Are You Ready for Some Football!?!

I'm playing catch-up...AGAIN...so here's a quick rundown of the football display that has come (and gone)* since my last post!

Football is quite big in my new school community.  Before the first game of the season there was a huge tailgating effort called Dawgapalooza (since we're the bulldogs), there's a huge Homecoming parade (that my uber cute 1st grade daughter was a part of), and many of the male students from elementary school to high school participate in the sport.  As a librarian, you have to know your patrons, so I thought a big football display to kick off the season would be just the ticket.

 A big, glorious display of American football and Football (soccer) books!  I also have some lovely framed Sports Illustrated covers to add a little humor to the display.

 Being from a family that upholds and appreciates the real sport of football (ie, SOCCER), I also had to include that in the display.

 The soccer season for boys is also in the fall! 

 Check out this one.  Man oh man, sometimes I'm super glad this collection hasn't been updated in years.

Just a few photos of the individual shelves of the three panel display.  To come up with the books for the display I just spent some more time in the stacks of our humble library, pulling everything I could find!  Easy!

I had lots of fun making a collage sign to go with the display, too.  I love to do picture collages, so this was a perfect little extra fun activity I gave myself.

The pick up from the display was constant, and the return was also great.  I had a lot of students interested in the books displayed, and they were awesome enough to return them on time, so others could get them.  Yippee!!!



*NOTE:  This display was up from September 15-October 1 as a beginning of season celebration. 

Meet Your New Librarian!

I have been trying to figure out a way to introduce myself to the students.  I wanted to make it part of their orientation powerpoint during their first visit to the library, but I was adding too many slides (and the cable we have for the screen is incompatible with my laptop anyway, so I couldn't do the powerpoint).  Then I thought well, I could put some trinkets up, but the library doesn't have a lot of space for my things yet, since I'm STILL cleaning things out.  Finally...like a bolt of lightening it hit me: DO A DISPLAY [you idiot]!!!  Why I didn't think of that at first, I have no idea.  Even if the students don't get an idea for my pop culture obsessions yet, at least they'll know what books I love.  I hope they can start to get to know more about me through the ones displayed.

Both the fiction and non-fiction collections here are rather dated, but I still did pretty well with what I have to work with.  I have six sections to my display, and they all contain some of my favorites from our humble collection.  The six sections include: picture books, junior novels, classics, young adult novels, graphic novels, and informational texts.  Next to each section I also put a sign, with a picture of some of my other favorites.  Finally, I put a quick blurb about how the students can follow me on Goodreads or Shelfari.

Students have already started taking books from the display, and I've been filling in holes with others I love as they are checked out (to keep it looking pretty).  My choice of Raina Telgemeier graphic novels get checked out quite quickly.  (I've already loved seeing both girls and boys checking out Raina's work.  Before getting a job in a library, I wondered if boys would be checking out her mostly female-centered works.)

Summer Lovin'

OK, OK...maybe not Summer Lovin'...maybe Summer READIN', but after living with Grease my entire life, you can't say "summer" without hearing "lovin'" in your head.  (True story.)

Even though it's not summer yet, and all these poor Uni students still have Finals to get through, the Seniors' last day is THIS FRIDAY, MAY 15.  I've gotten to know a lot of them, and I'll miss them.  I wanted to give them some summer reads before they left.  (And, as of this post, TWO have already been checked out.  Considering the display has only been up since Thursday, that's a good goin'-rate around here.)

The theme of this display is Summer Reads.  There are a lot of summer love stories out there, but I didn't want to just focus on those.  I also chose some island books: classic (The Mysterious Island, Robinson Crusoe), survival (Lord of the Flies), and futuristic (Nil).  I put our big Woodstock book on display, hoping some music-loving students would want to flip through its pages to learn more about the Summer of Love.  And, there are also some books that take place during the summer, which are just really good stories (A Beautiful Lie).  I was excited to also offer two excellent summer/beachy graphic novels for the display, This One Summer (which was checked out so quickly that it's not in the photos) and Robot Dreams, respectively.

I hope you have a lot of summer reading on  your to-do list for the next couple of months.  Remember, even if you don't get a summer break, it should still be a time of rest and rejuvenation.  I hope you get some time to yourself to rest, rejuvenate, and READ! 

I Had No Idea: National Eating Disorders Awareness Week

Eating disorders are not something to be ignored.  In order to shed light on them and help those that might be afraid or embarrassed to ask for help in a one-on-one manner, we have planned a couple of things to raise awareness of eating disorders.

Amy has been working with the school social worker to sponsor a Uni Period talk about eating disorders, and a registered dietician will be in attendance to lead the talk/discussion.  This year's NEDA focus is I Had No Idea. 

 Signage on our library doors for our Uni Period talk on eating disorders that Amy created.

I also did my best to create a display with information and fiction texts on eating disorders.  One student said that she is concerned with fiction texts that focus on eating disorders, because she fears that they give students who are in the throes of one ideas.  This is a valid point, and after this I was hesitant to put any fiction texts up.  However, after thinking about it for a bit, I felt that these fiction texts could help those recovering to know that authors are aware of eating disorders, and that if needed, they can find themselves reflected in some texts.

I sourced some titles from a Goodreads list on YA Eating Disorders, but this list was filled with books that would do more harm than good (giving "ideas," as the one student who raised concerns stated).  I tried to find some fiction titles in our collection and other collections from around the university that would give a more realistic picture of what eating disorders entail.  The signage posted here was downloaded and printed from the NEDA website.  

Eating disorders are easy to ignore, can be easy to hide, and easy to push to the side in order to worry about other diseases.  They are still life threatening and affect many more than one may realize.  This week, we hope to offer guidance, help, and hope to one, two, or many who may be grappling with an eating disorder. 

