Congratulations are in order!

The TL Scene / Seen:

It's the busy time of year. That's my excuse for slowing down with the posts ... and besides, I need you to catch your breath on the school library roller-coaster ride. We are moving along at quite a clip and it's hard to take it all in.

There are a couple of national awards of interest to Vancouver TLs ... but I am overstepping the official CLA / CASL announcements next week and can only suggest you stay tuned. We remain Haycock's Legacy! By the way, I saw Ken two weekends ago at the BC Librarians' Conference in Burnaby. Look for more Haycock by summer's end.

All kinds of events for the BCTLA are recorded by our President Heather Daly on her BCTLA blog In Circulation. Read, for example, about:

• this year's Distinguished Service Award recipient Coquitlam principal Ross Davidson who supports literacy by making sure his school has a strong school library program with full-time staffing and by continuing his involvement in the partnership of principals and vice-principals whose Hog Wild About Reading motorcycle ride campaign has, for the past nine years, raised funds for Coquitlam's school library collections. Yay, Ross!
  
• our VTLA President Chris Evans' receiving this year's BCTLA Ken Haycock Grant for Professional Development to help defray costs of coming to the 2009 IASL Conference in Italy. Mary's in for sure, and we have three others considering coming.
  
• Michele Farquharson and Chris being elected to the 2009/10 BCTLA Executive, joining me and Sylvia from Vancouver as well as the retired Val H who, when not geo-caching, continues her web-working-wonders for TLs.
  
• this year's TL of the Year, Victoria's Karen Lindsay, our BCTLA second VP, particularly well-known for her work in advocacy for school libraries and for promoting DEAR: Drop Everything and READ.
  
• now retired Richmond TL phenom Judith Kootte who won this year's Val Hamilton Lifetime Achievement Award. Judith continues her fine leadership role in learning resources and technology learning with ERAC.
  
• the new BCTLA Position Statement on Book Levelling and School Library Collections which is to be ready next week.

Amazing morning! See you Tuesday for Tea ...

Earlier this week the Churchill school library, a-buzz as ever with herds of students, was filled with rookie TLs, most of whom couldn't be distinguished from the kids. The 30 or so of our newest TL-colleagues were delightful to work with -- I know Maryann, Katharine, and Linda will agree -- and Mark Roberts too, as he has shed his "rookie" mantle after the first year back in our ranks from several years in a classroom. It was crowded but the energy and enthusiasm was fantastic. Thanks also to the VTLA, Kam at Fleming and Gwen in particular, who have identified the need for our new TLs to have the support of seasoned TL colleagues and time to talk. Don't miss their invitation to have tea and share experiences and ask questions ... May 5, Fleming School Library. See you there!

The Final Chapter / May Year-end Update Sessions

Still more than 50 need to sign up for these important in-service sessions to prepare you for the busiest time of year, June, and for what to expect in September. The first session is scheduled for Thursday this week. Sign up online please if you haven't done so. Contact ME if you need help organizing to attend. An important workshop for a number of you will be Bombino's Inventory Basics as well, scheduled for this month.

Very Last Minute Notices

Perhaps if you are checking this and if I finish in time, you will want to rush down to the CWILL Spring Hatching event at the VPL ... that is, if you didn't get the notice sent out earlier this week --- or to the Histori.ca Fair event at the Museum.

On things historical, by the way, I loved every minute of the presentation made by Wes Knapp at the Kitsilano workshop to share the DVD and teaching package for 1907 / Vancouver / 2007. Now every high school has the kit and there are two sets for lending at Media Services. Elementary teachers are using it as well. All this has been funded by the Vancouver Historical Society and is an amazing resource for Vancouver students. Wes and Charlie Hou will be presenting this again in October.


Web 2.0, Part 2: Online Conference June/July

Check here for more Henri/Lee Your SchoolLibrary Pro D, an online conference entitled Information Literacy and Web 2.0. This conference features our own Pat Parungao as a presenter alongside names like Mike Eisenberg of BigSix fame. If you "attended" the last one, there is a discounted price. There is also a group price. Let me know how many will be "coming" to this session which has more presenters and which runs from June 13 to July 5. Let me know ASAP if you are in for this one and I will set about negotiating our participation.


Educators to Watch

Maryann and I spent time together at the annual Fast Forward event which, despite the lack of ERAC participation, continues to provide public and academic librarians, as well as K-12 educators, a chance to pre-view and select DVDs and other related tools and resources for their patrons. I worked alongside Joan from Hamber and Steve from the VSB, as well as two of our French Immersion colleagues. We were all excited about some great programs that had been nixed or missed by the ERAC selection process. Mostly I loved the NFB videostreaming database ... you'll see this at the Update sessions. Oh, and lunch with a guy to watch ...

