Guest Blogger - Stacy Barry

As promised in a previous post, here are the thoughts from one of the Lighthouse School librarians that came to visit.

Greetings all from Libraryland! My name is Stacy Barry and I am the LMS at Rodger’s Forge E.S. I have been in the library at RFES for 3 years and loving every minute of it. This year has been a year of a lot of change, as we are 1 of the 10 BCPS Lighthouse Schools. The changes have been so exciting and the way that my library looks and feels is completely different from the last 2 years – from furniture, management, technology integration, and the circulation of materials (just to name a few!). Well with all this change, great things have come and I am looking for more ways to improve the library experience for all the RFES students. With that in mind, the opportunity came around for me to visit Sandy Bixby’s library. I felt so lucky to have the opportunity to talk with her about the organization of her collection! From the very beginning, I felt the urge to run over and start browsing books. The student friendly signs, interactive props, and “undeweyed” shelves made it so easy for me to find books in different genres. I immediately started searching for fairy tales and pets, topics I had just finished talking about with the kindergartners that day! I loved the idea of students being able to find books based on interest – with biographies, science, social studies, and literature all being merged in to “genred” areas. I thought about the excitement the kids would feel looking through ocean books, unexpectedly stumbling upon distinguished ocean explorer biographies to share with families. I couldn’t help but see how circulation statistics could only go up and students could find so many books that they never knew existed! Additionally, with each moment there, I felt increasingly excited about the possibility of shelving books so much faster too –whew! I left the visit feeling a sense of awe for the amount of work that was put in to create such a student-centered collection. I also left asking myself – where and when can I start!?!? I may have to get a cup of coffee before I answer those questions just yet, but once the caffeine hits – let the fun begin! Thanks Sandy for an AMAZING experience!

The Visitors Came

This is the first moment I have had to catch up. It seems as if the calendar items are all conspiring to occur at the same time.

 Kelly and I met about our Common Ground presentation and we both ended up with a long list of to-do's.  It's scary and daunting, and to be honest, a little bit exciting!  We have a plan and intend to work it. Priority on my to-do list is getting location fields set up for the fiction section. I am starting with the fiction section because there are a fewer amount of records to manipulate. Good news!  The Sports Fiction is finished.  It took about 1-1/2 hrs. to complete.  Bad news!  It is one of the smallest genres and there are 8 more genres to go in fiction.  I am simply refusing to think about Nonfiction section.  To quote that plucky little lady from the south,





When we finished, 3 librarians from our school system's Lighthouse schools came to visit.  (Can I just stop right here and geek out for a minute?  I just love company!  I am so proud of this project and the results we have seen.  So I get super excited when I know someone is coming.) These three ladies came to see my library set up and just to visit and ask a few questions.  They looked excited when they left.  (Hopefully you can read all about it when they send me some guest posts to share.)

And it turns out that Kelly and I will get a chance to present our Common Ground presentation to a group of BCPS librarians prior to the actual presentation in Ocean City.  I really am quite thankful for the opportunities that I have been able to experience and the ones that keep presenting themselves.