First Friday

Today was my first Friday at the Bush library. On Fridays, Jody (the Lower School librarian) isn’t in the library, so I can use her desk and computer to work on projects, which I very much appreciate.

I arrived at 9 and got started on putting together a display of Tall Tales. To do this, I searched the Bush library catalog for “tall tales,” “johnny appleseed,” “paul bunyon,” etc. until I had found a good number to use. I made sure to include one of my favorite tall tales, Carolinda Clatter. I arranged the book for maximum visibility on the table, and then made a sign for the display. I’ll insert a full list of the books I used later and maybe add a picture of the display.

Then I took some time to prepare for book talks I’m going to give to Fifth Graders next week. They’re focusing on award winners, so I decided to book talk Batchelder Award winners and honor books. It took me quite a long time to look up all the possible books in the Bush catalog, but I finally discovered that we had eight of them, only one of which was checked out. So I gathered the seven books available and looked through them. I’d only read one previously, The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke. I was impressed by the variety of books I had (fiction, non-fiction, biography, historical, jokey) so I think this group of books will make for an interesting set of book talks. Hopefully they’ll be something for almost everybody.

Then Jenine Lillian, the Middle School librarian and a former professor of mine at the iSchool, asked me to help her with a collection development project. She’d just returned from the ALA Midwinter Conference in Philadelphia where she served on the Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers committee. She had a bookcart full of free books she’d gotten at the conference and I helped her go through them to determine what she’d donate to the Bush library and what she’d raffle off to students. This mostly involved checking the catalog to see what Bush already had and separating the winning books from the nominees.

I left a little bit after 1:00 feeling like I’d accomplished quite a bit. It was a good day.