Banned Books Week, Sept. 29-Oct. 6

Banned Books Week is always fun and celebrates books which have been challenged or banned through history. Believe me, the list is long and includes such titles as the Bible, the Harry Potter books, and most of the major philosophers. The most challenged book of 2006 was a children's book called Tango Makes Three about two male penguins who parent an egg from a mixed-sex penguin couple (based on a true incident).

The library recently acquired a series called "Banned Books." It consists of four volumes titled Literature Suppressed on Religious Grounds, Literature Suppressed on Sexual Grounds, Literature Suppressed on Political Grounds, and Literature Suppressed on Social Grounds. It provides a comprehensive history of books which have for many different reasons been suppressed by the churches and society through the centuries.

There will be a display of challenged and banned books in the library during BBW. Come on by and take a look.

In the meantime to see a list of the most-challenged books of 2006 go to the ALA's BBW Web page. Or go to a page on how BBW is being celebrated at such online sites as Facebook, Teen Second Life, or MySpace.

9th Grade Orientations Complete

After fifteen sessions of more than an hour each over the last three weeks, all the 9th graders (and a few non-9th graders) have been introduced to the library and it's resources. This the earliest we have been able to complete the orientations and I will admit it feels great.

The last class to be introduced to the library was Mr. McDaniel's Alpha class (World Cultures & Geography) and I have to give them a lot of credit because they were very attentive during the presentation which took place right after lunch. All the classes were very attentive and responsive which is important because there is, despite my having to talk a lot, a good deal of give and take during the presentation.

The presentation uses SpongeBob SquarePants and the denizens of Bikini Bottom to help get its points across. (My favorite is Gary, SpongeBob's loyal, meowing snail pet, who wants to be a librarian as revealed in "Sleepy Time" an episode in which SpongeBob enters various critter's dreams). It starts with basic library policies and rules, talks about physical resources of the library including books (fiction and non-fiction, circulating and reference), pamphlet file materials, audio book, textbooks, videos, maps, and periodicals. We discuss how to access those resources using Sequoyah, the library's catalog. I then demonstrate the library's web site with it's myriad of online resources. Particular attention is paid to two databases, Student Research Center, provided by EBSCOhost and CountryWatch, a geographical database. Both of these are subscription databases which require a user ID and password so we explore how to find those passwords online using the Redwood website. We also take a look at MARINet, the catalog for the Marin County libraries. We introduce the library staff as well.

I really enjoy doing the presentations each year and want to thank the World Cultures & Geography teachers, Claire Ernst, Nicolle Plescia, Jon Hirsch, Eric Berridge, and Jim McDaniel for getting their classes scheduled in so promptly and helping with the presentation and follow-up assignments. All the teachers gave credit to their students for their participation.

Welcome to All Redwood Parents

Welcome new parents and welcome back veteran parents.

LIBRARY WEB SITE
The Bessie Chin Library would like especially to welcome parents new to the school community to take a close look at the library's Web site (http://rhsweb.org/library) which provides 24/7 access to many resources for you and your children. Even though you may not be able to come to the library during the school day, the online resources are always available. Starting with the library catalog (click on "Catalog Home Access") you will be able to peruse the rich resources of the Redwood library. The library has over 35,000 cataloged items, including books, magazines, websites, pamphlet files, videos, and audio books.

LIBRARY SUBSCRIPTION DATABASES
The library also subscribes to a rich collection of online resources which are accessed from the home page. Click on the link which says DATABASE PASSWORDS and enter the password when prompted. (Obtain the password from library staff or your kids). That will bring you to a page which has all of the user IDs and passwords listed.

The library's main magazine and newspaper database is provided by EBSCO, which also provides access to NoveList, Advanced Placement Source, TopicSearch, and professional educational journals. We subscribe to two online encyclopedias, Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Academic Edition and World Book Online Reference Center, and many other reference e-books through Oxford Reference Online Premium and the Gale Virtual Reference Library (through InfoTrac).

OTHER ONLINE RESOURCES
The library subscribes to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and several magazines which have online editions. The access information is listed on the library's Periodicals Page.
Another very rich database for students is Questia, "the first online library that provides … access to the world's largest online collection of books and journal articles in the humanities and social sciences, plus magazine and newspaper articles." This year each student will have individual access to Questia via a personal ID and password. Students will be informed of their login information as soon as it’s available from Questia. Take the time to check out all the databases available from the library's Web site.

LIBRARY LEAVES BLOG
This Web log will provide the latest in library news.
This summer I went to an international school library conference in Taipei, Taiwan and posted several articles with photos about the conference, school libraries in Taiwan and other interesting experiences. Come back often.

VOLUNTEERING IN THE LIBRARY
We encourage parents who have time to volunteer in the library. Last year we had about fifteen parent volunteers who were able to give a couple hours every week or so. Volunteers perform a variety of tasks and we couldn't run the excellent program we do here at Redwood without their help. We have parents who help with book processing (covering, stamping, typing labels, etc.), filing books and other materials, looking up web pages and adding them to our online catalog, clipping articles from newspapers, magazines and the internet, and more. To see the variety of tasks our volunteers performed last year go to the library Volunteer Page. We'd love to have you join them and look forward to seeing all of you on Back-to-School Night.

End of the First Month

September is Library Card Sign Up Month so get those library cards if you don't have one. The public libraries in Marin are very good and with a library account you have access to the resources of the entire county (and beyond).

As the first month of school winds down we have had four 9th grade Cultures and Geography classes go through orientation in the library.
The orientations went very well thanks to attention from students and active participation by their teacher (Thanks, Ms. Ernst!)
Seven classes will be in next week and the final five the following week. I'd like to thank all the 9th grade social studies teachers for promptly signing up their classes this year. It is essential that new students have an orientation to the library as soon as possible since they will be using the library regularly from the first weeks of school.

