Today both Shawn and Mellen were out of the library and I was on my own in the library! Subbing at the library was great! I had been thinking that I would like to develop more student interaction--but they already know to go straight to Ms. Mauser or Ms. Mellen when they have questions--so its been sometimes difficult to catch them to offer reader advisory or assist with any problems. Today was my opportunity to see and be seen! I tried to stay out in the circulation desk area during the busy morning before school and lunch times. Students pretty much seemed to adhere to their regular in and out schedule, but I did notice it did seem quieter today.
In the down times between student rushes--I was able to focus on a few administrative tasks. Shawn had asked me to start a consideration list for her end of the school year book purchase. She tends to purchase books throughout the year--but she is coming to the end of her allotted stipend from the Ann Richards foundation--so she is going to need to have a plan for the rest of that money this spring/summer. Shawn told me her strategy for keeping track of consideration lists. She tends to use two sources: 1. Permabound and 2. Follett. Follett is particularly useful because they keep a list of the entire catalog on file and when you search for a title, it will tell you if you already own it. Follett also offers an inventory analysis program which alerts you to the older titles in your collection and where you may want to spend time and funds rebuilding.
My efforts today were to go through the School Library Journal and a few other library publications reading book reviews and establishing my list for consideration. My default strategy was to include all of the recent award winners. Also, knowing I had just weeded out the hard sciences, I searched for any recent publication that seemed like they might be topical or useful. However, especially in this section, one may not want to invest too much money since they do tend to become obsolete much faster than other choices.
I had to note that most of the titles I searched on (especially award winners and other notable titles) were already in the Ann Richards inventory. I have to say that Shawn has been an incredibly good steward of this library and she has curated a beautiful and very relevant collection for her student community.
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