Eventually I'll incorporate infographics, but for now, I'm just going to drop some data here.

Total # students in library this week (Short week due to Teacher Workday):  570 ( 351 during CANES Lunch)
Books in: ~122    Books out: ~ 151  (this is how many were documented, may be low, does not include renewals)
Provided print/digital resources for 6 teachers
Supervised 58 students doing class projects
Helped students print 23 documents for classes
Provided reader's advisory and/or holds services for 36 students
Provided research, citation, or project assistance for 49 students
265 hits on canesmedia.org

Enrichment activities provided/utilized: Chess + board games during CANES lunch and after school, sensory materials to explore, brought African Dwarf frogs to the library this week - naming contest in progress, LaQ building supplies, color printing,  periodicals, Ripley's & Guiness books, animated short videos during CANES lunch on Halloween.

When I tell other librarians that I work at a combined public and high school library, the question I hear most often is "How does that work?". This post is intended to address that question.

SPACE

The public has an outside entrance, and the school has an inside entrance.  The main area of the library houses the circulation desk and the adult collection (fiction, non-fiction, biography, video and audio).  There is a separate children's room and a separate young adult room which is about 600 square feet.  In addition, there is a meeting room, a tutoring room, several storage areas, and two offices, one for the public library director and one for me and my assistant.  My office is in the process of becoming the school's project room/makerspace.  I'll post more on that later.

COLLECTION

Our library is part of a three-county regional library system, so we share our collection with eight other libraries.  This has advantages and disadvantages.  When one of our teachers needs multiple copies of a title, I am usually able to round up quite a few just by pulling from other branches.  However, high-interest new books purchased by the school for our students also go out to patrons in other counties so may not be available to our students when they want them.  We have the largest collection of YA fiction in the region, but also the largest collection of young adult patrons, so it probably balances out.  One problem is that I can't really tell.  Because our circulation system was established with the shared collection, books owned by the public library and books owned by the high school aren't separated in the system, making it difficult to obtain circulation data.  

STAFF and POLICIES

I'm the high school media coordinator and have a full-time media assistant.  The public library has a full-time library director and a full-time children's librarian, along with several part-time and substitute library assistants.  There are usually 2-3 public library staff members in the library during the school day.  They help with circulation and reader's advisory when I am not available.  

The regional office handles cataloging and some of the processing.  They would prefer that I not make any changes to the way they have entered the records.  To make changes, I am supposed to send the books to them via courier. 

Students are bound by most of the regional library policies, such as circulation times, renewal limits, and fee accrual. Because the county library director understands the unique needs of our students, she allows some flexibility for them regarding ability to check out books when fines are owed or when books are overdue. 

COLLABORATION

One of the main advantages of sharing our space is the ease of collaboration between the school and the library. Teachers are able to easily converse with the public library director.  For example, the art teachers are able to coordinate student displays during their planning periods.  Resource requests are quickly addressed, such as when the Friends of the Library provided a set of books for a book club one of our English teachers started this semester.  Students help with the semi-annual library book sale and some of the holiday events. The Friends have a college scholarship that students who have been active at the library can apply for.  I am currently working with the public library to develop a database of community volunteers who can speak or provide special programming in our school or in the library, and a Teen Library Council representative will be attending Friends of the Library and Library Board meetings. 

MOVING FORWARD

We are gradually shifting from a traditional school library to a learning commons with a small makerspace.  Students regularly come into the library to work on group projects or videos.  During our new Smart Lunch (CANES Lunch), we often have more than fifty students in here.  They behave very well, but that many teenagers can be overwhelming for some of the public library's elderly patrons.  The number of complaints has been going down as the students get used to this privilege, and we frequently hear compliments!  I am working on inventorying the high school book collection and the catalogers are making formal notes so that the next time we change circulation systems, the high school collection can be set up as a virtual branch.  That will make it much easier for me to analyse data and to properly complete the annual report the state requires, as well as to set separate policies for the students and staff. 

Earlier this month, I visited 2 high school libraries in Buncombe County, then attended the NCSLMA conference. Having missed 3 1/2 days of school, last week was super-busy playing catch-up. Today was the first day that seemed like things were back in somewhat of a routine, but I'm already getting more input online through webinars and TL News Night.

So - here are just a few of the MANY ideas I brought back with me from all these various sources.

• Implement a student blog where they can share poems, stories, essays, artwork, videos, etc. - so they can participate in the library site and not have it be just a 'warehouse of information'.
  
• Price out plexiglass cut to table size so students can collaborate on them Hunt-Library-Style
• Post library learning targets that are about life skills, not library skills
• Create a digital toolbox to be a matchmaker between teachers/students & digital tools
• Share with the community ~ make library Twitter & Instagram accounts & use them (and the YouTube account) regularly
• Look for connections/extensions - lots of authors enjoy skyping with classes - set up some CANES lunch author Skypes. 
• Talk with the students about what they want to learn how to do - then make it happen in our creation center
• Set out one & done activities during CANES lunch - like Perler beads, design challenges, ColAR & magnetic poetry
• Get teachers to post what they're reading in the hallways to build reading culture in the schools - model reading challenging material & struggling with it!
• Schedule a Tech Tuesday for digital resources (NCWiseOwl & EasyBib)
• Plan for transformative, interactive displays: "help me pick out books that exemplify this quote:..."
• Focus less on helping students find resources & more on helping them know what to do with the resources
• Let kids figure out how to mount & move the green screen - design contest w/ budgets, etc. 
• Be aware of my lens & seek to understand the students' lenses.  Be intentional about actively promoting positive racial identity.
• Stream events in the library: ALA Youth Media Awards, Citizen Science, etc.
• Build community resource database w/ public librarian
• Make usage data sheet & keep track!

SO - that's just a fraction of the ideas I gained in the past 2 weeks.  There are still so many resources to sift through!  This will keep me busy for a while, though, and will help me develop my PDP goals (yes, I'm a little late on that!)

Next post:  How this public/high school library works & thoughts about how to leverage that partnership for student learning.