One addition to orientation this year is an assignment which gives students the opportunity to explore at least a couple search engines they may not have used before. When asked, students say that their most popular search engine is Google, but there are several other which have features students may find helpful including Ask and Clusty. The nice thing about both of these is that they allow the user to narrow the focus of the search by providing suggested topics which Google does not do. I'd also like students to take a look at Yahoo's Directory (Google has one as well) and a metasearch engine, too. The directory sites can teach kids how things can be arranged hierarchically, and how that can help focus their search, and a metasearch engine (like Vivisimo) allows them to search across several search engines at the same time.
I will keep working on improving the orientation to make it as fun and useful as I can for students and teachers alike.

Open House will be next Thursday and the library will be open for visiting. Come on by if you get the chance.

End of the First Week

My meeting with the Social Studies dept. on Monday has paid off. I've got three of the Cultures and Geography teachers signed up bring their 9th graders into the library for orientation (a total of 10 classes so far). There a still a couple teachers who need to sign up but this is great for the first week of school. This year I'm working with teachers to do a follow-up assignment on the differences between various search engines. Nicolle Plescia had done the assignment with her Transitions students this summer and thought it was useful and valuable and I certainly agree. This is the first time a teacher has come with an assignment specifically related to information literacy and it's great. We will be refining the assignment as we work with various classes over the next few weeks and should have something worth sharing before the end of the month.

The library is looking for a few good students who are willing to be library assistants in the IWE program this semester. If you have a good mind, are reliable and have a good attendance record, and want to work in an interesting and highly valued school resource please see Mr. Kaun in the library.

Welcome to the 2007-2008 School Year and the Bessie Chin Library Leaves Blog

Welcome back to those who are returning and welcome to the newcomers.

Over the summer I attended a wonderful school librarians' conference in
Taiwan. I was trying to figure out a way to share some of what I
experienced and eventually decided to set up a Web log to make that
possible. I realized that I could use this blog as the library newsletter as
well so I started this blog version of Bessie Chin Library Leaves. I'll be adding postings to it on a regular basis as the school year progresses and will send reminders every so often to take a look at the blog. One of the things I will be posting to the blog is my regular article in the parent newsletter so you'll be able to find that here as well. I will also add a widget so you can quickly get to the list of new materials on LibraryThing.

While in Taiwan I visited two exemplary high school libraries and made some connections to the staffs there. This might be especially handy for our kids learning Mandarin but other classes (Cultures and Geography comes to mind) might want to take advantage of the connection as well.
I've got a lot of stuff I collected there, which, with Irene's help, we might be able to translate and use, including CDs with presentations about the schools. Come on by to chat if you think any of this might be useful.

We also installed (with the help of Becky and Rose) AquaBrowser this summer. AquaBrowser is an online catalog (OPAC) interface which will take some experimenting with to use to best advantage. Our internal AB URL is http://10.70.0.254/aquabrowser, external URL (from home) is http://137.164.143.38/aquabrowser. I will try to get some time at a staff meeting to introduce AquaBrowser and its' benefits. I have also put links to it on the library home page. It's kind of fun--take a look.

This year we will have a school-wide subscription to Questia, a huge database of full-text books and articles. Up to now our Questia subscription has been a single-user version but Questia is now making this multi-user version available to schools. Topics covered by the database include Art and Architecture, Communication, Economics and Business, Education, History, Law, Literature, Music and Performing Arts, Philosophy, Politics and Government, Psychology, Religion, Science and Technology, and Sociology and Anthropology. You will notice that it is much stronger in humanities topics than science but there are some interesting titles in health science and technology and civilization areas.
With this version of Questia teachers will be able to set up reading lists and other resource lists and students will be able to keep track of materials they are using for a specific project with individual accounts. As soon as I have the log-in information I will be sharing it with all of you. Staff development will also be available at some point for Questia. In the meantime if you go to Questia and log in using "redwood94939" as the User ID and "giants" as the password you can take a look at some info about use of the database by teachers and students. (Click on Classroom and then Flash Demo for an overview of some of the features).

Hope you had a great reading summer. If you've read any great books (I read the three Gormenghast novels by Mervyn Peake) and you want the library to add them to our collections let me know and I'll order them. Of course, if you just want to donate any books you're finished with we happily take donations as well.

I'll be sending a packet out to new teachers and staff with info about how to best take advantage of library resource, staff and programs. Come on down when get the chance to either take a personalized tour or re-acquaint yourselves with the Bessie Chin Library (named for the librarian here at Redwood from 1968 to 1993).
The library extensions are: 3662 (Tom Kaun--Library Media Teacher); 3664 (Karen Barrett--Library Specialist); and 3663 (Cythea Harrison--Clerk I).

Librarian-Classroom Teacher Collaboration

Well I'm back in town after a wonderful time in Bali and visiting my sister in Java. I'll be posting some pictures on my Web Album in the next few days.
In the meantime, I'm catching up with email, including American Libraries Direct, the online newsletter of the American Library Association. I'm always finding good stuff in this newsletter which comes weekly to ALA members.
One of the more recent ones has a fun video about teacher-librarian collaboration. The video is short on content but humorous in a library media teacher sort of way!
Here it is:

Find more videos like this on TeacherLibrarianNetwork

I'll be showing this to new teachers when school starts next week and maybe even show it to the entire staff sometime in the next few weeks. I look at it as a conversation starter and I'm always trying to find ways to get that collaborative discussion going!