Banned Book Week September 30 - October 6

During the last week of September every year, hundreds of libraries and bookstores around the country draw attention to censorship of books by displaying challenged books.

I am surprised every year to realize that so many of the books on my library shelves have been challenged at one time or another, not here at McCullough but in other parts of the country! We always put a nice display of our own "banned books", and our students, teachers and parents are amazed to see the works of good literature that have been banned or challenged.

Some of our challenged books are:
Harry Potter, by J. K. Rowling
The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
Scary Stories Series, by Alvin Schwartz
Captain Underpants, by Dav Pilkey
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, by Judy Blume
Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson
The Call of the Wild, by Jack London
A Day No Pigs Would Die, by Robert Newton Peck
The Face on the Milk Carton, by Caroline Cooney
Goosebumps Series, by R. L. Stine
The Great Gilly Hopkins, by Katherine Paterson
How to Eat Fried Worms, by Thomas Rockwell
James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl
Killing Mr. Griffin, by Lois Duncan
Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
1984, by George Orwell
The Outsiders, by S. E. Hinton
A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle

A more complete list is available on the ALA  website: ALA Most Frequently Challenged Books

 

School Starts!

Getting the McCullough Library up and running is going to be a bit of a challenge, due to the bond renovations during the summer. We are told quite firmly that we were not allowed into the school at all this summer. There were of course safety issues, and plus they just didn't want the teachers to get into the contractor's way! It was wonderful to have a nice long summer, but now we have to move triple-time to get the library back into kid-friendly mode. I pride myself on have the library open on the very first day of school. I am not going to let the the fact that all the library books are packed in boxes, the circulation desk computers are stored somewhere, I don't know where, and the electricity is off and on again, stop me from inviting the students in on day one!

The very first order of business is the Required Reading Book Fair. I have about 24 ELA teachers (more or less), and they make a list of their outside reading for me in May. My wonderful PTO Book Fair volunteer, Sally, helps us get the teachers' lists together, and by July we submit our list to Southwest Book Fairs out of Stafford, Texas. I can't say enough about Sally's diligent work getting this huge project together. She has a large, busy family, and I can't begin to count how many hours she puts into this volunteer job. Sally and I work together so well, and I will miss working with her when this year is over. However, she has twins coming up to McCullough in a few years and I have already made her promise to come back as book fair volunteer!
I also want to praise and recommend Southwest! They have an impossible task of supplying us with thousands of books, and some of the individual titles requires 500-600 copies each! We give them a number of copies for one title based on the teachers' lists, and they fulfill it. As any experienced librarian knows, this is a huge task: first of all to get a book fair company to accept the lists, then to have them actually fulfill the order. They do a great job and I will be glad to pass on their contact information if anyone wants it.
This book fair is held during Student Orientation, the week before school starts. This is where parents and students can pick up their schedules and other things necessary for the first day of school. My administration promotes Student Orientation in order to have the students ready to get to work and start their learning on day one of school. My book fair only offers the ELA Required Reading. We do not have the usual fun books and toys that the traditional book fair offers. Unfortunately the gyms will not be ready, so the textbooks will not be given out during Orientation this year only.

I will have to run get my annual super-sized desktop academic calendar for the year. The only place I can ever find them is Office Depot or a teacher supply store. If I wait too late they will be sold out!

We are finally checking out the Nooks!

The good news is we are finally check out Nook SimpleTouches. The bad news is we are still waiting for Barnes and Noble to send emailed confirmations that the downloads are complete.
We need these emails to confirm downloads for purchase. Once that happens we can open this up to other librarians in the district.

Our Technology Warehouse was able to negotiate a very good price for the Nooks with covers. Right now there are 110 sitting in the warehouse waiting for purchase. I have let Barnes and Noble know multiple times that the final step of emailed confirmations are necessary for me to "receive" them in. CISD purchasing requires delivery tickets for everything, including e-content, before payment is made. I guess B&N does not understand that. We shall see...

In the meantime, the ebooks are downloaded and I checked out the first 2 Nook SimpleTouches this morning. The students are beyond excited! We are requiring a parent/student lending agreement and an ereader AUP policy agreement. I am also posting the display cards for each Nook, along with a list of the books on each Nook.

We took the quickest and simplest route in cataloging the Nooks. We added the Nooks as devices in Destiny, and listed the ebooks/authors in the 500 tag. The students can conduct a keyword search for the Nooks and see the list of ebooks. Or they can conduct a search for one of the ebooks (keyword, title, author) and it will take them directly to the Nook record.

McCullough JH eReader Lending Policy

McCullough JH eReading Acceptable Use Policy

Nook Serial # and Genre eBook List

eReaders at McCullough Update

We got some very exciting news from Barnes and Noble a few weeks ago.  B&N will begin accepting purchase orders for ebook orders! Right now our People are hashing out the details with Barnes and Noble's People, and I should hear soon when I can make my very first order. I am interested in the new Simple Nooks, the latest eInk reader. B&N will assign the Nooks into groups, and then the content can be downloaded via line item PO between me and our purchasing department. I was chosen to be the initial purchaser using this method, and they want to get all the bugs and wrinkles out before presenting it to the entire district.
I plan or order 10 Simple Nooks and load them with the bestsellers the students are craving: The Hunger Games, Son of Neptune, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, etc. I will catalog the books just as I do every other book in our library, but the Nook Books will signify that, for example, The Hunger Games is contained in Nook #3.
I will let the kids check out the Simple Nooks, with permission from their parents/guardians. We already check out Playaways successfully, and some of them are quite expensive.

