Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Magazines

Hi,
Do you have any magazines in your library? Are they geared toward the children? Would you like a list of magazines to choose from? Well, today is your lucky day! I have a list of magazines for you. Some schools choose their magazines through a company that handles missing issues and payment to each. Other schools subscribe through their magazine fundraiser which also helps support the school. You might even check with your local church members and see if they are willing to donate their copies when they are finished with them.

I will not list SDA publications. I hope you are already familiar with them. The SDA magazines also might be donated by someone.

American Girl is a great magazine for your students. It has stories, games, advice, and crafts and the girls will line up to check this out.

The Cricket Magazine Group from Carus Publishing has some wonderful options. They are all $33.95 each for a year’s subscription. You can go to their website and check out all the options for the different age levels. They will also send you sample copies of their magazines if you request them. I would probably avoid Cricket and Cicada simply because of the content at times. For example, Cricket has a theme for the month such as Halloween. There will be games, stories, riddles, folklore, and more. Parts of many of the magazines will be wonderful and other parts will not be appropriate for an Adventist school. Cicada is the literary magazine for teens who love writing and literature. I would request a copy of each of those if you are considering them in your library.

Crinkles magazine takes a theme and focuses on it for the month. A recent month was about North Carolina and has articles about people, places, events and things from North Carolina. There are hands on activities and the articles are aimed at developing critical thinking skills.

Three magazines from Scholastic that we get are Current Health 1, Current Science, and Choices. Current Health has great articles on keeping healthy and drug free, Current Science focuses on science happening now and what we can look for in the future, and Choices is a life skills magazine. The most recent issue has articles on drug abuse, depression, a multiracial family, how volunteering can be fun and rewarding.

Other popular magazines here at Rogers are Sports Illustrated for Kids, Ski, Model Railroader, and Radio Control Car Action. We also have BMX, Popular Science, Ranger Rick, National Geographic Kids, National Geographic, Model Airplane News, Kids Discover, and Consumer Reports. Many of these can be placed in your library by donation.

One word of caution. We look through the ads in the Radio Control Car Action, and similar magazines that are also for adults because they often have ads with scantily clad models. Those ads are removed and then placed on the shelf for check out. This was a small problem for us in the past, and that is our way of handling the problem without canceling the subscription.

This is not a complete list by any means. It is one to get you started. What interests do your students have? There probably is a magazine about it. If you aren’t sure about the magazine, ask for a preview copy or buy one from the newsstand and look it over.

If you have a great magazine that wasn’t featured here, let me know or reply to all to let us know about your great find.

Happy reading!
Audrey

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Weeding Your Library

“Weeding” your library

One job that needs to be done is to weed the library. Right now I am preaching to myself since this is a difficult thing for me to do. This year we will work on sections of our libraries and do some weeding. You can weed along with me if you like. If you don’t have the time to do it as I do, then please keep these guidelines somewhere to refer to when you are able to weed.

The Library Media Center Handbook, May 2002 has guidelines that I will be referring to over the months. Another source is Sunlink which gives guidelines to follow along with some recommended titles to discard. I also will refer to the CREW method which has provided guidance for over 30 years.

Here are some general guidelines to follow.

What to Weed?
1. Materials that are worn or damaged.
2. Mediocre writing style, especially material that was written quickly to meet popular interest that has passed.
3. Unused sets of books. Specific volumes can be kept if they meet your needs.
4. Self-published or small press materials that are not circulating.
5. Poorly bound or poorly printed editions.
6. Items that are dirty, shabby, warped, marked up, mutilated, or ‘edited’ by patrons.
7. Books with very small print or poor quality pictures.
8. Materials containing information that is not easily accessible. For example, no table of contents, no index, or the content is poorly designed.
9. Materials containing outdated, inaccurate information, and outdated interpretations, values, and attitudes.
10. Material for which the format or reading level is inappropriate to the reading level or interest level of the students.
11. Material which is no longer in demand, or which no longer supports the curriculum.
12. Material that is condescending, stereotyped, patronizing, or biased.
13. Material which has not circulated in three to five years. (Remember that you are the final decision. You CAN keep a book that hasn’t circulated if you know it is important to your library or school.)
14. Duplicate copies of books not circulating.


The CREW Guidelines have an acronym MUSTIE which stand for:
M – Misleading or inaccurate
U – Ugly or worn beyond mending or rebinding
S – Superseded by a new edition or a much better book on the subject
T – Trivial. Of no discernible literary or scientific merit; the interest in this book has passed.
I – Irrelevant to the needs and interests of your community
E – Elsewhere. The material or information can be located elsewhere. (This may not apply to most of us since our schools likely don’t have interlibrary loan and few of us have electronic formats.)

