What's Been Going On?

Not much time to write lately as things in the library have been picking up. The fiction section is reset sending all of the fiction paper back books to the front of the library near the reading/discussion area, while the hard cover fiction books have found new life in the stacks with some added space. The top shelves now have room to display and feature books. Also, the Accelerated Reader books have been incorporated with the rest of the fiction collection. My aide and her daughter played a large role in helping to prepare and complete this huge change. Also, the students unknowingly played a large role in helping by checking out a solid portion of the collection so we did not have to move all of the books at the same time.
Also, a forgotten magazine back issue stock has new life. Mostly a new life in classrooms for cutting and reading projects. I cleaned out all magazines with dates prior to 2008, which was about three quarters of the back issue stock. Any "old" magazines not collected by teachers for classroom use will be recycled, but the back issue room is now very manageable. I will be better able to tell the staff what, exactly, we have giving teachers a better idea of how to use the back issues.
The back issue room also has a pretty neat special collection that has been growing for the last 20 years. I have the local newspaper, The Glasford Gazzette, collection with papers dating back from 1990. I'm not sure what to do with this collection, but it is very unique and interesting to look at.
I have also been doing some cooperative work with teachers. In the elementary library, we have put together a collection of reading materials that connects to the curriculum topics in the classroom. So, starting this week, when the kindergarten students come to the library for reading day, the books we read to them will be matched to the classroom topics. I hope that it helps the students to start making connections that what they learn in the classroom is not isolated to the classroom, but to a larger world. Also, I worked with the eighth grade social studies classes to create timelines using our new World Book online database. The senior research writing class also got help finding primary sources in the library and our World Book online database.
If I sound pretty excited about the changes, I am. But for every change or success, I realize what more could be done. There are problems with scheduling, holes in the collection of books, and quite frankly, inexperience issues with me as a new librarian. I am constantly learning, but moving forward to make a couple good libraries to support teachers and students.