Minor Musings

(more from the vault – next month, fresher stuff!)

Books, Reading, Etc.

• New fodder for the annual “Read A Good Movie” display – hoping to also plan some great book-to-movie discussions.
• Great collection of booky news on Book Riot.
• Share these book related tumblrs with your students (maybe they’ll get inspired)
• Working in a high school you need to stay on top of the New Adult genre, right?  Here’s a good start.
• I love fairy tale retellings.  Stacked has a list I’m dying to tackle.
• Even though we don’t teach diagramming sentences any more, this set of famous first lines may interest students.

School Stuff

• As we talk to students at the beginning of the year, think about how we approach the digital footprint question.  And then talk about adjusting their privacy settings.
• 5 Research-Based Tips for Providing Students with Meaningful Feedback – aka “something to remember when research season starts and I’m grading all those bibliographies!”
• Starting to think about how to create good tutorials for our students using the iPad (we’re a 1:1 school).  This may help.
• We’re moving to Google mail (not Gmail) to make Google Drive access easier.  I’m loving these tips on how to use Drive better!
• Do you teach these 5 Steps to Electronic Notetaking Success?  I’m still looking for the perfect online Cornell method app.
• Interactive maps like this one can be replicated by our students for local history, right? What about  virtual museums?
• Wondering what will be expected at the next level?  ACRL is creating new a information literacy framework. I’ll be watching/learning.
• NAIS lists the 25 Factors Great Teachers Have in Common.  Something to ponder as school starts.
• Hugely difficult even for adults: finding information you can trust.  Hoping our students know we can help!
• Good advice: think beyond the platform.

Etc.

• I don’t use Pocket (yet?) but am a fan of Readability.  Which do you prefer?
• Great playlist of TED talks on Our Digital Lives.
• Over the years I’ve scooped, livebindered, diigo’d and been delicious… should I now flip?

The upside (maybe) and other collection thoughts

In my last post, I mentioned that I hate shelving.  The upside, besides nice, neat shelves with books that are findable is that it’s a great way to look at your collection, particularly if there’s a research project ongoing (inventory is another great tool, and if you’re not doing an annual inventory, shame on you!).  The collections at three of the four schools I’ve worked at have been… neglected.  There are many wonderful books on the shelves, or they would be wonderful if we were still in the 1980s (or an earlier decade).

At my last school, there were a number of books published in the late teens-early 20s of the last century.  Now, that part of the  collection should be an automatic “weed” right?  Not so fast there! The 11th grade history class was entitled “The Twentieth Century World” and the initial focus is on the Treaty of Versailles, which essentially sets up the entire political world we now inhabit, and those books? They were written by people who were at the talks, crafting the treaty.  So while in the 90s or 80s those may have seemed outdated, by the early 00s, they were primary source materials.

Weeding, it’s tricky!

I saw this tweet a while ago,

Twitter / miss_print: Some weeding criteria I’ve … via kwout

and immediately thought, “oh my! wouldn’t that be nice…” The reality is that in a school, you can’t be quite that draconian.  You can do what we’re doing, which is replacing old versions of books like poetry – books we need, but are just so old the students don’t want to use them – and really evaluating the history and social sciences selections.  We did a massive weed of the literary criticism (no longer used) and the science collection already, which dropped about 6,000 volumes from our shelves.  My guess? We’ll probably weed another 3-4,000 this year.  And we’re using Thrift Books to help ease the guilt of getting rid of some of these books.

Without doing shelving, I wouldn’t really be looking at the books that we have, comparing what’s being used for research and what’s still sitting there – too old, too decrepit or just too out-of-date.  So there is an upside… maybe.

I read…

Ok, to be honest, I almost titled this post “iRead” but I don’t want to jump on any bandwagons!

So, yes, I read.  A lot.  It’s one of my few real talents – reading, reading, reading.  Since January I’ve read 180 books (well… started 180 books.  some were so bad I couldn’t finish) in a variety of genres and for a variety of audiences.  Format, on the other hand, was limited to print and ebook.  Frankly, I prefer print but for ARC/ARE books, I’ll accept (grudgingly) the e version.  When I left my last school, several friends banded together and bought me a Kindle, making it easier to get e books.  At my current school I have an iPad (there’s a 1:1 program) but I never read on that.

