The average day, fall version

Last October, the AISL blog had a post called What do you do all day? (sort of similar to the Library Day in the Life posts I did years ago).  I thought it might be interesting to share what an average day in my library looked like but quickly realized that we have two very different “average” days, first in fall when there is little going on and then in spring when Research Season hits.  Lucky you, there’ll be an update in March!

Usually I arrive at work around 7:30 (depending on traffic it can be 7:45).  Two mornings a week I have a meeting, either all school or just Upper School Faculty.  The school day starts at 8:20 and ends at 3:30, with the library open until 6pm and then again from 7pm – 9:45pm.  Here’s what yesterday, October 24th, looked like.

05:00 – Wake up, take my “pre-breakfast” pills, watch some tv I’d recorded yesterday, check email and news sites

06:00 – Breakfast, continue to read/watch, get dressed, etc.

07:20 – Leave for work.

07:45 – Arrive at work, check in with my assistant.  The Middle School Librarian has two “trivia question of the day” calendars and we usually try to answer those questions at this time.

08:00 – Time for the Upper School Faculty meeting, where we had a discussion about an academic issue.

08:20 – The school day starts.  I have bills to pay and our budget to reconcile and cataloging to do so I’m holing up in the office where I will be less disturbed than if I’m out on the desk.

09:10 – The advisor for the Conservative Club asks about what books we have from that perspective.  I said that we’re interested in presenting different points-of-view, and if there’s a list that she can recommend we’ll buy whatever we don’t currently have.  And if the club wants to put together a display we would be happy to make that happen.

09:35 – Our sixth grade has a reading buddy program with the first and second grades.  Today we got photos to post to our Instagram feed.

09:50 – Over the past few years we’ve been working on our collection and the second pass is almost done.  I spent Sunday through Tuesday at the NELA19 conference and attended this session from Brookline Public Library.  

It was really affirming to see that others are struggling with some of the same issues we have been (cataloging not consistent, or in areas that don’t make sense, or made up Dewey numbers).  Today we’re finishing moving the 973 books into “correct” shelf positions (I’ll have to change call numbers  in the catalog and relabel the ones that have moved).

12:15 – Done with the move!  Lunch time!

12:45 – On to the next bit of the project, working on the 974-999 books.  First step, download the accession list for those books.  Next I’ll sort by copyright, highlighting the books more than 20 years old (we’ll see if they need to updated or weeded when we get to those books).  Then I’ll sort by call number and start to see what needs to be moved/changed.  Tomorrow we will move all these books, and I’ll do the changes/relabeling for 973-999.

16:00 – Each of us take one night as a late night, and tonight’s my night.  I help a teacher prepare a display for tomorrow’s Upper School Parents Weekend.  She’s part of AWARE (Alliance of White Anti-Racist Educators) and we bought a number of books to supplement the books we already had to help support their work.

17:45 – Let students know that we’re closing in ten minutes (there are several people who come in at 7pm and staff the library during evening study hall, so the boarders and day students who want to study here at night can).

18:00 – Walk out the door.

18:30 – Get home.  Time for dinner, relaxing (with a new book), cuddling with the cats.  Lights out around 8-8:30.

Tomorrow, as a wise fictional character once said, is another day.

 

 

 

What I Did on Spring Break

In addition to staying snug during the last three of the March nor’easters, I read 32 books:

Spring Break Reading

And that’s not all!  I’ve cleared my DVR, my taxes are almost done (they’re a little complicated for 2017), I went to an exhibit of maps of imaginary places, got enough loose tea to make it through to Summer Vacation, and the past two days I attended MSLA (more on that later).

