A New Course for the District

At its February 12 meeting the TUHSD Board of Trustees approved a new course which will be offered next year at Redwood. The course, called Advanced Library Research, will offer students an introduction to college-level research skills. While we teach students at Redwood, and throughout the Tam District, how to use information efficiently and effectively through class projects in a number of different subject areas, this course will allow students to go beyond the basics of research and explore the world of academic libraries. The course will be an independent study course, taught partially face-to-face and partially online. Students will be expected to work with partners or in teams to complete various projects using all kinds of library resources. As the course of study states: “Many college librarians and professors report that students are not prepared to undertake college-level research when they reach post-secondary institutions of learning.”

We think that we can help students make the transition to college a little less traumatic by providing them with the ability to determine the nature and extent of information they need; access needed information effectively and efficiently; evaluate information critically; use information individually and in a group to accomplish a specific purpose; and understand ethical, legal, and socio-economic issues surrounding information and use information ethically and legally.

A little story. When I went to graduate school to begin my library science degree I had to take a prerequisite course about basic library research since I’d never worked in a library before. It was the best course I took in library school and I wondered why I hadn’t had the opportunity to take such a course as an undergrad—it was really eye opening to find out about all the resources I hadn’t known about but could have used. Even though that was long before the World Wide Web was developed, the same conditions apply today. As a result of the Internet the world of information has gotten infinitely larger and more complicated so having a guided tour of all kinds of resources is even more essential than it was in 1974!

Eventually we would like to have the course available across the District to all students but for the time being it will be offered at Redwood only. Encourage your sons and daughters to talk to the librarian, Tom Kaun, about the course and sign up for it during course enrolment time.

Teacher of the Year

Last spring at our annual end-of-the-year staff party, the "Ginny Luncheon," two staff members where honored as Employees of the Year. Kelly Starrett, our outstanding information tech, was honored as the classified employee and yours truly was honored as certificated employee. The only reason this info is being posted now is that Mike Dibley, a highly respected member of Redwood faculty and member of the social committee, which organizes the honor each year, appeared in the Library today in a way which only he can: Voice booming, he annouced that the plaque for the award had been completed and he was presenting it to me in person. He had hoped at least three classes would be in the Library at the time but unfortunately it was only me and my assistants and a couple kids. Oh, well.

Anyway I've reproduced here the very nice plaque which I received. Now have to rearrange my various awards, diplomas, etc. which I have prominently display behind my desk to make them even more obvious to the community. My motto is: If you've got it, flaunt it!

Thanks to my entire school community for this singular honor.

SF's Mayor Visits the Redwood Library

On Monday evening, December 1, Mayor Gavin Newsom, an alum of Redwood, visited the campus to hold a town hall meeting and (possibly) test the waters for a run for the governorship. Mayor Newson has visited Redwood before, his most recent stint as the graduation speaker last June.

The town hall meeting was held in the Bessie Chin Library and over one hundred invited guests and others heard Mayor Newson talk about what he has accomplished in San Francisco and then pose questions to the mayor about what was on their minds.

An article in the Marin Independent-Journal reports on the meeting in more detail.

I was able to take some pictures of the mayor which showed more of the library than the IJ picture did. After all I wanted to document this as a library event!

I used to live in the City but moved out just before Mayor Newsom took office. I was impressed with his list of accomplishments and would like to see what he would be able to do on a larger political stage. He's probably most (in)famous for his stand on the same-sex marriage issue but there's a lot more he's concerned with and his pragmatic approach makes him attractive to more than his obvious constituencies.

It's always neat to host various visitors to Redwood and we are fortunate to have an attractive space like the Library to do it in.

Celebrating Native American heritage

Throughout the school year the Library celebrates various ethnic and other groups which make up the rich fabric of the United States. Starting in September with Hispanic American Heritage Month and ending in May with Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month, the Library staff creates wonderful displays of books and other artifacts that demonstrate the diversity of our country and state.

November is Native American Heritage Month and Redwood’s library has a direct connection to one of the United States’ most important Native Americans.

According to the New Georgia Encyclopedia website, Sequoyah was a Cherokee Indian who “invented a system of eighty-four to eighty-six characters that represented syllables in spoken Cherokee (hence it is a syllabary, not an alphabet)”which allowed the Cherokee language to be written for the first time. Sequoyah’s system was derided by assimilationist Cherokees as being impractical and an example of witchcraft. It took him at least 12 years but once he was able to teach his daughter to read and write using the system he had devised, others quickly saw the benefit of having a written language and the syllabary was put to use teaching the language in schools.

