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!

Streaming Book Trailers in the Library

Today at Rider I learned how to stream a group of book trailers over the TV in the library. Mrs. M had a file of book trailers, but had not figured out how to display them yet. She wanted to have them playing before school and during lunch in the library to advertise the new fiction titles available to check-out.

After some trouble-shooting, I was able to get them up and running! Here are some simple steps you can follow if you would like to do the same in your library:

1. First, download from the internet or create your own book trailers using animoto.
2. Save your video files to "My Videos" on your computer.
3. Open Windows Media Player and create a new playlist.
4. On the Windows Media Player screen, click on "Videos"and then drag each video you want to use to your newly-created playlist.
5. Once you have finished addding videos, double-click on your playlist and it will automatically begin playing.
6. You will want to turn on "Shuffle" so the playlist will continue to play instead of stopping after each video finishes.

Only seconds after I had started streaming the book trailers, students were already watching them! I cannot wait to try this in my own library. What a great way to advertise!

During the next few weeks, I will be searching for and creating book trailers for Mrs. M to add to her playlist.

Learning more each day!

Today I spent a half-day at Rider. Although it was a short amount of time, I was able to accomplish quite a bit! I am really enjoying my time here with Mrs. M because she treats me as if I were on staff with her.

Mrs. M is also the Student Council and National Honor Society advisor at Rider. Today, her student council members were having a lunch meeting, and to kick off the new semester, Mrs. M ordered pizza for them. Since she had to go pick up the pizza, she left me to do a presentation for one of the English classes. (I guess I must be doing something right if she felt comfortable doing that!)

The presentation skills I have learned so far have really helped me with presentations at my school. Yesterday, I did a presentation on databases to the 5th graders at my school and I formatted the presentation similarly to how Mrs. M does at Rider. The presentation went remarkably well and the kids did great! I am looking forward to learning more at Rider this semester that will help me on my own campus.

I also worked on redoing the call numbers labels in the 500 section and I got through 529! Progress is being made!

Databases, Databases, & More Databases!

Today I spent the entire day at Rider in the library. We had freshman and sophomore English classes coming in throughout the day for tutorials on how to use the subscription databases and other internet sites that provide reliable sources. Mrs. M taught a tutorial lesson, and then she allowed me to teach a couple. I did surprisingly well for it to be my first time to present to high school students! I hope to get other opportunities to present during the remainder of my internship.

I also began working on redoing the call numbers for the 500's section. Mrs. M showed me how to edit call numbers in her library management software (Follett) and then she allowed me to work on it. I hope to be able to complete the 500's and get a good start on the 600's before my time at Rider is finished.

Week 1

This week was the first week I spent time in the RHS library since May 2009 when I graduated from high school. Walking down the hallways brought back lots of memories and each time I heard the bell ring, I still felt the need to rush to my next class.

Wednesday.

Mrs. M did a presentation on using databases for a freshmen English class. The students were to use the databases and other recommended sites to find information for a research project. I was able to assist by navigating through the database and websites while Mrs. M spoke to the class. Next week, she will be presenting to another class. Each class has several sections, so she is giving me the opportunity to do one of the presentations. I am looking forward to it!

Also on Wednesday, Mrs. M taught me how to use her circulation system. One of her student library aides had weeded out all of the classic titles from the fiction section so they could be replaced with newer copies with more appealing covers. I was able to create a list of the titles by scanning the books in to the computer for Mrs. M. Then she was able to email the list to her book buyer to create a quote for replacement books. This is something I did not know librarians were able to do! I always create the quotes myself and then get them approved before purchasing. The book buyer that Mrs. M uses will be coming to the library soon, and I am looking forward to meeting her! Maybe I can use her in my library at Christ Academy.

Friday.

On Friday, I spent time looking at the budget reports that Mrs. M receives each month. She showed me how she keeps track of expenses and revenue, and also explained how late fines are handled in her library. I learned that collecting late fines in a school library is very difficult because there are not a lot of consequences for students who do not pay the fines. Mrs. M also explained to me the process for ordering in her library. She must turn orders in to get approval and the items are then purchased through the front office.

One subscription Mrs. M has was very interesting to me and something I believe my school could use. "NetSupport School" is a classroom management tool that allows teachers/librarians to monitor the content on each computer in their classroom/library. It seemed fairly affordable after looking at the budget, and I will definitely be talking to my IT director at Christ Academy about this program when I return to school!
Check Out NetSupport School

Introduction

My name is Emily Adams and I am the Librarian at Christ Academy (CA) in Wichita Falls, Texas. When I took the job at CA, I enrolled in the Information and Library Services degree program through the University of Maine at Augusta. I am happy to say that I have finished my coursework and will be completing the final step of the program, an internship at a Library, this semester!

This semester I will be interning at Rider High School in Wichita Falls, Texas with my former Librarian and mentor, Mrs. Sally Mroczkowski. I am thrilled to be working with a lady that had such an impact on my high school career!

At CA, I work mostly with elementary students because they make up the majority of the school's student population. During this internship, I hope to learn more about how a secondary library functions and how to appeal to secondary students on my campus.