Several librarians are working on FollettShelf, another way to get eBooks into the hands of our students! More on this later!

eReaders at McCullough: Stage 1

An interesting thing happened after Christmas vacation. EReaders exploded at McCullough. We knew they were out there, and DinoCybrarians like myself had managed to totally ignore the concept of digital books (gasp!), and that there were alternatives to paper books. I knew several teachers at McCullough had eReaders and loved them. I chose to ignore the whole thing, for awhile, anyway.
I was forced to acknowledge that a good percentage of our students received eReaders as gifts during the holidays, and many adults in our school community owned them, too. It seemed eReaders were in the air, and I needed to look into this.
I really did not know where to begin. I did some internet research and found a few sites that were helpful. Cnet published an excellent article in November 2010 comparing Ipad, Nook, and Kindle. I asked around and did a little more research. Of course everyone I talked to who owned a particular eReader stated their brand was the best, and I also discovered I had to careful of the bias in some online articles. I settled on the Barnes and Noble eReader, NookColor, simply because B & N is an approved vendor in our district. The $249.00 price was within my budget, and frankly I was mesmerized by the color feature that was added to the new Nooks in November. The Nooks also have a very good internet browser, and there is recent news leaked to cnet  promising the addition of Android apps and Flash updates, plus an enhanced brower in April. This will make the already amazing NookColor a true Android tablet!

The actual purchase of the NookColors went much more smoothly than I anticipated. I order six with library budget funds. I suspect I was one of the first to order eReaders with school funds, and it could not have gone better from start to finish. The Nooks were delivered from the warehouse in a timely matter. Obviously our administration and district supports the introduction of eReaders in our schools!

Now it was time to load the Nooks with ebooks. One account may be used for up to six Nooks, so I set up an account and registered all the Nooks under this account. As ebooks are added to the account, either online or on one of the Nooks, the rest of the Nooks will have the exact same content.
I began to peruse the vast library of free books that I had been told Barnes and Noble has available.  I typed in "free ebooks" in the Browse box. Oh dear, I have a list of obscure books that are $.99. There is a sorting feature, so I sorted by price. Here we are, I finally see some free books. The first truly free book on the list is "Adventures of Harry Richmond". The second free book is "The Conduct of Life" by Ralph Waldo Emerson. I scrolled down and found 100's of free books with the same interest level, which was no interest at all. (Sorry, Harry and Ralph.)  My students are ages 11-13, and with all due respect to Harry and Ralph, I don't think my kids would read these "free" books. I scrolled down and found "The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook". My junior high kids could possibly be a little interested in that, so I downloaded it. Well, now it wants a credit card. So I had to put in a credit card on this account, even though the ebook was free. I love the Nooks, but I'm displeased with the ebook purchase procedure so far.

My assistant and I took a few of the Nooks home for Spring Break to learn how to use them. It was nice to discover that the Nook can be de-registered from the school account, and re-registered to a personal account. I purchased some good books (with my personal money, of course) and I discovered a wonderful "LendMe" feature where friends can share ebooks on their Nooks. Good to know a Nook can be used at school and at home, it's interchangeable! Once again, the "free" ebooks for adults were mostly out of copyright and not popular.

I decided now I must purchase ebooks for our students to read on the Nooks at school. That's when I hit the wall of State and District financial constraints. We are not allowed to purchase gift cards with school funds, period. Barnes and Noble offers a Line of Credit, and also accepts purchase orders. I am meeting with our district finance people next week to see if something can be arranged to help us out. More on this later.

In the meantime, I am using a Barnes and Noble gift card loaded with donated money to buy ebooks for the students. Sales tax is being charged on my purchases; another bummer for a school purchase, which qualifies for tax-exempt status. My school account still must have a credit card as the default payment method, but it will take monies from the gift card first. I am very careful to keep track of my spending so my personal credit card is not hit with a charge.

I am gradually introducing the Nooks to the students in the library. I am just putting them out for the students to read and get comfortable with them while in the library. Not checking them out yet!

The Dinocybrarian?

When I hear the term “Web 2.0 Tools” the first thing I think is “FREE”! I just love Free, in particular as it applies to my library setting. I hearken back to the days when all software programs had to be purchased, and computer hardware was so expensive as to be out of sight! My first computer in my library, a Macintosh LCII (also known as the Pizza Box) cost us $3,000.00!

So I guess that makes me a “Dinocybrarian”?

The most important thing is to use the free technology available to us, including Web 2.0 tools and First Class, and model using it in your library to your students. It is important that you label your projects with the tools that were used, so it will eventually sink in to the students that these are real, practical resouces they can use in their own projects. Or, if you are giving a presentation slideshow you uploaded to your website, be sure to tell the students what cool tool you used. For example, “I uploaded this slideshow to my webpage using Slideshare, which is free and you can register and use it for your own projects.” The kids really get excited when they know they can create, too.

Encourage your teachers to buy into alternate technologies. For example, if Mrs. Z. brings her class to the library to complete her annual “Snakes of the World” powerpoint, suggest a Glogster, or an Animoto project instead. You may have to do a little hands-on to get it started, but the students will take it and run once they get going!

And think of ways to make your own life easier as a librarian. Every year I do my Library/Lab orientations for 7th graders. Why not upload it to my webpage? This is exactly what I did a few years ago and it is now so easy.

I had a bunch of my students' projects on my blog, but when updating early this school year I lost their projects, so you will not see Mrs. Adam's ESL classes' nonfiction book Animotos on my blog. But on a good day when things go right, showing off class projects is a great way to get kids to check into your blog!

If you like to read series books in order:

I have made a list of series book for our students. This is a work in progress, and I am open to suggestions! Let me know if I did not include an important series. Enjoy!