What I need to do by the end of this week: finish my taxes, work on my AY19 budget, go through a whole lot of saved links to share with you lucky readers, figure out which books in PW and LJ should be bought now (versus after the new fiscal year kicks in), and – most important – dive in to Research Season, Part II, which is when our Intro History (aka “Class IV” or “freshmen”) come in.  That’s around 12 classes a day, about 150 students.  In three weeks, they’ll be joined by the sophomores, giving us around 20 classes each day and around 300 students to work with.  It will get done… it will get done… I will survive…

Busy November – NELA and YALSA

Now that Fall Conference Season has passed, and I’ve had some time to think about what I learned and saw, here’s a wrap up of the NELA Conference (about which I’ve blogged a little) and the YALSA Symposium.  After this, nothing until February’s ALA Midwinter (March brings MSLA, April has NEAISL, May will be ACRL/NE and I’ll end with June’s ALA Annual; I can’t attend AISL because it’s in the middle of Research Season when we have 15+ classes in every day).

NELA is the New England Library Association and thus brings together librarians from throughout New England.  It’s small, relatively targeted, and more like ALA’s mix of public, academic and school librarians than other conferences.  To be honest, fewer school librarians were there than I’d have thought; perhaps it was timing?  lack of publicity?  location?  We’ll see what next year’s looks like.  Many of the sessions didn’t apply, although there were good book buzz opportunities, which is always nice.  The overall conference theme was mindfulness, and contrary to my usual use of Facebook I actually joined a professional group, Mindfulness for Librarians, and we’ll see how that goes.

Some of the resources shared during the keynote – on mindfulness – were:

• Fully Present by Smally and Wintson
• Altered Traits by Goldman and Davidson
• How to Live a Good Life by Fields
• Self-Compassion by Neff
• anything by John Cabot Zinn

There was a lot more, and I’ll share that later.  I’m still processing it and trying to work out how to bring more into my life.

The best session was the Project Management session, since we’ve got lots of projects we’re working on in the library.  The big takeaway was that it’s really about influence: how to get your team to work with and for you.  There are several keys to making this work, and the presenter recommended the book Radical Candor by Kim Scott.  Good project managers need to listen, clarify, debate, decide, persuade, execute, learn and evaluate/celebrate.  The critical element is that you get people on board, keeping everyone in the loop by constantly getting and giving feedback.  Recognizing that the experience isn’t the same for everyone is helpful, and being explicit about expectations necessary.  Best practice?  Align people’s skills with the project (especially if you want people to be successful!), making criticism about the outcome not the person.  Also recommended: Mel Robbin’s Five Second Rule as a way to move forward.

The other sessions were a mixed bag, with one that had great ideas but a confusing presentation and others that were less applicable to me and my work life than not.

A few weeks later, for the first time I attended the YALSA Symposium.  Again, small and targeted.  And less applicable to school librarians than would have been nice.  There was a time when YALSA courted us, but once again the pendulum seems to be more on the public YA librarian side than not.  Oh well.  What disappointed me more was the emphasis on starting programs like makerspaces or STEM ideas.  Granted, in my situation, they’re not needed (we have a good makerspace in another building, and stepping on the toes of those teachers isn’t something I particularly feel the need to do). But… the presumption at YALSA was more “so, you need to start” rather than “ok, you’ve started – what’s next?”  I get it: presenters want to draw a large audience and making things applicable to newbies is one way to do that.  But still – and this isn’t just a YALSA issue, it’s also a general complaint about AASL and ALA programs! – what about those people already in the midst of doing whatever the program is about?

The opening author panel was the best part, IMVHO (there were a few more, but those didn’t leave me with much as a takeaway).  The big takeaway?  There was a panel-esque conversation about the idea of books as mirrors and windows, and Kwami Alexander said that giving a black kid a book like The Hate U Give wasn’t necessary,  that blacks (and other readers of color) had for decades gotten more mirrors than windows, and that whites needed to catch up.  Yes.  Exactly.