“The syllabary was rapidly adopted by a large number of Cherokees, making Sequoyah the only member of an illiterate group in human history to have single-handedly devised a successful system of writing.”The syllabary is still used, in modified form, to this day to write the Cherokee language.

THE LIBRARY CONNECTION
Many libraries have given their online catalogs (OPAC) a catchy title which plays on their school name and library themes. For example, the catalog for the UC System is Melvyl, named for Melvyl Dewey, the famous librarian who devised the Dewey Decimal System of classification. SF State’s catalog is called InvestiGator (the school’s teams are the Gators), Sonoma State’s is Snoopy (named for the Peanuts character because of the connection with Charles Schulz).

When we got our web-based online catalog several years ago I was trying to come up with a title which would reflect all the various ways Redwood High School uses variations on the theme of the redwood tree, e.g. The Log (yearbook), The Bark (school newspaper), The Twig (daily bulletin), The Post (parent newsletter), and so forth. The library’s newsletter, and subsequently its blog, are called Library Leaves,which continues the tradition of a connection with the growing, living redwood tree. I pretty quickly realized that a great way to refer to the OPAC would be by naming it for this legendary person who had been honored in the scientific name of the redwood tree. (According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the Sequoia tree(coast redwood) was named in honor of Sequoyah in 1847.) His connection to written text and language was another compelling
reason to name the catalog for him.

USING THE LIBRARY'S ONLINE CATALOG
I encourage all of you to use, and encourage your children to use, the online catalog.You can access the catalog at http://137.164.143.38:7195/webopac/main?siteID=RHS. The catalog provides access to more than the physical items in the library. Recently,we uploaded thousands of records of periodicals from a couple of our online databases,which can now be accessed directly through links in the catalog. Try looking for the journal, Chinese Studies in History, for example. Click on the link which states “Available on EBSCOhost,” and then enter the user ID: redwoodhs and password: giants when asked. This is the kind of journal our students preparing for university, taking AP classes, and hopefully in the future, studying for the IB Diploma,will
depend on to succeed in their studies.

MORE SEQUOYAH RESOURCES
For more information on Sequoyah here are some recommendations from the New Georgia Encyclopedia site.
Traveller Bird. Tell Them They Lie: The Sequoyah Myth (Los Angeles:Westernlore, 1971).
Grant Forman. Sequoyah (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1938).
Stan Hoig. Sequoyah: The Cherokee Genius (Oklahoma City: Oklahoma Historical Society, 1995).
Henry Thompson Malone. Cherokees of the Old South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1956).
Kim Schlich and Victor Schlich. "Talking Leaves." American History. December 1995, 38-40.

Come by the Library any time to see what groups and themes we are currently celebrating.

Illustration credit: McKenney, Thomas and James Hall. History of the Indian Tribes of North America: with biographical sketches and anecdotes of the principal chiefs. Philadelphia: E.C. Biddle, 1836-1844. Penn Library Exhibitions. Web. 13 Oct. 2008.

Banned Books Week

We've put up displays of banned and challenged books in the Library along with documents and quotes about censorship and the First Amendment.

Our library clerk, Cythea, with an eye for the dramatic and beautiful was a great help in designing the displays.

As soon as I can I'll have some pictures to share. The picture shown is from an exhibit about the artistic response to literary censorship currently being held in Oakland. See the reference below.
"The work of Liz Hager confronts when people tried to ban Harry Potter at the African American Museum on Tuesday, September 16, 2008, in Oakland, Calif. The exhibit has original artwork on the impact of banning books. (Gregory Urquiaga photo)"

The theme of Banned Books Week this year is "Closing Books Shut Out Ideas."

The official ALA web page for BBW is here. The includes press releases, lists of the most challenged books, and other materials about the topic.

The Banned Books Week site, which is more general in scope, states:
"Banned Books Week is sponsored by the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the Association of American Publishers, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the National Association of College Stores. Banned Books Week is also endorsed by the Center for the Book of the Library of Congress."

A couple folks have questioned whether we should "celebrate" BBW but my attitude is that we are really celebrating a very important part of the First Amendment with this week.

