TeacherNinja says:

While chatting (with a couple of my fellow bloggers), we were discussing the possible perks of my new job. “There will be less paperwork!”

I wondered aloud if that was true and was accused by my lovely bride of being a nattering nabob of negativism. Since she’s always right, it has gotten me thinking. Is there really less paperwork? Or at least less of the onerous kind?

There is some paperwork you will never get away from.  I HATE preparing budget requests. I want my district to give me untold thousands of dollars… just because I say so 🙂

Some of a librarian’s paperwork might actually be enjoyable to some.  When I am feeling stressed – I work on ordering books -sorting book reviews and prioritizing them etc.  Here are some links to my mentoring posts about book ordering:

Book Ordering – Henry Style

Book Ordering – Henry Style – Part 2

Book Ordering – Henry Style – Part 3

Book Budgets – Hanging on to what is yours

If I have no more money left, there are always books to catalog. I actually enjoy this.  Mostly I have my assistant or work-study student download the marc records – but I like to add subject areas to the records to increase access points.   I do this for the books that come already cataloged and processed as well.  It forces me to handle the books and get to know their content a little bit.

Doing a yearly weeding of at least half the library is a dreaded job – but SO necessary.

Also doing an inventory of holdings is vital.  Also onerous.  I do it every year.  I can’t imagine letting it go more than 2 years in a row.  Weeding and inventory force you to examine the usefulness of every book, and keep the catalog accurate.  If folks find that they often look for books that are supposed to be on the shelves – but they are missing – they get frustrated and form judgments about the usefulness/ease-of-use of your library.

If you run any reading programs, author visits etc. – that will involve LOTS of paperwork.

You MIGHT have some correcting to do.  Some elementary schools include a grade on the report card.  But even in schools where this is not true – you might choose to do so.  For instance,  I work with our English Teachers on big research projects  for all 4 grades, plus several social studies teachers for certain projects.  For grades 9 & 10 I teach the research process to all students (Eight, 80 minute periods in the library for each section) AND I grade the works cited lists.  Students turn in completed works cited forms (using EasyBib) for every source they use.  I grade each one, and return it with areas that the student needs to fix.  Finally, they turn in the completed list for me to evaluate as a whole.  This process gives me the opportunity to correct format,  make suggestions for further research, and especially to help them choose between “the good, the bad, and the ugly” when evaluating websites.   Anyway – here is a copy of the rubric I use.  You will notice that the rubric evaluates the quality and coverage of the topic – not just citation format.

My grades go to the classroom teachers to be included with their grades.  It is an enormous amount of work.  I can only do it because our school is so small – about 350 students.

Below are the evaluation checklists I’ve developed to help our kids choose the best sources.  They are not as thorough as other checklists I’ve seen – but the kids are willing to use them because they have a simple point system.

Web evaluation checklist – High School

Web evaluation checklist – Upper elementary/Middle School

Student discipline MIGHT involve some paperwork if you use a system like mine.  It works like a charm.  It is extremely rare for anyone to reach “step 3”.  No one has reached the “office referral” stage in a number of years now.  Below are links to the forms that keep the system flowing.  It is worth the little time it takes to record incidents, because it allows you to see behavior patterns and put a stop to them before they interfere with that student’s education or other students rights to an education.

Discipline record form

Parent Letter

Teacher/student notification (This is a confirmation to the student of what we talked about after the incident, PLUS a notification to the study hall teacher)

Much of your job as instructional partner with teachers involves “paperwork” – but again, most of us find it quite enjoyable.  Besides the joint collaborative lesson planning, it will also be your job to look  for resources of interest and share them with your teachers. I used to write them notes, back in the dark ages.  When the internet was born, I went to emails to keep them informed.  The trouble with that?  Several days, weeks, months later, a teacher might say, “Remember that website/idea/resource you told me about once?  Where can I find it again”?  Meanwhile, in many(most?) cases I’d forgotten about it myself.  That’s where blogs are invaluable.  I have a blog just for my teachers and administrators.  Every resource I send out is “filed” under either “all staff”, or admin, or the individual subject department.  I am under NO illusion that the teachers will actually read the blog regularly. So – when I write a post, I send the link via email.  This might seem like twice the work – but it only takes a moment to send a link via email.  The advantage of course is that when I get that question – “do you remember that source you told me about….?” I can refer them to the Latest Links Blog.

