The Johnson Family Library Blog

This semester the Director of Library is joining a number of faculty and staff who are participating in the Dean of Academic Technology's MADE course, a professional development course that dives down deep into the opportunities and features of our Learning Management System, Canvas by Instructure. Introductory modules go over using threaded discussion posts and blogs, and both features can be utilized as assignments for grades in Canvas.

We are utilizing this blog in the hope that it will be a more robust feature to promote our "libraryatsage," and all the things we're doing there. In the future we hope to expand to more diverse and media-focused platforms like Tumblr, and maybe even video, as there are exciting advancements in that field. Stay tuned while we plan for better and more engaging information literacy lesson plans and designs.

This summer we also welcome our new Library Coordinator, Miss Wahl, who joins us from Nashville Public Library system, and Michigan public libraries before that. She loves engaging programming and we are lucky to have her. Visit the lower library to say hello to Miss Wahl welcome her to the community!

End of 2014

It's been wild few months in the library!

Research
So far this year, we have seen implementation and launch of a one-search tool for all of our databases (new ground and impressive!), a brief training for employees during a faculty/staff meeting, and new faculty and student collection requests. Student requests included the Maze Runner series, Gillian Flynn novels, and the new Mortal Instruments book.

Technology in the Library
Technology equipment is flying off the shelves; we saw over 660 laptop checkouts over the course of October alone, all of them reused faculty notebooks. The overwhelming need for laptops on a daily basis is something the school as a whole is looking at from the perspective of technology. Over the course of October and November over 200 library materials circulated, including non-fiction and fiction, but not including textbooks, which are day-use only reserve materials.

The Johnson Family Library now has its own Instagram! Check out pictures here.

Additions to the Collection
We've received two great donations: 20 fundamental financial books from a generous alum and at least 100 of wonderful art books featuring detailed high-quality illustrations.

Utilizing a wonderful article in November's issue of School Library Journal, "Books That Help" by Erin E. Moulton, we have added a long list of realistic teen fiction and mental health books. Highlights include Ellen Hopkins' Perfect, George Harrar's Not as Crazy as I Seem and Amy McNamara's Lovely, Dark and Deep.

Recent additions can be seen on our LibraryThing by clicking here.

On the Move
We are very sorry to see our Library Coordinator move on to education administration at the university level, and we're searching for our next Library Coordinator. Information on the position can be found at www.sagehillschool.org/jobs.

August 2014 (Yearly Update!)

Wow, it’s been almost a year since our last post. Things have been so busy here lately, especially with the continuing use of technology in the classrooms! Here’s a quick review of new programs and cool things that have been happening:

Information Literacy
The Library continues to offer Ninth Grade students Information Literacy sessions during National History Day. In conjunction with Ninth Grade history teachers, both members of the library staff provide intensive one-shot sessions in the Argyros Family Lecture Hall (MMLH). Topics covered include: the research process, information reliability, the structure and organization of information, and the information retrieval process. We hope that our Ninth Graders learned something from us, and wish them the best of luck as they continue to develop their research skills in the following years. The presentation and other helpful guides can be found and downloaded on the Library course in Canvas.

Collection Development
Last year, we encouraged students to contribute to the library collection, thus allowing them to take part in the building a library that they can call their own. The Library got quite an eclectic mix of requests, ranging from more light-heart romance novels to super intensive research dissertations. The popularity of novels such as The Fault in Our Stars brought on a wave of teen romance novels. David Leviathan and Rainbow Rowell were particularly popular. Another popular genre that has popped up in recent years has been Young Adult dystopian novels, popularized by the likes of The Hunger Games and the Divergence series. Requests for more of these types of novels were common this year, and include works by Marie Lu and Hugh Howey.

The Library also started conducting inventory on our collection. Replacement items for lost materials are forthcoming! We have also weeded out some of our fiction books, particularly titles that did not circulate very well and in bad condition. Weeded fiction novels will be replaced by more Young Adult and Popular Adult fiction.

Library Statistics Continue to Rise

Picking up from where we left off, the Library continues to play an important role in student lives. This is particularly evident when we look at this last year’s usage statistics. On the whole, usage of electronic resources has increased approximately 10% over the last year. With the introduction of EBSCO databases, students now have even more options to conduct research. This increase is expected, as faculty continue to utilize technology in the classroom. Circulation of physical materials has also increased, but—unfortunately—not at the same rate at electronic resources. The Library has increased usage of books and novels by about 100 titles. This is a great start, and we hope to improve these numbers in the upcoming year by calling on students to contribute to the collection.