Greensleeves

There's a science project goin' on in these here parts, and it's a science free read.  The Subbie group can read any non-fiction science book they want, so that gave Amy and me lots of room to pull cool books for book talks, displays, and a book cart. 

The students can find books in one of three ways: look on the shelves, look on a designated cart in the main room of the library, or seek help from Amy, Paul, or myself for a reference interview.  Amy requested a lot of texts from other libraries on campus, and then she asked me to go into our own collection and seek out interesting titles to face out on the shelves.  This was more fun than I thought it would be.  Here's me being totally honest: I didn't know how many interesting science books there are!*

Three of my favorite science books I pulled, covering three of my favorite topics: Harry Potter, time travel, and Buffy.

Amy started the collection for the Subbies to peruse, Paul processed all of the books and created "temporary" statuses for them, so they're properly acknowledged in the online catalog, and I, well, I had the GREENSLEEVES FACE OUT idea. 

We've put greensleeves on each of the books for the Subbies, and then for each shelf in our collection, I picked one or two texts to cover with a sleeve and do a face out.  We cannot cover each and every non-fiction science text in our collection, but I pulled several I thought were super interesting to do as face outs.  These sleeves draw the students' eyes, and if they like the subject/topic, but not that specific book, they can look down the shelf to find a book with a similar topic.  I will admit that I was proud of my idea, and it has worked.  Students were much more confident looking on the shelves knowing that there would be suggested face outs.  In fact, it worked so well that Amy, Paul, and I only did a few reference interviews. 

This is just another example of collaboration, and how a simple thing like a colored piece of paper can make all the difference in the world for a student to gain confidence in the library.




*CONFESSION TIME...I am not a great scientist: Science is my worst subject on Trivia Crack, and I wanted to enroll our daughter into a STEM school, so she would be sure to have a lot of science instruction in elementary school.  (When I was in elementary school, science was always THE LAST subject my teachers made room to teach.) 

Treasures from the Uni High Library

Well, you just never know what you're going to find in the Uni High library.  So far this year I've found some treasures: a vintage copy of S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders, cool old covers of class literature by Hemingway and Fitzgerald, and the awesome Uni in-house archives are just a few of the cool things I've found.  A few weeks ago, I found two other treasures. 

The first one was this:

I think what I like best about this find is the fact that it was a face out.  Magic Johnson's seminal account about AIDS avoidance, acquired in 1993 and last checked out from the Uni library in 1996 (see below) is a FACE OUT.  I don't know who made this a face out; probably a student who thought it would be funny.  I don't mind a time machine book, so I haven't changed its face out status since I found it.  If any student checks it out, I WILL take their picture holding the tome, and I WILL ask if I can post the photo. (I would also want to know why/how they plan on using the text.)

Acquisition date in red; mail-away form to order the audioCASSETTE

The last due date for this seminal text?  November 25, 1996--I was a junior in high school at the time.

I probably should read this book to find out exactly how I can avoid AIDS.  I would love to read the 1993 ways in which I can avoid it. 

Another find is this miraculous art tome:

 

I'll make a confession: on Saturday and Sunday afternoons I used to tune in to PBS programming toward the end of the half hour (like 1:25 or 1:55) to see if they'd squish in a Sister Wendy art informational before the next program started.  My dad got me hip to her.  I'm still sad she isn't on PBS anymore (just like I still grieve the lack of Bob Ross).  But, when would these students have ever heard of or seen her?  I mean, I'm glad the book hasn't been weeded, but I don't know how much authority it would hold with the student population of Uni.  I actually made this a face out when a student came in asking me for an art book with brief blurbs about different types of art.  I didn't get her to check this one out, but I encouraged her to search for Sister Wendy shorts on YouTube.  Here's a link to one Sister Wendy program.

Those are the treasures for now.  I hope I can find some more soon!

Display Fun

I think the best part about working in a library is finding new books to skim, marvel at, and dream about.  It is also fun fitting these into our New Books Displays.

We still have our New Book Overflow section, so that makes two new book spaces in the Uni High Library.  It's my job to place them on the displays after I've posted them to the new book blog.

This week I've had fun grouping...

new memoirs:

kick ass girls:

"romances":

Oh how I long to read Eat Brains Love and The Impossible Knife of Memory!

U.S struggles, controversies, and identity:

And, all together now:

What a great week to be a Uni High Library grad assistant!  

Food & Gaiman

I made a diary entry about how "unfortunate" I was to create displays about food and Neil Gaiman.  I hope you know I was kidding!  I just realized I never posted the finished products.

I've known since the beginning of the year that I would do a food display for the Thanksgiving season.  I had fun just roaming around our collection pulling books that had to do with food: I pulled fiction, graphic novels, memoirs, and non-fiction.  I couldn't fit all of the cookbooks we have, so I tried to put a good variety.  Praise be to the heavens that the Uni Collection does have what I think is my most favorite food book of all time: The Gallery of Regrettable Food.  When I worked at Pages for All Ages, we used to pour over this book at the Info Desk.  It is one of my all-time ultimate favorites.

I also made some signage for the display, encouraging students to ask for help if they need to find more food books or want to search for them at one of the public libraries.  I had to use a still from Oliver for this...of course.  This is also how I got a photo of Jamie Oliver included.

The Neil Gaiman display also turned out well and included signage.  Since he's the author of the month, I included info about him: vital stats, his work, his social media sites, etc.  It was great fun collecting his books for the display, but a lot of his books are checked out--no shocker there. 

He's one of the biggest advocates for libraries, and for some great personal stories he has about libraries and being a book nerd, check out these links:

• Libraries are Cultural "Seed Corn"
• Reading Agency Lecture