Of course you know it’s always the favorite part of our job to go visit our members! Being part of a multitype library system means we have 300+ organizations as members: school, public, academic, and special libraries. It’s so neat to be part of it all – and it is great to go see members and how they do things in their part of the system!

 

Well, yes! This is a great way to get started in any school library!!

Libraries are much more than “just” books – but of course books are always going to be important in a library.

 

I’m a librarian! I like to have things labeled!! And when we are thinking about usability in libraries – always a key aspect of any library – making it very clear where all the different types of books can be found is a key to really implementing that usability!

And these words are just too cute!!

 

 

I love to see unique features in libraries – and this stage area is just adorable! It is handy for hanging artwork on the side facing the rest of the library, and also has some steps and an area that could be used for performing or other fun stuff.

   If you have been keeping up with our Peep Team Information Literacy series, you will understand why I was so very excited immediately by the Peep book dioramas that were all over the library!! (There were a lot of them, but I loved this one!) I love to see student projects, especially book-related projects, in the library. Reading is nice; but it’s good to see people able to interact with the information in the book and use it in a different context! (Yes: information literacy is awesome!)

   I love to see these shelves, sized just right for the patrons who will be using these materials! This school is preK through grade 5, so many of the patrons will not be very tall, and they will be interested in books that are fairly large. So these shelves are just right: a good height for easy browsing, and filled with books that are easy to flip through and lots of good cover art to admire! Thinking about the things your community members will need, and figuring out to best provide it to them, is the key to successful library services.

Another great example of this kind of usability is the labeling of the series books. As a very dedicated series reader myself, I always appreciate it when a library helps me out with finding the next book in the series. And in this library, these cute and handy book shelf tags are  right there to help patrons find their next books!

Of course, in any school library students are not the only members of the community served by the library. Here you can see the packets of books collected for teachers to check out and use in their classrooms. This is an important function of a school library. We serve as information resources, and we support the information needs of all teachers, staff, and administrators. Developing and sharing this kind of resources is one great step in fulfilling that mission!

 

“There’s an ocean of learning in technology!” indeed!! (Sorry about the bad photo there – but the sign is just adorable in real life!) We are information centers for our communities, and you can admire the computer lab just off this library! As the people in a community (here: a school) who can provide information and tech training, along with other staff members, we are partners with our colleagues in helping students to learn great skills they will keep building on as the world continues to grow and change. Do you think there is any chance the tech we are using right this minute will still be in use in twenty years? In ten years? Nope – I don’t think so either! So let’s be part of the system in helping our community to learn HOW to learn. That is: building information literacy skills.

So this is where most member visits end. I had a great time, I saw neat things, and carefully did not take pictures of all the kids using the library. (Privacy! Libraries are into it!) But here is where we take a sharp turn into even MORE fun, as this school was having a Vocabulary Parade!!!!

If you did not know about this great thing, you are not alone. I had no idea what a Vocabulary Parade is; but now it is going to be one of my favorite school activities! A few kids from the third, fourth, and fifth grades dressed up as selected words. We all congregated in the gym, and the principal carefully read off each person’s, or team’s, name and their word. Then the kid ran out on stage in a costume and a sign identifying their word. Wild applause followed every word! It was fantastic. Then their teachers paraded across stage with their costumes and words, and I tell you I thought the kids (and their parents in the bleachers) were going to applaud down the house!! It was all glorious!

 I tried to get some photos, but kids in costumes are very fast-moving! You can see some of them lined up here, waiting for their colleagues to finish parading and sharing their vocabulary words. It’s a little tough to make out the specific details, but you can just make out the yellow costume of the boy who was “light” all decked out in his glowing light bulbs! All the costumes were fantastic – these kids (and their parents) really did a lovely job of thinking through their words.

I tried to take pictures of people on stage, but they are just very cute looking blurs. So I grabbed this one of my library guide, Mary Berning, District Library Media Specialist for the Chisago Lakes Area Schools. Her word is so long it was hard to get in the photo: cruciverbalist, a person skillful in creating or solving crossword puzzles. (Seems very appropriate for a library person, doesn’t it?)

 

As I headed back to my car, I stopped to make photos of their very lovely Little Free Libraries! I just love these libraries – it’s so nice to have options for kids, parents, and anyone else in the community to just drop by and drop off books or to borrow some books. Schools are such integral parts of their communities – these little free libraries are a small way to make that connection more concrete!