If you are going to do in-service workshops for your teachers, you will have lots of planning and paperwork to go with that.  I have done a number of workshops – both inside my school district and with other groups.  Much of it is kept on my library website, under workshops.  I probably need to find somewhere else to put these materials, since I will be retiring in a few years, and plan to continue to do workshops.

And then, there is always paperwork involved with school-wide initiatives.  Right now I am working on curriculum mapping.  I suppose you can’t count that – because everyone has to do that.

And then there is Interlibrary Loan.  That can be HUGE if you have a lot of teachers who like to change their projects at the drop o f a hat. I NEVER (well…almost never) complain about that.  I am ALWAYS thrilled when a teacher wants to try something new, and I go out of my way to make it work.  So – when the entire 9th grade research project switched from author studies to the Middle Ages – I saw it as an opportunity to teach kids that they can request books and materials from other libraries.  All they have to do is learn how to search area library catalogs and ask us to order what they want.  This whole process can be enormously times consuming.  Fortunately, I have a full time assistant to help with that.  But just keeping up with the requests I need to make and filling the requests from other libraries is a lot of paperwork.

Overdues can be a lot of paperwork.  Fortunately again, I have an assistant to take care of that.

Shelving books – especially in an elementary school – can be VERY time consuming.  Again – having clerical assistance is so important.  You will have too many professional tasks that need your time.  But – if you don’t have clerical assistance, hopefully you can get parent volunteers.  Because book  shelving can take up a LOT  of time.

Speaking of books….. If you have a lot of whole grade level projects – you will be called upon to pull relevant resources and put them on reserve. Also time consuming.  An assistant can help with much of this – but it is important for the librarian to identify the items to be pulled.

There is probably more……  I hope you don’t run screaming back to your old job 🙂

There can be petty  job comparisons going on in schools.  Everyone else’s job looks easier from the outside.  Most folks don’t see the work that goes on behind the wizard’s curtain.  They only see a well-run library or a poorly-run library.  A good librarian often makes a well-run library look like it’s effortless.  But then, so do Olympic athletes.  No one is there to see them as they sweat through their training routines.  They only see them as they cross the finish line, or complete a seemingly effortless triple axel at the end of their 4 minute program.   It is irritating to hear folks talk about how “easy” it must be to not have grading etc to do.  I just smile and say – “Well – we all have our dirty dishes.   If I let mine pile up, you would certainly notice the amount of work I didn’t do” 🙂

The alternative is to watch their eyes glaze over as I describe the many duties listed in this endless post!

One last thing.  I NEVER forget how HARD it is to be a good classroom teacher. My  job is to work together with the classroom teacher to provide a world-class education to our students.  By respecting what we each do, and working together, we help students learn and find thier passions.  Working with classroom teachers allows me to at least aspire to achieve our library’s mission, which is: To empower students to be critical & creative thinkers, enthusiastic readers, skillful researchers & ethical users of information.

In my ongoing series of mentoring posts…..

Jacquie,

I’m looking into ordering some magazines  but as of now there isn’t a checkout procedure for our magazines.  I know you have some kind of protective binder for them.  Can you tell me what product you buy?

I’d also like to know how you select, process and loan them.

Thanks,

Your Favorite Mentoree

We order as many of our subscriptions as possible from a magazine jobber called EBSCO.  I am not sure that the prices are any better than ordering directly – but it is certainly easier.