So we watched DVDs ... and then dashed to a lunch-time talk to hear Assistant Superintendent (West Van) Chris Kennedy's energetic presentation. Well, began, Kennedy, the world needs more librarians in the 21st Century (don't need to worry about hooking this audience) -- kids need to be taught how not to plagiarize, not learn by getting caught by mechanical plagiarism detectors. Using wikispaces as a presentation tool, he talked about the world-class product of our education system that we have here in BC, as evidenced by the PISA tests, measuring 15-year-olds for international comparison, that clearly place us at the top alongside countries like Finland. His District's literacy goals next year will feature Digital Literacy ... how much fun will that be! After the little shot of professional adrenalin to keeps us thinking about how best to work for our teacher-colleagues and with the needs of the children of the 21st Century in mind, we headed back to the viewing tables. Yes, it's all exciting stuff.

Budget Presentations

Kudos to the parents who are Friends of the School Libraries here in Vancouver, for the astounding level of support given to us in the recent budget process. Thank you, Trustees, for your support under the most trying of times, as well. It surely isn't the best part of your leadership role, having to cut the very services, resources, and tools that you know enable and empower our young learners to enter the adult world better able to read, think, learn, and prosper. It's been lean here in public schools for way too long now.


IASL Conference 2009

Planning-for-Padua Update

Are you looking for a great travel opportunity with fantastic company? If you haven't looked at the IASL Conference information, you may want to see what's up for TLs in Italy this summer. And we are so excited we have organized a group tour with our Italian travel consultant, Pre-conference Tour Organizer Francesca della Hastings (as in our Frances). We are pretty close to having a package together that we will send out for your summertime consideration. Vancouver and other TLs, educators, and friends might want to consider the 10-day Tour that brings us to Padua in time for the Workshop Day (August 31) with Dr Ross Todd and Dr Carol Kuhlthau -- I emailed for details which are too follow but they are pleased to hear a group from BC is coming! The Pre-conference Day, September 1, is fully posted. The workshops and papers have been selected so more detail on conference presenters will be coming soon. The actual conference, School Libraries in the Picture: Preparing Pupils for the Future, is September 2-4. Email ME for the information package.

New Issue of Teacher-Librarian, April 2009

This is the Best-of Issue (best fiction, picture books, websites, graphic novels, software, adult books for older teens, and so on) of Teacher Librarian and it includes the BEST from Canada's Resource Links 2008. Two articles I intend to savour: Tips from National School Library Media Program Winners for Success, in "A Recipe for Your School Library," and an article entitled "From Library to Learning Commons: A Metamorphosis." Great Advisory Board here everyone ... includes Ray Doiron, Michele Farquharson, Doug Johnson, Joy McGregor, Marcia Mardis and more. Try the magazine's TLToolkit for great websites.

Inquiry

Project continues. Inquiry TLs are invited for Monday morning to join SLRCCC sub-committee to look at IL Benchmarks and to consider project timeline and products for June. Academic librarians from UBC and SFU will join us for half the meeting. I am looking forward to this. Our TLs showcase so well!

Weeding 1 Was Wonderful by Any Analysis

If you were one of the 15 or so TLs (and one keen teacher named Yvette) who came to Dickens learn how to weed and discuss the challenges of weeding, you would have had fun!

It was a great event ... and by the end, Cheriee was weeding with enthusiasm. Amazing what a little light refreshment does at the end of the day. More help could be used next week.

Are you considering a serious weed of one or more sections, likely preparing for inventory or making room for new resources? While Cheriee is preparing to move her collection to the new school and knows on a rational level it is better not to move one more book than is absolutely necessary, we saw a TL working with what we all recognize as the emotional attachment to a collection she has helped build. We agreed it is much easier to weed a collection that belongs or has belonged to someone else. But let's review the Dickens weeding process, to date ...

Analysis by IGE: Thyrza and Irina from MLST and I went to Dickens on Wednesday morning. We brought an IGE (a Horizon report where a particular group of items has been defined by parameters and identified in a printout) -- all books with copyright older than 2000 that had never (since automation) been signed out. Cheriee had already run an IGE for all books not circulated since 2000, a different list. Guess how many books were on these lists.