Gearing Up

I’ve been diligently trying to update this blog regularly, and I intend to keep trying but wow!  School starts and that seems to take over my life despite my best efforts.  Between now and Thanksgiving, for example, I have two personal trips out of town, then two conferences (NELA and YALSA’s Literature Symposium).  Plus my Alex Award reading.  That’s outside of my work, which this year includes beginning to plan for a new library in addition to continuing to look at updating the collection, revamping our website, improving our Resource Guides, working with classes and all the “normal” stuff that librarians and Library Department Chairs do on a daily, monthly, annual basis.

So posting may be sporadic.  Just sayin’

Where Will I Learn Next?

Now that I’ve (finally) had time to think about and digest my professional learning from last year, it’s time to turn my attention to this year. Yes, being in a school is weird thanks to the “new year” starting in July. I’m already in 2018 and officially it doesn’t start for another few months!

Anyway, here’s where I’m thinking of doing a little learning over the next twelve months: NELA, the YALSA Symposium, ALA Midwinter, NEAISL, ACRLNEC and ALA Annual. The lucky librarians on my staff will be attending AASL, ALAN, MSLA and AISL, plus NEAISL and NELA. Of course, there will be in-house learning, both formal and during our annual Faculty Forum. We’re hosting the fall CLA (local independent school librarians group) Meeting, and there are at least two other meetings later this year. Thanks to Booklist, there are book preview webinars. And earlier this month, SLJ’s TeenLive gave me a day of YA goodiness from the comfort of my living room (bonus: this was the summer I got my laptop hooked up to my tv, so I could watch these things on the Big Screen).

Where are you learning this year? What are you excited to explore and delve into? Share – inquiring minds want need to know.

Personal, not private

Many years ago, when schools were just starting to think about email and giving faculty their own addresses, we were reminded that what happens on school “property” (digital or physical) belonged to the school – our searches, our emails, our content were theirs. It might have been personal, but it wasn’t private. Many people in the business world also learned this, particularly those in companies that employed people to read outgoing email to ensure that corporate secrets were safe. Some people made the mistake of forgetting this, much to the internet’s amusement.

So, here we are, years later and some people still think that just because they have an email or password, it’s personal. Not so fast. And just as I’m thinking about this (and the number of people I know who mix and mingle their work email and personal lives, along with the dangers of health tracking devices not being secure) along comes the 4TDL conference with two sessions on personal privacy! Talk about serendipity. The two sessions were led by Wendy Stephens and Jole Seroff.

Both covered similar areas but with a different focus. What follows is less commentary on their sessions (archived here and here) and more a round-up of the tools and tips, along with some other stuff I’ve been finding and saving over the past month or so.

Thoughts: We don’t know how our data is being used, even joining an elist or doing a search can be flagged/tagged/used against us; the big flashpoints are with healthcare (just look up a disease; Google’s flu map tracks where searches are coming from because why look it up if you’re not concerned?) and consumer information (watch ads follow you). Also, think about the ethics of privacy: if we’re all cloaking our data, if that becomes the norm, then those who need it (living in difficult areas, protestors, etc.) will not appear as being different. In other words, it’s a form of social justice!

Ways to protect yourself:

• Delete your cookies after every browser session
• Turn off your computer, don’t just log off
• Use https:// everywhere
• Consider not using Chrome/Firefox/IE, use Opera or a VPN; use StartPage or DuckDuckGo as search engines
• Use a password manager and two-factor authentication when possible
• Check your settings! “do not track” does nothing

Articles and Tools

• Why Online Privacy Matter and 5 Ways to Reclaim It
• This Is How Your Fear and Outrage Are Being Sold for Profit
• What every browser knows about you
• Privacy
• Protect against phishing
• Adblockers may not work
• TOR/Don’tTrackMe/Ghostery/TrackMeNot (add ons to your browser)
• Signal app for messaging
• Proton Mail
• DoNOTlink.it
• haveIbeenpwnd? (check to see if your email is part of a data breach)
• clickclickclick.click (a little frightning!)

A great follow-up to the session on Data Privacy of a few years ago. And something to wonder how to approach with our teens and faculty.

