10/11/2010 Library as Places

10-11 Libraries as Places
Woolls Chapter 7: Managing Personnel
There are several points in this chapter that I found interesting. Firstly, I must say that I am concerned about the managing of personnel. It wasn’t a task I have ever even considered as a part of the job, but now that I think about it, it does make sense. However, I do not like the idea of having to fire or hire someone. Nor do I like having to evaluate others’ performance, especially when I am with those people all day in an often silent, empty environment. On the other hand, I am a very intimidating person, so my students tell me. This is going to work in my favor since I can manage students, but I am concerned that it will make my assistant unhappy. I would love to have a happy place, but I know that I often come off as domineering without meaning to be.
The more important point that I took from this chapter was that much of it seems to focus on how to make my job indispensable. It is true that funds everywhere are being cut and that I will have to lobby for my job; however, I found some encouraging points in here. As mentioned before in Skype and other posts, I work in a PD-happy district. The first Monday of every month is dedicated to PD and, up until the starving times of this year, there was also PD at least once a month on plan periods. I think that when things bounce back, as they surely must, PD will again become a part of the school day. In addition to this, we have a full week of PD before every school year starts and two days of PD after school ends. As such, I see that Woolls makes a good point by claiming that the LMS may eventually control PD. Though she says, “as professional periodicals are added to the media center collection, the media specialist may copy pertinent articles, highlighting key passages, and forward them to the principal” (119). She ends this portion with the thought that it would simply make both persons look good. I, however, see it as a way to maintain a job. With so much PD in our district, I can safely say only a fraction of it is good PD. Training staff on new technologies and things the library can offer teachers would be a much better way to do PD and that would make the LMS a central part of the school that could not be done away with.
This ties too with her point on page 114 that libraries are now arguably unnecessary. It’s true that it is possible to have a functioning virtual library and as such the librarian would need to be an integral part of school to maintain a place in it. Aside from PD development, another way to make myself indispensible is to help develop cross-curricular activities. I currently teach an English class that doubles as a current events class. My subjects often fall into things that sociology, current events, and psychology study. As a classroom teacher, I feel lucky to get through my grading in a day. I can’t imagine having the time to develop these units with another teacher. However, the LMS is in a perfect position to do so since she sees what kids’ research year after year. This is also a good way to get involved in the classroom and to make the school look good as everyone knows that cross curricular lessons are all the rage now.

Podcasts
Cool Tools 2.0 Live MOcah.com sounds awesome. It is a social networking site with the exclusive function of learning a new language. Aside from being a useful tool for library patrons, as a librarian it is very important to learn a new language so that non-English speaking patrons can still get help. It would further help with understanding patrons with heavy accents. As a social networking site, users get help from native speakers of the language through online chat to help with grammar and pronunciation questions. Online exercises are where the main content is given. Eight languages are covered including Arabic, French, and German. As a high school librarian this is a very important tool to integrate into the library’s cache of online resources in light of the economic situation. Though I certainly don’t advocate the downsizing of foreign language programs, it is happening nonetheless. Livemocah.com will allow students exposure to languages in schools where programs have been cut to the bare bones or cut entirely. In today’s global economy, it is more important now than ever to promote language studies and this is a cheap effective manner in which to do so. Additionally, if nothing else, it would make me look good to the administration as a librarian. After school study groups could be held and this would further highlight the importance of what the library does to prevent downsizing there as well.

Cool Tools Lucid Chart is an online graphic organizer and flow chart creator. As a high school librarian, this would be one of the things that I would promote to students to promote collaboration among them and to help them complete group projects at home. Lucid Chart has premade shapes and connectors (such as arrows and bars) that the students simply have to drag and drop in the order they want them placed. Then they simply type what they want inside them. What makes this tool exceptionally important in today’s education is that a Lucid project can be opened up to other users by the creator. Lucid Chart has a built in chat tool that allows students to communicate about changes that are being made and to help them finish their project easier. To prevent disagreements, Lucid Chart keeps a log of what changes have been made to the project and who has made them. In today’s day and age, it is super important that if educators are going to assign a group project that there also be a tool such as this to go along with it. Kids are busier now more than ever and asking four kids who each work different jobs, play sports, babysit younger siblings, etc to get together at the same time on the same night is nearly impossible. As an added perk, this program is free making it a great tool for both student and the school.