Irina had also run a count of "New Items" and of Items Missing, Missing Inventory, and Lost. If Cheriee were to check in all New Items, they would be added into the collection numbers and exactly offset the removal of the list of missing and lost items! Put another way, removing the lost items didn't accomplish any reduction in the collection size and it's really important to remember to check in all items that are added to your collection, both when you copy-catalogue and when you send them in to MLST. Remember that New Items do not exist for inventory purposes until they have been upgraded to Checked In.

While we were pre-assessing the collection, we checked collection size reports -- for Dickens and for other single-track schools of a similar size (500 students). Dickens had the largest collection but not by much -- and there would be reason to expect this, given that this school doesn't use textbooks. The range in collection size amongst these similar-size schools indicated that at least one collection was only two-thirds the size of Dickens', suggesting some considerable leeway for de-selecting!

Analysis by Professional Development and Collaboration: When we had resolved the refreshment shortages and pondered the reports, we began the weeding discussions. I provided an article "Weed!" by Doug Johnson (Head for the Edge, Library Media Collection, Sept/Oct 2003). The handout also included pages III, 35-37, from the district Handbook (2007; see portal) and pp. 92-3 from the Ministry document Evaluating, Selecting, and Managing Learning Resources: A Guide (2002).

Other "weeding resources" included in the package were:

• Resources for School Librarians - Collection Development
• Toronto School Board's Weeding Pamphlet
• Sun Link Weed of the Month (Archived, Sept 1997 to Dec 2005).
  

Analysis by Doing: Cheriee had taken pages from the IGE prepared at MLST and grouped them. TLs paired up -- experienced with inexperienced -- to undertake an analysis by doing the work: find the volumes identified as being older than 2000 and as never being circulated and verify they were ready for discarding. While on that shelf, identify other volumes to consider for discard. It soon became clear that it would be a time-consuming process -- that it would be just as easy to pull the books for Cheriee to check before discarding. Piles began to appear all over the school library.

Next Week: finish weeding; learn how to create the Discard IGE, as well as box and label the materials.

Analysis for Long-term Planning: We have had a look at the inventory records for the district. We are compiling the information on collection size for each school and will correlate it with information about school size (annex, small, medium, large; single-track, dual-track, etc.) and inventory. But why? you ask, given that the limited amount of staffing at some schools makes it impossible to do the "annual" inventory. The union catalogue is a primary concern: how accurate the records for your school are depends upon the adjustments following inventory. The records of books lost and missing, as well as the value of these items, are a useful measure of the importance of staffing, security systems, supervision, shared knowledge and professional qualifications, as well as consistent practice.

Workshop for April: Embracing Inventory!

Here There be Dragons ...

... and much much more:

Dragons, bats, and treasure ...

Dragons, books, a list, and a T-shirt contest ...

Dragons, rats, and spiders --
Thanks to those TLs who sent in books,
to Peggy and her creative energies, and
to the Works yard for this great display
in the lobby of the school board.

Field trip, anyone?
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TL Studio: Jings and blogs ... and we're all none the wiser! Michele took us into jing world ... here you can capture an image from your screen, record your screen actions and commentary, and upload for instant replay. If you saw Alan November use this open source program, you would have seen the potential for student assignments, for sharing ideas and information about technology, and for demonstrating a technical lesson for students who may have missed the class or the point.

We also used blogger (a google tool) to create blogs, comparing uses of these with wikis.

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Serendipity Saturday -- UBC First Nations Longhouse -- hope to see you there.

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Spring Weeding, Part 1 is on Thursday, 4 pm, Feb 28, Dickens. Part 2 is Thursday, Mar 6. David is off in Morocco but we plan to get everyone on board for the annual inventory. (If you already have a process for taking inventory, ignore this.) For those of you who haven't ever done inventory or who have but have forgotten everything, we are going to set up some training sessions. We are particularly concerned about school libraries where inventory hasn't been done for a number of years. Here's the inventory cycle we would propose:

• Year 1, do everything except non-fiction.
• Year 2, do non-fiction.
• Year 3, REST!

If we set up and followed this pattern, MLST would know which one-third of schools would not be doing inventory in June.

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TOC Training on Horizon; General Operations of a School Library Program: Horizon, Mar 4 -- Rm 100 (lab), VSB; General Ops, Mar 5, 4 pm -- Moberly Elementary School Library, with Gwen Ingham and Denise North. Please tell TOCs about this training opportunity. They must attend both sessions.

ORDER THIS RESOURCE --

This recommendation for Eco Kits for B.C. Schools comes from SFU Media specialist Linda Hof's Webbits: As part of the Green Schools strategy, the Ministry of Education is offering all schools (K–12) a BC Green Schools Eco Kit. The deadline for ordering free Eco Kits is March 31. French or English.