I realize that there is a LOT of information here. If you want to download the Crew manual, I will be referring to the 2008 revision by Jeanette Larson. http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ld/pubs/crew/

Have a great day!
Audrey

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Hello, Everyone,
I’m sure you didn’t expect to hear from me again this week, but I got a great question from one of you wondering if I had a written selection policy that I would share. At first I sat sheepishly thinking, “Yes, I do, but it is in MY HEAD!” Then I remembered that I HAD written one up a while ago and searched for it on my computer. Well, here it is. You can see that it was written up in 2003, but it does live in my head as I select books and other materials for our library.

Please let me know if you have any questions about our policy or any ideas about selection policies. If you don’t have a selection policy written, it really is a good thing to have for your school particularly if a parent or constituent questions materials in your library. Feel free to use ours as a base for yours.

Please don’t feel threatened if a parent does question material in your library. Also, don’t immediately discard the questioned material. I tell parents that I appreciate their concern and I also don’t want inappropriate materials in the library. (Many libraries require that a patron fill out a form to request removal of materials they find offensive. You can find examples of these forms online.) I explain our procedure for removing the book and I thank them for reading the book and letting me know about it since I cannot read every book. I tell them that I will temporarily remove it from the shelf and reevaluate the book personally. Then I read the book and make a decision. I usually send a letter to the parent to let them know of my decision.

I hope this is helpful to you.
Audrey

Rogers Elementary School Library Selection Policy
April 30, 2003


Description
The Media Center Director is responsible for the selection of library materials and the development of the collection of the Rogers School Library.


Criteria for Selection
The Media Center Director is guided in selection of materials by professional book reviews and standard bibliographies. Recommendations from the patrons will be given careful consideration for purchase.

The Library’s collection will be built to meet the needs and interests of Rogers School. Materials are selected to reflect the varying age groups, abilities, and interests of the patrons. All materials to be selected are subjected to the following criteria as they are applicable:

 Current interest and usefulness
 Permanent value
 Comprehensive in scope
 Relevance to the existing collection
 High standards of quality in content
 Cost in relation to the individual title and to the overall collection
 Availability of funds and space
 Attention of critics, reviewers, and public
 Balance of viewpoints in the collection
 Strengths and weaknesses of the existing collection
 SDA values

Physical Maintenance of the Collection
The Media Center Director and staff will regularly weed and update the Rogers School library collection. In general, removal will be based on:

 Relevance of content
 Duplicates of titles no longer popular
 Usage over time
 Condition of material

Reconsideration Policy
If library material is challenged, the material will temporarily be removed from the shelf giving the Media Center Director time to reevaluate the material using the above criteria. If the materials are not in line with the selection criteria, they will be removed from the library collection. If the materials are found to be worthy of the collection, they will remain in the collection and the person who challenged the material will be informed by letter the reasons why the materials will remain in the collection.

Kid Friendly Books

What kinds of books will a reluctant reader be attracted to? We all have those kids in our classrooms or schools. Those kids who CAN read, but can’t seem to find anything to read in the library. They will read for the required assignments, but seldom pick up a book for recreational reading. Here are some subjects and titles of books that have worked well for me.

About 5 years ago a student came to me and asked if I had any books on building stuff. We didn’t have very much. I realized that there were lots of kids that probably like to build things and started searching for books for kids with building projects in them. I came across David Stiles’ books on building tree houses and forts and other simple projects. They were a hit! Other books that are universally popular are books on jokes and riddles, origami, paper airplanes, codes and ciphers, and drawing books. The “I Spy” books and “Where’s Waldo” type of books are also popular with all ages.

A few years ago another student came in asking for books on crocheting. Her teacher was teaching the whole class to crochet and she wanted a book to check out on the subject. I had a couple, but decided to update that section too. Along the way I also upgraded our books on weaving, beading, rubber stamping, quilting (MY hobby!), sewing, and knitting. This summer I saw a sale book on adding ‘bling’ to personal items (cell phones, shoes, purses, etc.) and got that for our library.

Consider adding books on other hobbies like stamp collecting, coin collecting, and photography. There are some great new books on digital photography for kids.

I have a weakness for any cookbook for kids. I gave some ideas last year about good titles for that section. You can locate that in my blog at sdalaibrarian.blogspot.com.

Think about adding books on sports, too. BMX biking is big here, and skiing and snowboarding are also popular. What sports do your students like to do? Do you have books on those sports?

Ask the kids what hobbies or sports or crafts they would like to see in the library and tailor it to your kids. If they have a voice, they will be very likely to use the books ‘they picked out’.

Have a great week!
Audrey

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Special Offer from a publisher

Hi,
I hope your week is going well. I have a good deal for you this week. Here is part of an email I received today. Enslow Publishers is offering a great savings on even their discount of 25% to schools. They call it “Cash for Clunkers” and the point is to replace books that you have weeded out of your collection with new books. Just weed 10 old books and follow their instructions and you receive a 45% discount on your order of 10 or more books. I looked in their online catalog and found quite a number of interesting titles so I’m sure you can find something you need. There is a phone number to call and you can ask for Dave or Linda to help you further. (800) 398-2504. I would ask them to email you the information for their “Cash for Clunkers” deal.

Have a great week,
Audrey