New York times Book Review 8/6/2010
The books that were focused on in this review were Comedy in a Minor Key and The Death of the Adversary by Hans Keilson. Both of these are holocaust novels, but the view they take a drastically different one than most Holocaust novels do.
Comedy in a Minor Key focuses on a Dutch couple who take in a Jewish man that needs a place to hide. Unlike other Holocaust fiction, these people do not really want to take him in and only do so because they are told it is their patriotic duty and because the wife wants glory after the war is over. Furthermore, they live in the country so unlike other holocaust fiction there is not the imminent danger of them being caught and taken to a concentration camp. Another main difference between this and other holocaust fiction is that the Jew who was saved, though aware that his life was saved and appreciative for it, shows jealousy of his saviors. They have been able to keep everything while he has lost everything for a ridiculous reason. As he looks at their things he feels anger at them rather than the blind devotion showed by other who were saved in other holocaust fiction. Furthermore, the Jew dies of natural causes rather than being caught or set free at the end of the novel and the couple who were hiding him then have to decide what to do with a dead body that they shouldn’t have.
Death of the Adversary is told from the perspective a Jew early on in the war. He witnesses nearly all his friends turn to Nazis and gives first-hand accounts of acts of violence against Jews that are often given less attention, like grave desecration. This novel differs from other Holocaust fiction in the sense that the narrator gives the reader a sense of what it is like to be told he is worthless everyday to the point where he begins to believe it.
I think that there is a definite need for “new” Holocaust fiction in libraries. For so long we have read Anne Frank and Night that other points of view, more human points of view, get lost. Additionally, the young generations have lost touch with WWII in many ways. Yes, they all read Night and Anne Frank, but that is part of what caused them to lose touch, I think. A new perspective is needed to bring the issue back to the forefront of thought as a reminder to not allow it again.
Another portion of this podcast focused on teen fiction and the sudden push towards it for adults. I agree ardently with the contributor to this piece, Pamela Paul that teen fiction is in many ways better than adult fiction. Paul claims that the characters are better developed and the problems more important than in adult fiction where character development and plot are often left behind in the search for high literary status. Since teen fiction has been given a bad name for so long (Rowling herself was told that if she intended to write teen fiction she had better keep a day job since no one made money at it), that the authors put more into their work. Additionally, childhood is disappearing quicker now than ever and teen fiction shows that. In this sense, teen fiction is in a way becoming adult fiction. many of the problems faced are not so dissimilar from what adults face: lack of money, homelessness, loneliness, etc. as a public librarian, I would, at the very least, move the teen fiction section away from the children's section and attempt to integrate it more fully into the adult portion of the library in order to encourage more adults to read it rather than be embarrassed by it.
eBooks were another topic this podcast considered. This week (8/6/2010) Barnes and Nobel went up for sale. This podcast’s conjecture was that it did so as it was having a hard time staying afloat in the new digital book age. However, the environment of the café is what kept Barnes and Noble alive so long. I think that both points can be taken to heart at the library. Now more than ever people want to find free things to do and the library fits that description. It would be amazingly helpful if the library could adopt a café-type feel. I know when I go to my public library I still feel that I am at a government institution rather than being at a relaxing place to hang out and browse books.

LM_Net
Dennis LeLoup posted on LM_NET on 8/21/2010 in response to another post about how to manage a library with a split schedule called “Fixed Schedule Question for Elementary Media”. His post states that he in a district that, due to layoffs, has resulted in an assistant being at the library when he is not. Since he has top travel between buildings, he is only at each building every other day and the assistant has to take over when he is gone. I can see that until things get better for schools financially this may be a recurring situation. However, it is one I never even considered. After all, no matter how bad things get for schools, I won’t ever teach my kids only every other day. I have to be with them every day. This is a concerning issue in terms of library administration. At the very least, you would seriously have to trust the assistant that was hired. In the worst case scenario, students would suffer from an assistant that could possibly not have any experience with databases and teen/children’s fiction being the only person there every other day. I can see that this could be a serious problem for the long haul of the library, but I hope that this sort of situation is short lived. I hope that isn’t too optimistic. I expect the idea that a librarian is option will only be further promoted that appearance of empty shelves with the incorporation of downloadable content.

