Weekly Reflection 4

This week (April 22) was fairly slow and was primarily focused on performing odd tasks around the library, as well as helping prep materials for classes that were in the library this week and for testing next week, including checking out laptops to teachers (ultimately learning how to check out technology to students and staff that need it). I also checked out books and helped students find what they needed when a TA or Erin were unavailable.

Some of my work today was going to be assigning potential sub-locations to non-fiction books; however, I was not super confident in my ability to properly assess new sub-locations for many of the non-fiction books, and so focused on filling in a couple dozen of the animal books that were reasonably obvious, then switched to other tasks with Erin’s permission as I was struggling with Dewey and its proper sub-locations.

After that, I checked in the overflowing book return to ease the load on the TA’s for the day, and then went to help Erin with her classes. The primary task of the day for the students was to create “shelf-talkers” for the library to highlight recommendations for their peers. My job was to prep strips of paper that fit the shelves and lightly crease them at the appropriate size, and distribute them to students who had an approved draft of their shelf-talker. Once the class was finished, I went around the library and put the shelf-talkers in their appropriate locations where the book should be on the shelf (some of the books had disappeared during the class due to students seeing their peer’s recommendations and immediately grabbing the last copy!)

I also created a couple for two of my favorite books (both of which are the starts of their series), which were books that did not have any other students create talkers for, but are excellent reads for the age group.

I found these very fun to create and found the wide range of books chosen by the students interesting, since it gives me a better idea of what students this age are reading. I noticed at least five separate entries for the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, which suggests that they resonate really well with this age group, as well as Baby-Sitters Club (which also had several talkers). I also noticed a surprising amount of shelf-talkers for It by Stephen King, which is not a book I would have expected in a middle-school library, nor one that I would think middle-schoolers would enjoy. However, I consider this a learning experience in my own inexperience with what children and young adults are reading, and will keep an eye out for other titles that I did not think of as being popular in the age group.

The non-fiction shelves also continue to improve. Between Erin and I, most of the to-be-weeded books have been deleted from the system and so the shelves are emptying out.