Here’s the thing: there’s something wonderfully immersive about a print book.  I open the book up… dive into the world the author has created (that’s true even for non-fiction books)… and woe betide any animal, human or feline, who disturbs me.  When I’m reading on my Kindle, I don’t feel as immersed.

Last year I was given a copy of the recent Brown/Haverford/Trinity/a few other schools e-book survey.  The results didn’t surprise me, but I suspect they surprised the administrators: students don’t want to go e: they prefer print for both research and pleasure reading (sorry, no link).  The Chronicle reported something similar  in 2013, and Publisher’s Weekly  and the Financial Times did the same in 2014.

And in a completely unscientific survey of 100 students at Porter’s (nearly 1/3 of the student body), the girls said the same: give us print, please.

As mentioned earlier, we have a 1:1 program, with a mandate from the administration that if a textbook is available in e format, that’s what the students should buy.  I’ve heard from some parents, and not a few students, that it works for them with math and science texts, but for their English books?  Please, can we have print?  Some are buying two versions, the e and the print, so that they can read in their preferred format and still comply with school requirements.

How has this affected our collection?  We subscribe to Credo Reference and EBSCO’s Academic E-books, giving the students a wide range of books for research.  They’re pretty heavily used, which is great because we certainly couldn’t keep that many books on hand! It’s also allowed us to remove older books from the collection, knowing that the information is covered in the online collection (and eliminating the “wow – this book might just fall apart in my hands” factor).  But in terms of the fiction collection, we’re still going strong with print.

Last [academic] year I was a panelist for a conference discussion on ebooks.  One of the other panelists uses Axis 360 at her school and has great success; part of that is because she has a co-ed population and it’s a great way to get sensitive books into the hands of readers (by “sensitive” I mean GLBTQCA* books, or books about health/emotional issues… and quite possibly “girl” books being read by boys).  If I had that population, it might work better at Porter’s.  The previous librarian subscribed to some Follett shelf books, and there are six Kindles with books loaded (we even borrowed the themed Kindle idea espoused by Courtney Lewis at Wyoming Seminary.  They’re a hard sell here!

Still, as we move forward into AY15, we’ll be thinking more about this question and trying to see what combination works best with our students.  Note: our students.  As the previous paragraph illustrates, YMMV when introducing ebooks into your collection.  Some schools just force them down students throats (Cushing Academy, I’m looking at you!) but to me, that feels wrong.  Far better is to keep taking the pulse of the students, seeing what they want and what’s out there (devices, programs, availability, etc.).

How are you dealing with this issue/conundrum?  And how do uRead?

Minor Musings

I promise: this blog will be better attended in the coming weeks and months.  In the meantime, enjoy these links and ideas that I’ve tucked away since, oh, January…

Books, Reading, Etc.

• There’s been a lot of talk about reading socially – let’s not forget that what we e-read isn’t all that private.
• BookRiot published a list of 60 YA books to read between January and June.  I’ve read 15… you?
• As part of our Big Collection Upgrade, tagging the fiction selection has been on my mind.  This list of genres will definitely help!
• The #weneeddiversebooks movement has garnered a lot of interest: Joyce does a good initial round-up, and Wendy takes on what happened at ALA.
• I haven’t been back to Oxford in years, but the Story Museum is a great reason to return.

School Stuff

• We bought Twitterature for work, and I’m hoping that some of our English teachers take on the challenge (perhaps not Beowulf, but other books?).
• Joyce highlighted Buncee a few months ago; maybe for tutorials or resource guides?
• We’re going to create a writing table in the library, encouraging students to write notes and letters.  I picked up some great paper in Montreal, and these formal sets are piquing my interest (so do the ideas in the post).
• Trying to figure out ways to introduce these Super Searcher Tips to students, since we have no real class time with them.
• I’m sharing this article, What do College Professors Want from Incoming High School Graduates, with my faculty. And, with luck, we can do a Professional Development session using this quiz so they understand the students take on research.
• I used an Office template for our annual report, then published to Issuu.  These look like some great alternatives.
• Is anyone using Postach.io with Evernote? Wondering if that would be a good way to push content to the school.

Etc.