Carol Peterson posted “Dewey Shelving Lessons” on 8/21/2010. Her concern was that she had given her 7-8 grade library aids verbal instructions and shown them how to shelve in the Dewey Decimal System but the kids were still shelving incorrectly after getting over her frustration at their perceived laziness, she discovered that no matter how she explained it the kids just didn’t understand. Here is yet another thing that did not occur to me as a teacher who will later be a librarian. Our school library has no library aids, so I asked the librarian why not. Her answer ran along the same line as Peterson’s issue: that the kids didn’t do it right and it was more baby-sitting than anything else. The result seems that it is far easier to just shelve the material correctly so that the librarian doesn’t have to spend hours hunting down a missing book. I think this is an interesting conundrum. Mis-shelved items were a huge problem at the school I worked at before because kids were putting them back incorrectly. Right before I left the librarian had to reorganize the whole library since it was unusable after years and years of neglect. I wonder of the librarian at my current school doesn’t have the right idea. Perhaps it would be far better to simply absorb and extra bit of work in the short run that would save a ton of time in the long run.

Carolina Cuello posted “Calvin and Hobbes strip about librarians” on 8/20/2010. Though her post is short an only describes the comic with a request for anyone who has it to send it her since it’s funny, there are rather big issues within the management of the library that are brought up by the strip. The comic itself has Calvin being afraid to go to the library because his book is late and he’s afraid of the librarian. Sure this is a common comic trope, but how did it even get that far? What does this say about libraries? At first, I thought that if people borrow books then they need to return them or pay the price. It also seems like an easy way to generate extra money for the library. However, I then read in Woolls that this was a terrible idea since it makes reading punitive. Then I began to think. When I lived in Warrensburg, MO (for less than a year) I used the public library all the time for books on CD. Since I could return the book and lose my spot if I didn’t drive enough in time to finish it, I kept my first book a few days late to get it dome. I went in to pay my fine and the librarian looked at me as though I were weird and said they didn’t fine at all unless a book was lost or damaged. I probably got more books then I would normally have my home library (still the one I use) because I was never afraid of running out of time and having to pay a fine. It does seem to me that reading should be fun. If anything, we should be giving rewards to kids for wanting to read and using the library. Though there is always the issue of what to do when someone won’t bring the book back, I think that the library really needs to be a place in school where there is no punishment (though kids should still not be climbing the walls). All day kids are told what they can’t do or that they need to work faster to keep up with the class. It seems like a good idea to let kids have at least one place where they can go at their own pace. If it takes 8 months to read one book, then at least they’ve read one book.

Woolls Chapter 7: Managing Personnel
There are several points in this chapter that I found interesting. Firstly, I must say that I am concerned about the managing of personnel. It wasn’t a task I have ever even considered as a part of the job, but now that I think about it, it does make sense. However, I do not like the idea of having to fire or hire someone. Nor do I like having to evaluate others’ performance, especially when I am with those people all day in an often silent, empty environment. On the other hand, I am a very intimidating person, so my students tell me. This is going to work in my favor since I can manage students, but I am concerned that it will make my assistant unhappy. I would love to have a happy place, but I know that I often come off as domineering without meaning to be.

The more important point that I took from this chapter was that much of it seems to focus on how to make my job indispensable. It is true that funds everywhere are being cut and that I will have to lobby for my job; however, I found some encouraging points in here. As mentioned before in Skype and other posts, I work in a PD-happy district. The first Monday of every month is dedicated to PD and, up until the starving times of this year, there was also PD at least once a month on plan periods. I think that when things bounce back, as they surely must, PD will again become a part of the school day. In addition to this, we have a full week of PD before every school year starts and two days of PD after school ends. As such, I see that Woolls makes a good point by claiming that the LMS may eventually control PD. Though she says, “as professional periodicals are added to the media center collection, the media specialist may copy pertinent articles, highlighting key passages, and forward them to the principal” (119). She ends this portion with the thought that it would simply make both persons look good. I, however, see it as a way to maintain a job. With so much PD in our district, I can safely say only a fraction of it is good PD. Training staff on new technologies and things the library can offer teachers would be a much better way to do PD and that would make the LMS a central part of the school that could not be done away with.