The next level up: #ACRLNEC17

Working in an independent school, particularly one usually considered an “elite college preparatory” school means extra pressure to be aware of what my students will be expected to do and know in their next educational institution. It makes sense to spend the day at the ACRLNEC conference because many of the colleges and universities represented will be where my students end up next.

Keynote: Bringing Down the Empire: Remaking Our Work, Our Libraries, Our Selves

What is the Empire in our world? The idea that libraries no longer matter. Now, how do we fight it?

• Remake Our Work
  • as users change, we have to change, adapt and educate
  • is higher education worth it? or is training (internships, apprenticeships, etc.) better? there’s been a huge change since the 50s, with the current expectation being “of course you’ll go to college” – however, more hands-on, critical thinking tools are needed
  • digital literacy is important: faculty are finally embracing this and the role of librarians in teaching these skills. NOTE: First Year students need research skills and are coming with subpar skills and understandings.
  • the University of Oklahoma has a virtual reality lab – think about using VR as a tool for teaching language, archaeology, history, etc.
• Remake Our Libraries
  • with all these changes, what you’re doing with your buildings: we are not just print warehouses, so we need to become an exciting destination.
  • think about this problem/conundrum and the pace of change because what works today probably won’t work in a few years – flexibility is critical
  • one idea: use BrightSpot to rethink space; another idea: create rooms for students to Skype/FaceTime with family, friends, potential employers (or colleges)
• Remake Our Selves
  • managing is a team sport – we need to support training and opportunity to use new skills later (in other words, don’t train then stuff the skill in a drawer)
  • the 23Things idea (BYU turned it into a contest!)

So: what is a librarian? And what is our role in the academic institution of the 21st Century?

The next two sessions were interesting, but one was (again, as at NEAISL) on archives/digital initiatives and the other was not relevant, so we’ll skip those.

New Model for Library Orientation

We don’t really have a library orientation, but that’s something I’d like to try to create. My college library orientation was four days of one hour instruction in a lecture hall, followed by at “quiz” that took several hours (albeit made easier by all the others doing the same quiz and marking answers or sharing). Did I learn anything? Not really, but I’d been using that library for a few years thanks to my father’s being on faculty there and because my high school library used Library of Congress and was, like my employer, an elite college preparatory school. But… we have students coming to us from a variety of backgrounds and levels of preparation, and while the school can test for math and language skills they have no test for research or literacy skills for incoming students. An orientation might help them feel comfortable in the space, with us as learning partners, and with the resources inside.

• Step One: get away from library jargon, passivity and lack of real need connection
  • the early days at school are overwhelming, and the library shouldn’t contribute to that stress
  • recognize that the library and resources won’t/can’t/shouldn’t compete with their first stop for information (Google and Wikipedia, duh)
• Step Two: find a model that works for your institution
  • the presenters work at the UVM Medical School library, so they use the clinical care model that students will be using in their every day classes – it’s a format they’re familiar with, so it makes sense and it’s “special stuff” in their lives
  • what does this look like?
    • Need (what information is sought)
    • History of Need
    • Past Information History – social, previous education, family
    • Diagnosis of Needs
    • Review of Information Systems
• Step Three: ask for feedback from students and teachers
  • does this make sense?
  • does it help?
  • will you remember it?

Other models? The Scientific Method, Literature Review, Annotated Bibliography, Pathfinder/LibGuide, SWOT, Design Thinking.

Other ideas? Consider using Instagram or other social media to post a Research Question of the Week or Information Resource of the Week.

#NEISL17 Reflections

I love the NEAISL conference. I love it even more when I’m not hosting, as I did in 2015 and 2016. For those who don’t know, it’s a 40-year-old conference that brings together independent school librarians in New England (and a few from NY). We meet and talk and learn together for one day and then disappear back to our respective schools until the next year. For some, it’s the only professional development during the year, so organizers take it seriously. This past year we went to Cheshire Academy.