• Are you paranoid about digital security? Maybe you should be… (and if you think your identities aren’t linked, think again; here’s why we can’t find out what They know)
• While at ALA I had lunch with Dan Cahoy and talked about copyright; this article highlights the biggest problem about the “rules” (via)
• If you don’t follow Barbara Fister, you should.  This post applies to school libraries as well as academic.

The end is nigh…

Every so often I think, “you are seriously neglecting your blog!” and immediately feel guilty – all those posts I meant to do that simply don’t get posted because “they” haven’t perfected thought-to-text blogging yet.  I do have an excuse, an oldie but goodie: I’ve been incredibly busy.

Working in a boarding school brings about a special time commitment.  There are the obvious ones, like long open hours (8-5:30 M-F) and sit-down dinners.  Add in weekend duty, evening study hall supervision, plus required attendance at various events… Some weeks, it’s a 7-day workweek with days that stretch from 8am to 9:30pm.  So you can see where “busy” comes from.  Lucky for me, I don’t coach a sport! Towards the end of the year there are even more traditions taking place (all schools have them, to one degree or another), all leading to the passing of the school’s leadership to another group of students, ensuring continuity of programs and activities and Tradition and school ethos.   This is my fourth school, so I’m used to much of this, but each school requires a certain learning curve.

My goal for this first year was to take things somewhat easily, starting to create an embedded program and assessing the collection.  Well…. that didn’t exactly happen.  In addition to that, and creating opportunities for students to use the library that aren’t study related or class related, we embarked on a very ambitious project: changing from Dewey to Library of Congress.  The reality is that as a college-preparatory school, we needed to do this.  It’s also given us the opportunity to weed nearly 8,000 volumes already, with more to follow next year.

Graduation is in three weeks (well, a little less than that) and between now and then we have to finish the changeover and find the missing items (“missing” meaning “we printed a new spine label but the book’s not on the shelf… yet”), prepare the suggested summer reading Resource Guide, prepare summer book and supply orders, attend the final Convocation, year-end performances and Traditions, tidy the workroom and get things ready for the summer break.  Oh, and did I mention that the library is now handling the online book ordering site for textbooks?

I’d blog more, but I have three classes worth of bibliographies to assess and an ereader textbook to create for an English teacher.  Before Monday.

The end is truly nigh… and getting nigher.

Minor Musings

Books, Reading, Etc.

• Just discovered Go Book Yourself.  Might be interesting to try to emulate for school, but definitely I’m recommending this to friends and students!
• If you missed this Atlantic article on how Tablets Make It Nearly Impossible for Kids to get Lost in a Story, go read it now.

School Stuff

• We did a Before I Die wall in October… what about using Padlet all year long for similar things?
• I’ve always been a huge fan of Cornell notes (even before I knew what they were) and now there’s Classmint for digital versions.  A “must play with” for me!

Etc.

• Are you reading the Journal of Creative Library Practice?  You should be.
• This video of the creation of a paiting via iPad is just very, very cool.
• Curation’s meaning then and now.
• When you work in a school library, finding focus can be difficult (too many interruptions).  How can you tweak this?

More data links (via) – to compliment the Data Driven post

• Fieldtripearth
• Graphingstories
• Floorplanner
• Educreations
• 3dtin

My year in reading

This year saw some major changes in my life (new job, new town/state, new house) take away from my time reading, so rather than a book a day, it was a book every 1.12 days (325 completed).  In 2012 I spent a lot of time reading YA Nonfiction for YALSA, while in 2013 I started with three months of First Novel reading while I worked with the Center for Fiction (which sponsors the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize);  several reviews have appeared on the Adult Books 4 Teens blog, and I’ve got three books to review for them on my nightstand. My GoodReads followers list keeps growing, which is very flattering! It’s been great being in a school with excited readers, and my “Books So New They Haven’t Even Been Published” rack is very popular.

While I’m looking forward to several upcoming books, I’m looking back fondly on the following (note: no book read for the F-D prize appears here; those books remain unrated):

Here’s to a book-filled 2014!

Minor Musings

For those about to go on Break, some things to explore and/or ponder.

Books, Reading, Etc..