This ties too with her point on page 114 that libraries are now arguably unnecessary. It’s true that it is possible to have a functioning virtual library and as such the librarian would need to be an integral part of school to maintain a place in it. Aside from PD development, another way to make myself indispensable is to help develop cross-curricular activities. I currently teach an English class that doubles as a current events class. My subjects often fall into things that sociology, current events, and psychology study. As a classroom teacher, I feel lucky to get through my grading in a day. I can’t imagine having the time to develop these units with another teacher. However, the LMS is in a perfect position to do so since she sees what kids’ research year after year. This is also a good way to get involved in the classroom and to make the school look good as everyone knows that cross curricular lessons are all the rage now.

Blogs
School Library Journal posted “LJ's First Virtual Ebook Summit Is a Big Hit” on 9/30/2010. Many good ideas were mentioned in this posting. This was an overview of the major points from the conference focusing on eBooks. The assumption is that eReaders will become like cell phones in the next few years. Therefore, libraries are now spending a sizable portion of their budget on them. However, as one panelist mentioned, that unlike cell phones, eReaders will result in a digital divide. Unlike a cell phone, which can be justified as a life saving apparatus in addition to the sheer convenience of a parent not having to wait outside the mall for an hour while their teen wanders around inside, an eReaders is just not high on the list for some people. The unintentional side effect of libraries switching steadily over to electronic content is that those kids who are left without an eReader will be left behind with books that are outdated. Though I don’t think that libraries will go all electronic, I am gathering that the movement is gaining momentum quickly. I do have some concern over what will happen to those kids whose parents don’t value reading and who can’t afford an eReader. Another good point was the Kindle, which is not as popular among librarians as a Nook since Amazon deletes content at will. Though as I looked into this I found that, and this is to my understanding only from the Amazon site) that a book can be put on the same Kindle up to six times before it has to be rebought. Though the concern in the SLS post was that each kid would have a Kindle, I’m certain that that won’t be the case for a long, long time. In the meantime, the library can own one Kindle and share its books with the students who have Kindles – or a Kindle app.

On 9/30/2010 Swiss Army Librarian posts “Historical Photo Collection Survey Results.” Though this was straight information concerning what printing selections libraries offer, I think there was an interesting point that was implied here. The fact that 42% of libraries do not offer high quality copies and that and that 75% of libraries surveyed offer only limited or no access to historical photos online seems to say something about what’s happening in society today. Though I am an advocate for the eBooks, history seems to be getting lost in the library nowadays. Based off this posting, historical photos are not convenient to get or satisfying once coped from the public library. But where else can the people go? It seems that the options are limited and the result means that those who are interested may lose interest soon.

On 7/6/2010 posted “Fines, Daycares, and eBooks.” The author of this post was concerned with the idea that libraries charge fines for overdue CDs and movies but not books. Historically, she says, this made sense since CDs and DVDs used to cost so much but now she sees it as a way of telling patrons that those things are more important that the books in the library. She has a good point about that. It does seem to be sending the wrong message to people. Then she launches into an explanation of what fines really do. She gives a study that a daycare did where they started fining parents who were late to pick up their kids in the hopes that they would be on time, much like we do with library books. Then the daycare discovered that late pickups skyrocketed because it was worth it for the people to be late. The author of the post comes to the conclusion that people are more likely to do what’s right (return library books on time) when they aren’t being punished. As we all know in education, praise works better than punishment. Though the average patron won’t care at all if we say good job, self-rewards still seem to motivate more than punishing. So really, if they really want to keep Twilight for another month while they finish it, why can’t they?