Final Days

This week is my last week at Rider High School. I will have completed 120+ hours on Friday. This week, I have been focusing on finishing up my re-labeling project in the 500s section. As of today, I am FINISHED!

I have also learned about shelf-blocking this week. After I completed the new call number labels for the 500s, I went back and blocked each shelf - and they look good if I do say so myself! :-) Shelf-blocking is not something I remember talking about in my ILS classes, but Mrs. M said that most librarians find it very important. In order to "block" a shelf, each book is pulled forward to the edge of the shelf. There are also rules for books that do not fit properly on the shelf. After learning about shelf-blocking, I went back to my school library and realized it would be very difficult to keep my shelves blocked. Most of my patrons are elementary students, and I feel we are successful if they can use their shelf-markers and make sure the books get put back on the right shelf! However, after seeing Mrs. M's nice blocked shelves, I will definitely continue to notice how messy mine look compared to hers.

My experience at Rider has been a great one. I have learned a lot and I am going to miss spending time with Mrs. M! I will continue to email her and keep in touch though - she only thinks she is getting rid of me. ;-)

Social Media Woes...

Finally, after two weeks of working on it, I have made and synced a Facebook and a Twitter account for the Rider Library. This proved to be more work than I thought it would be. My first post on these social media sites was made last night. I have turned over the user names and passwords to Mrs. M so she can continue to use these tools to promote the library to her students and staff members.

This week, I have been working with Mrs. M to teach a freshman English class how to find articles and cite sources for their term theme assignment. Freshman year is the first year that students are required to complete a term theme, so everything is new to them. Monday, they learned how to cite and book and how to make notecards from a source. Tuesday, they learned how to use two online resources, Britannica Online and EBSCO Databases. And today, the students worked on finding their 3 sources. Once they found their sources and printed them, they spent time highlighting and categorizing important information from the articles.

Today, I worked one-on-one with a student who had been absent the last two days. We were able to get him completely caught up so he can have a good start on his term theme assignment.

Teaching this week has been a very good experience for me and has once again, given me ideas of how to present information to my students at school - even though they are much younger. It has also confirmed that I need to work in a school library! I am very passionate about helping students succeed, and enjoy anytime I get to be a part of them learning something new.

As for my relabeling project...I am up to 592 in the 500's section! Woohoo! I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! :-)

Social Media...YIKES

So, last week I was to work on creating library accounts for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This is part of my internship project, "Promoting Our Library Programming in the Digital Age". However, I ran into a few snags that have set me back. Mrs. M and I both realized that we needed to set up the accounts without personalizing them to fit either one of us. What I mean, is that we do not want the Rider Library accounts to have our personal information, because if a new librarian ever took over, we would want her to be able to use the same social media accounts. This has required us to do some thinking and planning! We have now set up a NEW email address that is very generic, and have tied the accounts to it. This week, I will continue to work on learning how to utilize these social media tools to advertise items in the library.

Mrs. M and I spoke with several high school students who are faithful library users. They seemed very excited about the possibility of receiving "tweets" when new books arrive. They also like the idea of creating a social media community where rider library users can discuss what they are reading.

This week, I have also worked on cataloging new fiction materials for the library. I will post photos of these new titles on Instagram/Facebook/Twitter as soon as I learn how to! :-)

Troubleshooting with social media is helping me learn how I could use it in my school library as advertisement as well. I hope to set up a Christ Academy social media accounts for the next school year!

Project: Social Media

This week, Mrs. M assigned me to work on the social media aspect of the Rider Library. She gave me the task of creating Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts so that she can use them interchangeably at school. This task is a part of my internship project, "Promoting Our Library Programming in the Digital Age". I, myself, do not have any experience with Twitter or Instagram, so I am interested to see how all three can be used together to promote the library.

I will have to work on this project at home, because the school has all social media sites blocked so that students do not access them on school computers throughout the school day. Although it is blocked on the school computers, students can still access social media sites via their cell phone if they have a data plan, so using these sites for advertisement is still effective for many students. Those without data plans can access the library's social media sites at home.

I will post more about the process I went through to create these accounts once they are complete!

Cataloging at Rider

This week I learned the process of cataloging new books in the Rider Library. There are several steps involved, but I found their system much easier than the one I use at Christ Academy. Rider uses Follett Library Management, which allows the librarian to search for new records straight from the library management screen. This was a luxury for me, because I am required to search for MARC records through the Library of Congress, or create my own entries. I only wish my campus would switch to Follett!

Mrs. M allowed me to catalog a section of new books that she received from her book rep. These were sample titles that were published a few years ago, but still great additions to the library! There is nothing like looking through a new book! I just love it!

Today, I also helped several seniors with a research project over The Great Gatsby. This was the first class I have seen that was required to use at least one book in their research. All of the other classes I have seen have strictly used the databases and internet for their research. I was able to practice my "reference interview" skills during this class period because the students did not know how to search for books in the library.

What a great week it has been at Rider! I will not be interning on Friday, because my school is having a guest author visit all day. She will be leading book talks and writing workshops - it is sure to be a fun day!

TGIF! :-)

Today was a rather low-key day in the library. We had several classes come in to do research, but at this point, they were working very independently. The majority of my time I spent working on the call numbers and labels. The school counselors held a "Coffee with the Counselors" meeting in the library this morning, and it was very interesting to listen to the interactions between the counselors, administrators and parents.

Today I will giving a presentation to 5th graders at Christ Academy on how to use Glogster, a digital poster-making tool. I feel very confident that I can give a quality presentation with the skills I am learning by interning in the Rider library.

I must be doing something right!

This morning when I arrived at Rider, Mrs. K, the woman who usually opens the library, was not there, so the library was locked. Mrs. M gets there a little later, so I just decided to wait in the hallway until she arrived. The school testing coordinator arrived soon after me and asked me to open the library and supervise until Mrs. M arrived. I guess I must me doing something right to receive that kind of responsibility! I turned on computers, checked-in books, etc to help get the day started.

Today I taught two classes how to do database research as well as how to use "NoodleTools" to format their citations and works cited page. I am feeling more and more comfortable speaking in front of secondary students. Teaching these mini lessons is really helping me because I am learning new ways to present information to students. It has been great to get to watch Mrs. M present, and then try it myself. 

I have now completed changing the call number labels through 569! Progress!