• Maybe some of Sarah’s ideas will help create the culture of reading I’m hoping for!
• Breaking up (with books) is hard to do…
• Very glad I have a break, so I can seriously peruse these Best Of lists and catch up on my reading! (If I’m really ambitious, I may take on this spreadsheet)

School Life

• The introvert/extrovert conversation is still ongoing – so here’s a timely post about designing with introverts in mind (via)
• Elizabeth’s rethinking rules in her library.  We only have three: respect the space… respect the resources… respect others in the space. So far, so good.  Although the smushed mini-marshmallow in the carpet tonight may lead to a “no minis in the library” rule!
• One of the bigger problems: what do I need to do to prepare the students for their first year of college?  and can I get the teachers to buy into this?

Tech Stuff

• FlipGrid looks like an amazing tool for both reader-to-reader advisory and in class collaboration for online learning.  (via)
• Are you Sleepless in Cyberspace?  Maybe this vacation is a good time to try to rethink things.

Etcetera…

• Doug ponders Age, Energy, Privacy and Morals – I’m a little more concerned about privacy (perhaps because of my age) than he is… it’s interesting to note that many of my students don’t think about it, but when you start talking about the lack they get very concerned.
• For those of my friends traveling, some tips on how to get through the airport fast.  Bon voyage!

So what do I know?

Nothing, apparently.

A couple of weeks ago I gave The Infinite Moment of Us a three-star review, in part because “The starts and stops of the relationship felt real, and Myracle has a real ear for the language real teens use.”

Then one of my hard-core readers borrowed it and completely disagreed: she felt (strongly) that the language was not authentic, that the teens didn’t resemble anyone she (or her friends) knew.  Wren seemed one-dimensional, and the relationship just didn’t work for her.

I’ve often wondered about the difference between my reading a book as an adult, with an ever-growing distance between me and my teen self, and an actual teen’s experience of that book.  Several books that have seen much critical love – being added to the curriculum or as all-school reads – from adults but from the intended audience’s point-of-view they’re complete flops with characters they don’t relate to and a message they feel stifled by.  These are readers who know that books like Gossip Girl or those by Sarah Dessen aren’t real or meant to be “good” books but they’re enjoyable reads anyway.  And they don’t expect those characters to be real, or relatable in the same way that the characters in this book are supposed to be.

How many others have had similar experiences? Or have recognized themselves in a character, only to realize that the author is closer to them in age than to the proposed age group – and that what they’re responding to is from a teen perspective some decades old?  It’s making me question many of my recent reads, and whether I am, in fact, buying the right books for this library.

Minor Musings

Sorry I missed September – here’s two month’s worth!

Books, Reading, Etc..

• Who doesn’t love a good fairy-tale update?
• In case you missed it, my old friend Jandy links to Neil Gaiman’s defense of libraries.

School Life

• A recent project about the Republican Party’s ideas about debt and fiscal planning led me to give my “sometimes, it’s ok to use biased information” speech.  This time I also added “but if you use social media, you’re going to need to verify what you’re reading”.  Of course, as always, Joyce puts it far better than I.  And HT @lbraun2000 for 10 Ways Students Can Use Twitter for Research.
• One goal for the year is getting colleagues (some, not all) to see us as “embedded” in their courses, and much of the work will be done on-line.  This article about feedback will help me  work with both students and faculty.  We also need to work on improving the library experience for them.
• Don’t you love the video tours here?  Think we need to try doing some for my library!

Tech Stuff

• As I begin to play with my iPad and watch students intently focused on their iPhones, I’ve begun deleting that which is not used.  Cleaning the crap makes it just more usable – and I’m not alone in this thinking.  (I’m also working on learning to type – thx Doug for these tips!).  That won’t stop me from seeing which of these apps I should recommend to everyone!
• Research season is fast approaching, which makes this the perfect time to revisit what Archipelago said about her Adventures with E-books. Even better (from my viewpoint) is the opportunity to test-drive some of this with students and talk to vendors at AASL and ALA Midwinter.
• The Atlantic gives advice about the iPhone signature far too many people haven’t yet changed.  Go now and be creative.
• Usually it’s my librarians who give away the good Google search tips.  This time, it’s Wise Bread (so maybe now more people will get the hint[s]).
• Badging is becoming a big thing these days, and I’m inspired by Laura’s blog to consider ways we can integrate badging and library skills.

Etcetera…

I bookmarked this a while ago, and having just finished meeting several parents during Families Weekend, it’s worth remembering that not everyone is, or thinks like, a librarian.