We have a binder with a check-in form for each subscription.  Here is the form we use.  There should be a form for weekly and monthy mags.  MAG CHECK-IN Template

The idea is to keep track of the magazines as they arrive.  The binder of forms should be reviewed periodically to make sure that all the mags are coming in regularly.  If something stops coming in – then you contact EBSCO and they will track down the problem for you (yet another benefit of ordering from a magazine jobber).  We put a sticker on the upper left  hand corner of the magazine cover with the date.  This makes it easier to find a particular issue once the magazines are archived.  We only archive for 3 years. The plastic covers we use to display the new magazines are from Highsmith.  I love this company.  The prices are good – and they are SO friendly and accommodating. We use plastic magazine/pamphlet boxes from Highsmith for storage.

We have surveyed our students in the past to find out what they like.  I mostly order magazines for fun reading – not so much for research as those can be accessed via the databases.  However – I still get some research magazines because they are good for students to browse for topics.  For example – Business Week, Scholastic Update, Discover.  I also still get Time Magazine, because I think folks should still be able to read a weekly news magazine.  I think a person browsing/reading a news magazine is more likely to come out with a broader mental snapshot of current events than they would going to internet news sites.  Something they never would have known they were interested in just might catch their eye.

I have tried various methods for magazine sign-out.

1. Mostly we just sign them out by paper.  We don’t get a lot of requests to sign them out – so this is not terribly onerous. And we are a bit cavalier about whether they come back or not.
2. Back before the databases streamlined periodical research – we used to actually enter each magazine in the database.  It is time consuming to do that – but could be done if you have enough assistance.  When you do inventory,  you have to export all the magazine records and save them.  Then when inventory is done, you import the magazines back into the database.
3. We have also handled them as temporary loans – something like you do with ILL loans.  To do that, you just slap a bar code on each magazine and scan it in when you create a temporary record.

I think that about covers it.  If you have more questions, let me know.

We had a whole procedure for routing professional magazines.  But our budget has been cut so drastically that I no longer order professional subscriptions. Maybe someday we’ll be able to do that again….

In case you want to provide such a service – here are the forms that we have used for this process.

Professional Magazine Routing Slips

Professional Magazine Tracking Sheet

Professional Magazine Memo

My favorite mentoree recently asked me about managing overdues.  I really had no particular wisdom to offer her.  But then I found this on LM_NET:

With permission from  Harry Coffill  – who always makes me laugh out loud:

I work with tech and switch off computer accounts for overdue books. Works better than anything.

You need staff buy-in. Especially helpful if you’re also responsible for texts (we are.)

Always point out to admin and staff the $ signs. (“We’re owed $3200 worth of school materials.”) Don’t say “library books” or no one will care. When, say, a history teacher, complains of denied computer access for a student–say “$1000 of those materials are SS books.”

Want kids to rocket to your desk with ovd materials? Switch off the internet.

By the way–my favorite line? “Its in my locker. DO YOU WANT ME TO GO GET IT?”

Yes, miss. After the printed bulletin, the notice over the loudspeaker, the mailed bill, the marching band, the skywriter, the carved marble tablet, the morning wake-up call, the conversation with your mom and the face-to-face conversation we’re having RIGHT NOW, I’d like you to walk ALL THE WAY to your locker and get the book that’s been due since October 1st.

“Right now?”

We can all relate, can’t we?

My favorite mentoree has asked me how to make School World webpages do what SHE wants them to do – instead of what SchoolWorld wants them to do.

I used to use FrontPage – but I understand that is no longer available.  After searching for awhile – I realized that an old friend was still available.

KompoZer is an easy-to-use, free web editor.  Some of you may know it, because it used to be part of Netscape back in the day.

Anyway – if you want to do something and School World is unable to do it , here is how to get around School World’s limitations:

• Create you page in Kompozer (don’t bother with pictures at this point)
• Click on the “source” tab at the bottom of the screen.
• Copy the source code
• Open your School World editing page
• Click on the “html” tab at the bottom of the editing box
• Paste the code from Kompozer
• Click the “design” tab at the bottom of the School World editing page
• Add pictures if desired.