Today was my first day as a "visiting" summer librarian for another school in my district. Their librarian is happily celebrating the birth of her new baby girl (this morning!) and I agreed to spend 12 hours this summer at the library so students in the school's summer enrichment program and from the surrounding community could check out books.
I was a bit apprehensive because a fellow librarian posted on Facebook last night that she had 0 participants show up at the school she is covering this summer (also not her own school). I know I have a captive audience in the summer program students but I am not sure about the community ones. I did send out a Tweet last night to remind them and I know the principal did ConnectEd calls and a flyer went home before the end of the school year.
I do have some familiarity with this library because Cara, the librarian, was my mentee during the past school year. She has done a great job making the library a more "kid friendly" by reducing the clutter on the shelves, increasing signage and making popular items more readily accessible.
BUT...it still feels like a foreign country to me. I miss my Un-Deweyed library as students walked up to me today and asked me if there were any books about dirtbikes or giant pandas or Pokémon. I missed being able to stride confidently over to the shelf and say yes or no. I knew the Dewey section to look in but it isn't my library and so I had to look to find that section and then find the right shelf and then find the right section within the shelf. I have a list and I spent some time pulling some books for students for next week. But not being able to find the material instantly was frustrating for me. I felt like I was spending time wandering along the yellow brick road looking for the land of OZ.
And I miss my series section and my graphic novels section. I miss being able to recommend something on the fly. I didn't realize how often I did that until that was taken away. When you are using someone else's collection, you don't realize how different it is from your own.
But there is good news. I am walking around and seeing some new titles that I do not have and checking out some authors and series that are not in my collection.
And I am meeting some new munchkins!
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