Embedded Librarianship (panel discussion)

This is an idea I’ve been excited about for a few years now and sadly, because of changing jobs and changing staff, haven’t been able to really get into before but this year one of my goals is to create an action plan with the department and start to begin the work over AY18 and AY19. So here’s what we need to start thinking about as we move forward:

• ask questions of the department heads – what skills do you teach? how does the library fit in? (move from support to teaching)
• reinforce what’s being taught in classes, using ACRL/ISTE/AASL standards to support our involvement
• create a booking system for reference opportunities on the website, one that asks students to do some thinking rather than just posing a question
• work with a local academic library on a Day of Research
• try to get faculty to allow us to grade rough drafts for process, and be as tough as a college teacher would (it’s eye opening for teachers and students to see what’s really required) – one idea is to put all notes and bib in NoodleTools, but require a printed final draft so you can see the changes between the rough and final version

The big takeaway: teacher buy-in is critical, so we need to form a focus group with friendly – and unfriendly teachers!

Critical Media Literacy (Allison Butler)

What is it? It’s continued inquiry into the “behind the scenes” of ownership, production, audience and distribution of media – getting the broader picture because media does not occur in a vacuum.

One idea? Ask students to pull apart a fashion magazine to separate content from ads. Difficult, right? Thing is, we’re still consuming a lot of traditional media, just not in traditional ways: the audience is no longer well-known, so risk-taking is difficult (think: could Archie Bunker work today? maybe. audiences either were in on the joke or saw him as one of them, which might be the case again today).

It’s equally critical to look at what’s not there, which stories aren’t being told and why. What gets prioritized? who does that prioritization? Think: what’s on Fox vs MSNBC vs NPR vs Breitbart. Part of critical medial literacy is to critique power, not to be partisan.

Critical Media Literacy (panel discussion)

• We need to expand spaces for students to interact with the library
• Create “Calling BS” posters for all subjects, all topics (get all departments involved) – why stats, data, news, etc. are “BS”
• You probably will, at some point, retweet fake news – it’s ok. Learn from that failure how to better check sources and biases.
• Think about how we ask questions: if I can’t find get the information, is that my fault or is there deliberate obfuscation going on?

Critical media literacy isn’t bashing, it’s questioning.

The last panel was on Archives, which I’m sitting on for a while. That’s next summer’s Big Project, my third school archives reorganization. One of these years, I’ll get it right.

Can’t wait to learn with these people next year.

The Very Overdue #AISLNO17 Post (part 3)

My goal: to blog all the PD I’ve done this year before the academic year ends. In eight five four days. Get ready!

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Day Two: E-Books

The best presentation advice: start on time, end early, feed participants.

This is an area we explored gently over the past few years (both at Milton and Porter’s) and haven’t gotten much buy-in for, so I was interested to see what other schools were/are doing.  There’s so much to think about, and as one person said, we need to suck it up: things are evolving (as they did from film to VHS to DVD to streaming).  Here’s my question/problem: my students, based on a survey I did at Porter’s that got a 33% response, prefer print for fiction.  Why?  Because it’s an escape from the screen, providing a more immersive/less interrupted experience.  So… there’s that.  I might do a survey of Milton’s students and faculty, particularly as Overdrive is pushing a consortium for the local independent schools.  The Massachusetts ebook program is difficult, particularly since it only allows for one book/reader!

We agreed that there are So.Many.Platforms. ABC-CLIO, Amazon (might need to circulate Kindles), Destiny Discover (which only works with Destiny, so that’s out), EBSCO, GVRL, OUP and Salem Press for NF; Overdrive, Axis360 are for Fic.  The big question is how do you support all of them, including train people in their use because it’s not “one size fits all” for platforms!  Promoting them is also an issue, because discovery isn’t as obvious as it is for print (you can’t easily browse a shelf) you need to add MARC records to the catalog.  Another way to promote is to put links everywhere, in all Resource Guides, on pamphlets, etc. You could also let students know that Snapchat reads QR codes and include those codes in book displays or on the inside cover of a reference book.

