Past their best by dates

As we've been doing a (I hope) final pass on the collection, we're noticing a lot of books that are just past their "best by" dates and having to determine if they should stay on the shelf until something new comes along, keep them anyway, or remove them and try to replace. This isn't the…

Making progress

We've had a successful first week, and to be honest I'm surprised and pleased. When we walked out on the 10th I didn't think we'd get here but, well... whew! Every year we try to do something for the faculty as a welcome back to the school year thing. This year, we decided just to…

The students are here! The students are here!

Of course we're excited to see the new students (and by "new" I mean anyone in the Class of 2023, Class of 2024 and Class of 2025, since we've barely got to know 2023 and have never met the other two classes). The same applies to all the new faculty. But... Over the summer, the…

Tracking the year

Tuesday, Karen left a comment on my post about the Big Picture: Hi Laura, I have been exploring different TL blogs as I start on this journey in my career. I have taught in many guises and never really needed to explain what I need to exist in a school, and am now beginning to…

It bears repeating: check your sources!

Whether you subscribe to the CRAP / RADAR Test or the 5 Ws or lateral reading or another method, it's never too early to teach your students to never assume that what they read or hear is accurate (and for librarians to model this publicly!) If it's too perfect to be true...

It’s yearbook time

(or, in more adult terms, Annual Report time) https://issuu.com/cox_library/docs/ay21_1_ You know you have a winner when your Development people say that "this is a stewardship professional's dream with all of the facts and figures"! If they're going to share this with donors, it means we're telling our story clearly and showing our work. #goalmet

Up from the ashes (part eight)

As I've been going through the process of rebuilding the collection and the facility (neat pictures of our "permanent" temporary space to come next week), attending meetings and so forth, one question keeps coming up: what does a 21st-century library look like? How do we plan for what students are doing today and think ahead…

Up from the ashes (part ten)

(parts one through nine here) One of my Spring Break chores is to finish the insurance claim. If I haven't mentioned it before, MPOW has a full replacement value insurance policy. This means that assigning value to the items lost is critical: it's not enough to just print out a list of the catalog and…

Up from the ashes (part seven)

Ok, I'll admit it, I have a thin skin. In addition to rebuilding the collection and providing library service at MPOW, I've also been participating in a series of meetings designed to elicit parent/alumni opinion regarding the rebuilding of the physical space. There were questions about whether the library should go back into the space…

Rising from the ashes (part six)

I've spent the better part of the past week ordering books and checking in new books. In between that, and since the fire, I've been thinking about the way forward (or, as Chris says, not standing still).In the midst of all this came the whole Cult of 2.0 controversy. Annoyed Librarian said, among many other…