Library Laptops (A Hot Commodity!)
Circulation of library laptops has been through the roof. The month of April saw 376 laptops move through the hands of students. And in May, that number increased to 434! We are glad that we can contribute to student success by providing them with the technological tools that they need to succeed at Sage. With the introduction of Canvas, the use of a computer or laptop has been increasingly more important. The Library will continue to meet these student needs by upgrading our laptops from 11 inch Thinkpads to 15 inch MacBook Pros in the following year.

Library Space Update
The Academic Resource Center has moved to the Library! We are excited to introduce this program into our space, and hope that students will continue to seek out help in the Library. As a result of this, we have been able to move to the entire Fiction collection to the lower library. Now, students have easy access to leisure reading! The Library is also getting new couches soon, expanding the space where students can relax with a good book (or perhaps take a quick nap between blocks!).

Commemorative Monthly Displays
We hope the community enjoyed our monthly displays. This year, we focused on using S.A.M.E.’s (Sage Advocates for Multicultural Education) question of the month as a guide for what we exhibited. Some of our celebrated/awareness months include: Hispanic Heritage Month (September), Disability Awareness/LGBT History Month (October), Native American Heritage Month (November), Black History Month (February). And while these collections did not circulate as much as we had hoped, we definitely had a fun time showing off the great resources that we have available for people interested in social equity and justice.

September 2013 update: Back-to-school Edition

School is back!

School is now in session and the beginning of the year has been great so far. Our students, especially the newer incoming 9th graders, have really embraced the communal spirit of the Information Commons we've established in the lower library. Over the summer, we've rearranged some of our furniture and added in more study tables to provide students with the space they need to study in a collaborative atmosphere. As always, the chess boards have garnered a lot of attention as competition continues to heat up.

The library is now on Canvas

There is now a library course on Sage Hill School’s new learning management system, Canvas. This new platform allows us to provide students and faculty with resources in a more efficient manner. We've integrated our library catalog, as well as our research databases, into Canvas which will now allow for easier access to library books, DVDs, and journal articles. We've also added some handy tutorials in the research database section so please review them if you need a refresher. If you'd like a librarian to demo a particular database for your class, please feel free to send an e-mail to set something up.

Circulation stats are up

The library has added more technological devices to our collection. As the entire school community learns to use Canvas together, students have been checking out laptops at an increased rate. The library supports educational technology and will continue to provide students with the tools they need to succeed in their classes. The books the library has added to the collection over the summer have also fared well. Some of our newer, popular additions include: Eleven Rings by Phil Jackson, Everyday by David Levithan, Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic by Emily Croy Baker.

National Hispanic Heritage Month

This month, the library—along with Sage Hill School’s multicultural group, S.A.M.E.—celebrates National Hispanic Heritage Month. Our display in the upper library exhibits various aspects of Hispanic heritage and history. Please stop by the upper library to learn more about a rich and fascinating culture!

Summer 2013: Lots of new things to be excited about!

Inventory

The Library conducted an inventory of the entire collection this summer. Out of our collection of 15,000+ print resources, we were missing roughly 100 books. We reviewed these missing materials and decided to replace the ones with medium to high usage. The Library will make an effort to remind our students to check out their books in the following school year.

Collection Development

We’ve added some new Young Adult and popular bestselling fiction books to our collection. These new titles will be on display for the first semester in the lower library. If you’re interested in reading something new, please visit the lower library and check out a book! Some popular additions include: The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer, The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman, and We are All Completely Besides Ourselves by Joy Karen Fowler.

New databases, new periodicals

The Library has subscribed to some new EBSCO databases, including Academic Search Premier, Consumer Health Complete, Literary Reference Center, and a bunch more. We are planning on integrating all of our resources—print and digital—into a unifying searchable index. This means that our students and faculty will no longer need to hunt down links to a database they want to use. The Library has also subscribed to some new magazines, including Cooks Illustrated, Harvard Business Review, and Yoga. Swing through the lower library and browse our newly updated periodicals!

More mobile shelving units

Our plan to move the entire fiction collection downstairs continues this summer as the Library received approval for adding four new mobile shelving units. The next step in the phase is to continue moving through the alphabet. We expect three-quarters of our fiction collection to be house downstairs by the end of the year.

Kindles and requests for eBooks

The Library purchased two new Kindles for student and faculty use. We are currently building a small collection of books in the curriculum. The Library plans to use these Kindles to meet resource requests on-the-spot. This means that if you have a request that is in the Amazon marketplace, we can purchase it on-the-spot and lend you a Kindle.