Day Two: Personal Librarian Program (CD McLean and Katie Archambault)

Another “we need to try this at MPOW” idea, which may or may not work given our size population.  But still… They got the idea after reading The Personal Librarian (there’s also this one), which further enhances the idea of library as “third space” (see a theme?  Doug and Claudette both talked about this!).  It’s important to get Admissions, Communications and the Dean of Students on board before starting, particularly since you can start talking about the program on revisit days.

Other ideas?  Create a “what is a personal librarian?” video and “get to know your librarian” videos… Tasty Tuesdays (send a surprise gift of treats to a random class)… send emails to all incoming students, detailing how the program works and connecting it to the work they’ll be doing.  CD sends a letter, a follow-up letter, is a presence during orientation retreats and promotes library tours by “their” librarian.  Make sure the program is seen as two-fold, promoting reading and research.  Asking teachers if you can embed is great – digital embedding means you can drop resources into the class page (be it WhippleHill, GClassroom, Schoology, Moodle, or whatever your school uses), pushing databases, print books and critical websites.  Encourage 1:1 consultations with both faculty and students, adding a link to your sig. file for setting up an appointment.  What about YouTube videos personalizing the experience?  New Book lunches?  Having students sign up for Reading Recommendation and then do video/email outreach.  Constantly promote services and resources.

We were reminded that it’s important to do an annual debrief, to collect statistics and to keep up with alumni.  Equally important is that we don’t have to do it all: the same program doesn’t need to exist for 9, 10, 11 and 12th grade!  You can push heavily into 9th, less in 10th and 11th, and they’ll still remember to come in in 12th.

Another way to be personal?  Get college matriculation information and create a presentation highlighting the college libraries to students (eg, “If you’re going to Bates, you’ll find….”).  Do outreach to those librarians so your students are known.  (kudos to Elizabeth Nelson for this!)

Day Two: Booktalking

This is so easy to do with LS/MS students, but US?  Sigh.  So here are some great ideas we’re going to try in AY18 to try to get our overworked, overscheduled, overstressed students to read more fiction:

• Ask-a-Question
• PW’s First Sentence List
• Use these Book Reports
• TeachingBooks.net
• Checking Pinterest for trailers and displays
• Getting teens to create posts
• Using Typorama, Adobe Spark, Thinglink and Canva
• Creating “booktalks to go” for students to take with them

Whew!  One conference down… two (NEAISL and ACRLNE) to go…

 

The Very Overdue #AISLNO17 Post (part 2)

My goal: to blog all the PD I’ve done this year before the academic year ends.  In eight five days.  Get ready!

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Day One: What Keeps Me Up At Night (Courtney Lewis)

Courtney started by talking about some of the things that keep us all up at night:

• faculty still referring to their experiences doing research, ignoring changes that have taken place since (and insisting students do it the way they did research “back when”)
• budgets
• what is the mission of the library, and does it mesh with the school’s mission?

She’s started to also think about other things, like discovery (how do students and teachers find our resources), tools and what students really need, as opposed to what we think or are told they need.  To find out, she reached out to the First Year Experience librarians at the schools her students matriculated at most, using a personalized letter with a link to a survey; she also posted it on the ACRL list.  There were many responses and as of March, she was still getting data.  No surprise: selectivity in schools matters, particularly in this regard (“selectivity” as defined by US News & World Report and Barrons).

I’m not going to go into the nitty-gritty of her results, but it was interesting to see how we, at a relatively selective independent school, align already with some of the results at the lower, less selective level.  The question I have to ask myself (and my staff) is how high up we want to reach, and can we differentiate between what we do with our Middle Schools students, our 9/10 graders and 11/12 graders? One big complaint – or, perhaps more accurately, concern – was that students don’t always come with the level of ability that FYE librarians/teachers need for them to have, which (IMVHO) is a result of not being able to mandate specific learning and skills for all high school students, in all high schools.  We run into this challenge with our Upper School students entering from schools other than our Middle School, so why should college be any different?

