Elsevier offered free chapters of professional books for you to download. This one is Facing contemporary challenges in librarianship and whilst it is not directly related to school librarians I thought it looked very interesting. The chapter we are discussing in May is:-
Excerpt 1 — Marketing a Profession: Marketing the Future
Questions will be posted on the 1st May. Please come and join in when you can.
The dialogue between Howard and his friend related to housebound is quite funny. Your https://www.scottsdalemobilecomputerrepair.com are good; but formatting of your website is little bit unjustified. So, make it also the proper one for getting better feedback from visitors.
However, we do have a budget for this, so understand it might not be feasible in state schools. :(
What we've found really invaluable is inviting dept staff to do a stock weed. It's been an excuse to show off what we already have, get newer/more relevant textbooks. Then it's fed into suggested 6th form reading lists (recommended from the new stock). We've had members of staff then bring in students to see the refreshed stock and collect the leaflets.
I have already removed a great many reference books and had a a bit of a move around. The problem is if I remove too much the library may start to look a bit sparse. At the moment I don't teach website evaluation but that is something I want to look into as I am always looking at ways to update my library workbooks. I hope to use FOSIL to help me with this.
Read the chapter and feel that as a school library, to a certain extent we have a captive audience. The pupils come in to use the space and borrow books, use computers for homework. I promote initiatives by contributing to newsletters, informing staff via email or in staff meetings and plastering posters in parts of the school where I think they will be noticed more. From a customer service point of view the only difficulties I experience are discipline issues. Pupils come in and don't always use the space in ways outlined above. I have never experienced any difficulties with teachers. When verifying information I urge caution when students use Wikipedia and have Fake News posters on the wall which guide students on how to work out if a story is real or fake. We have a lot of resources in our library that are not used/rarely used reference books and a good percentage of the non-fiction books among them. Digital resource costs are often prohibitive so feel we need hard copies resources to fall back on though I do collect lists of websites offering free resources and promote these to pupils. I try to be as visible and as vocal as possible, communicating with staff at meetings, via email. I am present at Open Evenings, Year 6 Intake Evenings and Year 6 Taster Days. I also help out at school fundraisers and attend school church services etc. I am not involved with any partners as such but do liaise with other school librarians, subject leaders etc. I would like to become more involved with EPQs and do use research skills as part of my IL lessons. I found this chapter very useful, particularly the comment about not expecting patrons to use the service if you don't have what they want.
9. This chapter was about university libraries, was there a message for you as a school library too? Was this a useful chapter?
8. School libraries are ‘useful, necessary and important to educational research” How do we persuade teachers that this is the case?
7. Which partnerships do you currently have? How can you expand them?
6. “Self promotion doe not equal self-gratification” How do you feel about promoting yourself and your service? Had reading this chapter changed the way you think about this?
5. “We cannot expect patrons to use what we offer if it is not in fact what they want or need” How do you know that you have got it right in your library?
4. “If we can impart the importance of data verification they will learn to question their results”. In other words evaluation of sources. How do you teach this?
3. How important are your customer service skills? Do you ever find this hard and what do you do when students or teachers are being difficult?
2. Which promotional methods are you using to market your library?
1. “The continuity of the profession [ ] rely on how well librarians educate our consumers about what we offer students’ academic lives” How do you feel about this statement? How are we already educating our consumers and could we do more?