Fostering Community in the Ewing High School Library/Media Center update

So we finally hung up the artwork I made for the school spirit display in the Ewing High School media center and decided on a student created slogan to tie together school spirit and the library.  Here is how it looks so far:

But now it looks a bit bare around the cartoon graphics, so I'm going to continue coming up with information about the school or other school spirited things to continue to incorporate in the library. One of the suggestions of the business class we spoke to about fostering a greater sense of spirit and community in the library was to incorporate student art work to make the library more colorful and welcoming. Hopefully I will get to expand on this display by talking to the art teachers in the school and encouraging them to donate some of their student art work for display.

Art to Illustrate a Point - Power Users in the Library

Libraryjournal.com recently posted an article about the power users of the library. Basically, who utilizes the resources and what is being utilized. Here's a link to the article:

http://blog.libraryjournal.com/ljinsider/2011/10/17/identifying-and-cultivating-the-power-patron/

This has become an important part of justifying uses of the library: data. How can we prove people are using the resources? What kind of people are using the resources, and most importantly, what are they gaining from them? A lot of school libraries are struggling to prove user-ship and improvement through qualitative data. In Ewing High School, the librarian recently received a grant to purchase lower level reading books to improve literacy in the school. While she says the books are flying off the shelves, she now has to come up with a way to prove that these books are improving literacy and the quality of learning for those students and in the general classroom environment.

While this is not quite the qualitative data that they are thinking of, I could not help but call to mind an art project I stumbled upon over the summer. Wendy MacNaughton is an artist who publishes monthly documentary-like art collections in the online magazine The Rumpus. Her depictions of everyday people, places, and things aesthetically captures the mood of a community. In May, she published a collection of watercolors based on the "power users" of the San Francisco Public Library. This representation of the variety of users that walk in and out in search of information,as an art-minded person myself, is a great representation of data. What better way to prove user-ship than physical representations of the community that you will find in the library? Not only are they physical representations, but they are artistic and creative, fostering an even greater community by combining those seeking equal opportunity for information with those who are creating information through art.

Check out her beautiful watercolors based on what she saw in the San Francisco Library, and check out some of her other ones as well:
http://therumpus.net/2011/05/meanwhile-the-san-francisco-public-library/

Little Free Libraries - free books, free information, free community building

I saw a picture a little while back of a bird house-looking construction filled with books. There was no caption or explanation to it, and I always wondered where such an idea came from.

Little Free Library is an organization that promotes literacy and community by providing a free outlet for the exchange of books right within your neighborhood.

http://www.littlefreelibrary.org/

You can collectively pay for one of these little libraries or donate one yourself. What a wonderful idea! Who wouldn't want an outlet to not only give old books new homes, but to find new books yourself and discuss among your neighbors? It screams for a book club component!

Graphic Novels Finding a Place in the Children's Library

With a growing interest in graphic novels in high school and college level literature, there has become an increasing need for transitional graphic novels. The Association for Library Service to Children has released a companion list for librarians to consider with age-appropriate options for graphic texts. The multi-level learning involved in graphic novels, with the aesthetic story line represented through images and the syntactical story line represented through language, calls on multiple intelligences to analyze the narrative. It also encourages students who may not be drawn to traditional books to think about alternative texts.

This article leads to the grade-appropriate suggestion lists which are great resources for libraries looking to incorporate graphic novels into their collections.

http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/news/ala/alsc-releases-children-s-graphic-novel-core-collection

Criminals or Educators?: Librarians in L.A.

With increasing debates about the function and necessity of the library, specifically in schools, the Los Angeles Unified School District set up interrogations over the summer to question the qualifications of librarians in the classroom in preparation to cut almost 100 library media specialists in their school district.

Here are two links to articles written about the situation:
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/13/local/la-me-0513-tobar-20110513
and
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/slj/home/890644-312/layoffs_interrogations_l.a._school_librarians.csp

After reading these articles it made me really think about how the library is perceived by students, by teachers and administration, and even by parents and outsiders in the system. To cut librarians based on their lack of current experience in a formal classroom setting seems absurd to me. While the library is viewed as an extended classroom, and I do agree with that perception, the issue becomes what do librarians teach. Well, while we may not have a curriculum filled with set topics that need to be covered, we do teach. We teach how to be self-sufficient learners, how to go out on your own and find useful and valid information. Librarians are information specialists. How do we expect students, and even public library users, to learn how to find information, and the right information, if we have no one supporting them? There are techniques and resources that need to be provided that librarians are trained to provide. Your librarian knows a little bit about everything, and to boil down their ability to the last time they taught in a formal classroom is incredibly limiting. I hope that people begin to realize, especially in the dawn of a society where information is so widespread and easily accessible, how important it is to know what is valuable and what is not, and that the librarian is the source for this information.

Fostering Community in the Ewing High School Library/Media Center

A week or two ago the librarian at the Ewing High School library asked me to come up with a display that would promote school spirit in the Media Center. With that in mind, I went back to my dorm and set to work sketching out some ideas. I came up with the idea to portray their school mascot, the blue devil, active in the different elements in the library. I painted the blue devil searching on the internet, and the blue devil reading a book (pictures to come soon) but was having a hard time coming up with a slogan to tie the two images, as well as our message, together.

Today, the librarian introduced me to the marketing teacher at Ewing High School and asked if she had any ideas for a slogan. She suggested I come in and talk to one of her classes about coming up with an idea to spruce up the display: a possible slogan, maybe an idea for another graphic. So Wednesday morning I will be speaking with her first block class to get some ideas on how to make the library more community-centered and school spirited.

I think the prospect of connecting with the classes is a great opportunity for the library, and for myself as an aspiring librarian. The library should be all about connecting the different areas of the school, and what a great way to get started, promoting school spirit and student involvement, as well as using aesthetic creativity to spruce up our learning environment.