The biggest thread was that students need better understandings of what resources are useful for what types of information retrieval, to be able to transfer skills from one thing to another.  The idea that you are part of a community of learners, sharing knowledge and resources, is more critical than knowing exactly how to use a specific citation generator or style.

She learned that students will be asked to create traditional research papers (number one response), visual presentations (number two) and DIY science experiments (number three). BUT: the traditional paper, while still the top response, was favored by older professors (see about re: referring back to your own experience) and younger professors were asking for more digital types of responses (blogs, videos, etc.).  There is a critical need to make these types of products part of our curriculum!  Again and again, she heard that the end goal of all research was to make students part of the global community of scholars.  What can we, in K-12, do to ensure our students start on that path?

The other things she learned?

• format is invisible to students (the UVA Source Death exercise, for example)
• students need to know what librarians do and how to ask (corollary: they need to know that not everyone working in an academy library is a librarian, or does reference!)
• skilled searching
• how to create a topic
• what the community of scholars is
• how do you pace yourself when writing a paper (5 pages is different than 20 pages)
• oral presentation with visual aids skills (don’t silo things)

Next?  She’s looking at a larger sample size, plus cross-referencing with NSSE/BCSSE/FSSE data (they have great research questions), using the data to make smart budgetary choices.  Bigger challenge: changing faculty and students from a local to a global mindset.

As I sat there, I wondered how we can do similar work at Milton.  There are schools around the country wondering that as well.  Maybe we team up and tackle this as a group?  And how can I get local buy in on changing some of how we do research and teach research skills so we know our students are better prepared for their FYE than the average student?

Day Two: Building Community (Claudette Hovasse)

For the past few years I’ve been in awe of what Claudette’s built at Cheshire and tried to think of ways to replicate it at my school.  At Porter’s we were working on it, with some success; at Milton, we need a more concentrated effort.   So, what’s she doing that’s so great?  well…

Example one: she started with a station to create a card for Faculty Appreciation that has grown into cards for Valentines, Thank Yous, Mother’s Day, etc.

Example two: Zentangle (purposeful doodling), book folding, trivia nights, games, stamping, candy sushi, cupcake decorating, pumpkin decorating, vision boards, Lego Nights, coloring book table, comic book artist, bingo, Banned Books Scavenger Hunt.

How is she doing it?  By “starting with Yes“, which has led to program and space changes.  By starting with “what if…” – students felt ownership of the space and program? what are local libraries doing (take classes and crib)?  It stemmed from a desire to build bridges between day/boarding, American/International students and has grown!  Even non CA students come to some events.  She promotes them with signs, in the parent weekly email (and has found that parents push students to attend, which helps build community and leads to greater visibility for what the library is doing).

Some final thoughts:

• work with what you have – staffing, furnishings, facilities/maintenance, etc.  It doesn’t have to be fancy!
• puzzles on casual tables have led to new friendships
• “when I started saying “yes” it changed how I saw myself and how the students see [the librarians]“

Day One: Design Thinking (many, including yours truly!)

This was an opportunity to report and reflect on the AISL Summer Institute I attended, so here are a few bullet points:

• Design Thinking is not a magic bullet, it really needs thought and planning (ie. it’s just another tool in the toolbox) – it is a way to give and get better feedback that is more constructive and is very collaborative
• You don’t need to use DT language, you can create language that works for your school and your population
• Empathy is the end product, woven throughout the project.  It is not a step.
• What you’re really asking is not “what do you need” but “what’s missing”

I’m currently taking a Space Planning class that is using DT methodology.  Not because I need it, but as an attempt to get my staff to learn more about DT as we plan for the future of our space and program.  More on that when it’s all over.