Dialoging with student librarians

 For the third year in a row, I am once again working with my former professor, Dr. Larry Johnson, and his library media specialist students from the School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University.  I'm sharing a few photos of my school library before the book fair and after.  My library media center is a separate building and was once the cafeteria.  Above, the photo shows the biographies that are housed right inside the main door.

The E for Everybody books are located along the back wall.  The free-standing cases in the middle of the room house chapter books and much of the non-fiction collection.

The 398.2 and 811 collections are large enough to require their own shelving.  There are six computers around the room for students to use Destiny, our online catalog, or to do Internet research.

Our reference area is the focus of year one of our five-year collection development plan.  Common Core has required all of us to take a hard look at our collections in terms of curricular support, and text-complexity and depth of non-fiction and reference holdings.

This is my media cart.  My LCD projector is hooked to a desktop computer with a video splitter.  Because tablet technology is developing so fast, we have decided not to invest in laptop computers, but rather concentrate on getting document cameras, LCD projectors, MobiViews or eBeams for each grade level.  My document camera gets a workout most days because I read to each class that comes for their media special.  I have three classes each day and switch off with our computer teacher.  This leaves the library media center and the computer lab open for three class periods each day for individual teacher sign-up.

The back room of the library media center houses the professional collection, the guided reading collection, many class sets of novels, and videos and DVDs.

For our Scholastic book fair, we roll the free-standing cases to one end of the room and open the fair cases.

PTA volunteers help a class fill out wish lists during their preview of the book fair.  Since I can't teach in the library media center during the book fair, I "take my show on the road" and go to classrooms.

Welcome to my blog, SLIS students!  I look forward to talking with you.