for that but if you say things like here's
how I can help or here's how I could make this better or here's how I'd like
to work with you on or I already have this great idea yes can I bring it to you yes and we'd be
like oh my goodness yes thank you so much that would be wonderful
and so that that collaboration out by no means am I saying do all the work
because that's not what I mean but bringing that preformed idea if you just
go to a librarian and say hey I want to collaborate with you how do you think we
should do that we're gonna I don't know but when you said hey could they be in
your library Advisory Committee and like Oh awesome
or hey could they give you weeded books yes that's great those are all ways that
we can work together on that and I love the suggestions that were brought forth
already do you want me to read you a couple of the ideas yes sir that would
be wonderful helping set up book clubs for teen
yes I love it see we paid for an organizer to go to the high school and
in return they opened it up for the parents to come also oh very nice we do many field trips with our local
schools students come in and tour the library to familiarize themselves that's
great that you have the opportunity to be able to do that and if you if you can
get kids there into your building wonderful I love that concept I used to
be able to do that a little bit easier a few years ago and and field trips are
kind of limited now so I love that idea yeah well here's a school librarian's
perspective as a school librarian I reached out to our public library then
stationed myself there on our e-learning days so there was a school employee
located where families might go for internet access on a day schools were
closed that is wonderful so an e-learning day is something that
Indiana has started where if schools have snow days closed for some sort of
weather we always have to make those days up at a later time but with an
e-learning day we just tell the kids it's not a snow day it's an e-learning
day and now you're going to have to do everything online for our students who
don't have access to maybe you don't have broadband services at home going to
the public library is great because then they can get everything they need they
can get the help they need and the school librarian posted there it's great
great way to use the resources and share the resources I love it I'm just going to skim through a few other
ones Suzanne used to go to her school library to get book talks all right
here's another quite a few libraries are starting to do this and actually our
third webinar which is I believe in early December about school and library
partnerships is gonna be about this - but here's a library who is giving
students letting them use your school IDs as their library card number oh well
to access digital databases sorry that's and I'll talk about that next
okay so there's a few more great things everybody who's participating can read
through those ideas yeah and hopefully you're able to get a lot of ideas from
from that I always love to to share those ideas and resources so the next
part of it is those partnerships and the way I
difference between the collaboration and the partnerships the collaboration we're
really working together hand in hand figuring something out together and
putting it forth to our patrons with the partnerships that that student ID is a
great way to remember that all of our students in my school district and this
is my beautiful public library I love at the Avon Washington Township Public
Library great staff great director just really we've had some great partnerships
but one of the things that they've done is they have used the student barcodes
student barcodes student ID numbers as their library card we have some
additional digits in front of that but we let the kids know what that is and
then the kids have access to all of their digital resources so they can't
actually use it to come in and get print materials but they do use it for
Overdrive which sharing that has been wonderful um our school does have
Overdrive as well we just started a new pilot with it but we've been able to if
we don't have it in one place we go to the other place which is just a
collection absolutely that's just exactly what I do as well
they've got additional research databases that we don't have they have
Zinio and Hoopla and I've been able to show all of that to our students again
through that kind of direct instruction time that I have with them and then
they've been able to see what resources the public library has available for
them just by using their student ID number and so that is a fabulous way to
to provide a partnership with with student or with school librarians um and
I always think again of partnerships like what can what can the Public
Library do to benefit the students and don't think of benefiting you know the
librarian but what can we do to benefit the students because that's what we
really do is putting our students forth so again a quick question what do you do
in terms of partnerships so go ahead and type partnerships that you have we've
already got the student ID number from someone else so what else is it that you
do and why don't we let them type and that's what I was gonna do I was gonna
let you type and you can read through those and hopefully get some ideas from
one another so that you'll be able to to share those or glean ideas from
somewhere else Suzanne mentioned we'll capture this chat and share that
with you guys - great great I can't because I can't see the chat so I'm
really excited to see that so the last thing I want to talk about in ways that
school librarians could use your help is with programming the public library has