Almost every week a message comes across the school librarians' LM_NET listserv about a challenge to some book or film. Intellectual freedom is what we are celebrating and which we must continue to protect in libraries and bookstores across the country.

According the the Banned Books Week website the following local event is underway:

San Francisco Center for the Book | 300 De Haro Street | San Francisco, CA 94131

August 15-November 26, 2008 | 415-565-0545

Banned & Recovered: Artists Respond to Censorship More than 60 artists interpret banned or challenged books in their chosen medium in response to the suppression of literary art. Curator Hanna Regev has assembled more than 60 artists, each interpreting a banned book of their choice. “Collectively," says Regev, "the work initiates an important undertaking—the recovery of fragments of our censored history. We felt that the pairing of visual and graphic artists with these banned and threatened books was a natural one. After all, what better group to interpret suppressed works than visual artists who are already so attuned to the threat of censorship. The show is a powerful reminder of the fragility of our freedoms, many of which are being chipped away by the PATRIOT Act. It is a powerful testament to the irrepressible creative spirit.” A sister exhibition is being held in Oakland at the African American Museum and Library, 659 14th St. An Oakland Tribune article discusses the exhibition.

Hispanic Heritage Month

 
Throughout the year the Library celebrates several groups with displays of posters and books. From Spetember 15 through October 15 we celebrate Hispanic Heritiage Month. Unlike the other month-long celebrations Hispanic Heritage starts in the middle of one month and ends in the middle of the next. This is because Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua achieved independence on September 15th. Mexico achieved independence on September 16th and Chile on September 18th. Hispanic Heritage Month has been celebrated in the United States since 1974, when President Gerald Ford issued a Presidential Proclamation extending Hispanic Heritage Week into a month-long observation.

Some titles in the Bessie Chin Library to consider reading during Hispanic Heritage Month are:

Books by Gary Soto including: California Childhood: Recollections and Stories of the Golden State; Living Up the Street: Narrative Recollections; A Summer Life; Who Will Know Us: New Poems
Books by Julia Alvarez including: How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents; In the Time of the Butterflies; Saving the World; Something to Declare
Books by Nicholasa Mohr including: El Bronx Remembered; Going Home; In Nueva Yorka
Books by Rudolfo Anaya including: Bless Me. Ultima; Benedicime, Ultima; Aztlan: Essays on the Chicano Homeland; My Land Sings: Stories from the Rio Grande
A book by Esmeralda Santiago: When I was Puerto Rican
Books by Isabel Allende including: Daughter of Fortune; House of the Spirits; Cuentos de Eva Luna; Zorro: A Novel
Red Hot Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Being Young and Latino in the United States and Cool Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Growing Up Latino in the United States edited by Lori Marie Carlson
A book by Carlos Ruiz Zafón: The Shadow of the Wind: A Novel
Books by Gabriel García Márquez including: One Hundred Years of Solitude; The Autumn of the Patriarch; The General in His Labyrinth
Here Is My Kingdom: Hispanic-American Literature and Art for Young People by Charles Sullivan
Books by Judith Ortiz Cofer including: Latin Deli: Prose and Poems
Books by Jimmy Santiago Baca including: Black Mesa Poems; Immigrants in Our Own Land & Selected Early Poems; A Place to Stand: The Making of a Poet
A book by David Rice: Crazy Loco: Stories
Books by Richard Rodriguez including: Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez; Brown: The Last Discovery of America; Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father
Books by Oscar Hijuelos including: Mr. Ives' Christmas; The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
Books by Piri Thomas including: Down These Mean Streets; Savior, Savior, Hold My Hand
Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America by Juan Gonzalez
Latinos: A Biography of the People by Earl Shorris
Books by Jorge Luis Borges including: The Book of Imaginary Beings; The Book of Sand

Welcome to Our New Afternoon Library Specialist

Because Karen Barrett, our long-time full-time Library Specialist has taken the position of Athletic Director we have hired a new part-time person to fill her position in the afternoon.

We'd like to welcome Hans Doto to the Bessie Chin Library and the Redwood community.

Most recently Hans has been working in food service at Drake High School in the district. He also runs a martial arts school in San Rafael in the evening.

At his interview Hans said he was looking forward to learning how a library is run and learning some new skills in an area he doesn't have too much experience in. Hans definitely seems eager to learn and judging by his first day on the job gets along well with students and staff. We all look forward to working with Hans this year.