such a long history of programming and different programs that you develop and
guest speakers that you bring in and it's just amazing that that resource
that you have school librarians are relatively new to that that's something
that we haven't had a lot of training on but again in creating that third space
we're trying to figure that out um so one of the ways we do that is with our
maker spaces but or maybe bringing in an author visit that's probably the typical
ways that we will do any kind of programming but boy would I love help
with that that is one way with your specific programs that you have so you
could come in over lunch periods lunch times and have students come in during
lunches and have a program that would be going on throughout those lunch times
that could be advertised both in the public library and in the schools with
that partnership it could be that it's something done after school it could be
something done before school and that could be something started at the school
library and continued at the public library for a second part of that and
this is an area where I will say that I would love help with this and I haven't
done a lot with that and I really need to and so that's one of the things I
think about is how could we collaborate boy I'd love somebody to come in and
help me with the programming or do a program for me and have it running and
available and and that would be fabulous so that programming is another aspect of
it again with everything that we're doing I know that you already have some
programs ready to go just bringing those into the library would be a huge help so
um that is my part of it right now and so let's finish up with any other
questions or comments that people have I know that we're nearing our time or just
a little bit look at that so I want to be aware of your time I do
want to say in case people do have to leave I greatly appreciate you taking
your time today I can't wait to see what's on the chat as well but what
other questions might you have and if do we want to do the last part here I am
going while you guys if anybody has questions while you're asking them I'm
going to go ahead and put the LEU form up here for you guys to download there
it is so you just click right on that and then select download files and you
can be downloading your LEU certificates as we answer questions potentially it
looks like we have tons and tons of great ideas someone wants to know would
any elementary school librarians be open for public librarians coming in to do
programming I can't see why not I think it would be great um so with schools the
only thing that you would have to do is you would have to make sure that you're
following their school protocols for safety um for our school you have to
have a photo ID and you have to sign in you have to name have a nametag on but I
can't imagine that there's an elementary school that wouldn't be open to that I
think that that would be wonderful now do be aware that if you have classes
coming in and you're in an elementary school you might be doing that program
five or six times in a day so just keep that in mind if you're doing that
because we do want to make sure that we like to see all of our kids throughout
the course of the day or set up something that would work for that
school librarian in terms of the schedule school libraries are very very
schedule heavy you know a school is very schedule heavy and we make sure we
follow all the schedules so sometimes a school or a public librarian might come
in and if you're five or ten minutes late well we've already had to start the
class and get everybody going and that would cause problems for us so you want
to make sure that you're just aware of that schedule not that you would do that
but just that um that we're very schedule conscious when I have guest
speakers come in and they're coming in like two minutes before the bell rings
with the kids coming in we start to panic a little bit so but that is a
great suggestion I would say just try to talk to them and find out what
times work for them - because it's not quite as like elementary school they
don't have as many after-school opportunities or during lunch might be a
little more difficult absolutely yes but talk to them and they might have some
ideas yes and what if we can't get the focus this is a technical issue your
screen says it's not supported you know what I will if you can email me I'm
gonna put my email address in here right now and I will send it to you and I can
just send that file to you so if you're not able to access that just email me
directly and I will grab it for you I do also have a survey for you all an
evaluation so I'm going to put that in the chat box also so if you have a
second go go fill that out shouldn't take too long let's see if we have any
other questions okay I think we're done I don't think we have a whole lot more
questions um there was so much information so much great stuff we could
have gone on longer so everybody thank you for your patience with our technical
issues earlier and thank you everyone for your time and for listening um is it
okay if we put my email address up and if people would like to contact me
that's fine you want I think you can just might type in there okay so Robin
is also putting her email address up if anybody who wants to is it working yeah
yeah anybody wants to contact her directly I'm going to leave this LEU
certificate screen up for you guys for another minute or two but we're gonna go
ahead and mute the chat or mute the microphone so one more thanks to Robyn
and thanks to all for listening and we'll talk to you the next time.
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