State of the Library: April Edition

Welcome to the home stretch! As we leave behind April and approach the end of the year, the library is looking for ways to support the community as a whole.



Jacquelyn Martin for Kansas City Star



Breaking News

Many of our students were only five or six years old during the 9/11 attacks and continue to learn the historical significance of the political decisions of today. One of our publishers is offering free resources in light of current events, and I thought many of you may find the short articles of interest:

• George W. Bush’s Address to the Nation on September 11, 2001: The Full Text & Analysis
  Milestone Documents in American History
• Osama bin Laden’s Declaration of Jihad against Americans: The Full Text & Analysis
  Milestone Documents in World History
• Osama bin Laden Biography
  Great Lives from History: The Twentieth Century: 1971-2000
• The War on Terror
  Weapons & Warfare

In the Library
In a quick look forward, the library is going to be hosting many exams in the month of May, and various AP examinations are being held in MMLH and upstairs. We are being especially sensitive to group work and noise level where possible to respect students taking and studying for exams. If you would like a class to come in for research or study, please contact me in advance! The space may not be available. We appreciate your support in this busy time!

Spring at Sage Resources
There are so many unique topics being addressed at Spring at Sage! As you begin your prep work for your seminars, please don't hesitate to contact me with the resources you plan on using, or that you think your newly-inspired students may find of interest. I would also be happy to see if the already collection has something that may support you. I hope to have a display of spring topics to reflect the exciting places and ideas our students will experience this year.

Future Databases

I've been in contact with several companies that provide databases and resources. At the end of May I'll be asking the Research Committee to look at one or two databases, particularly with an eye to science and math. I will be sending out details as classes and finals complete, and even if you are not on the committee, I hope you may let me borrow your two cents on the resources the library is considering offering our community!

State of the Library: March Edition

Usage
After completing the initial draft of the library's CAIS chapter, I was able to look at our statistics from a broader perspective. In the last three years physical circulation has slowly drifted down to hover around 200 resources a month on average, while electronic circulation has steadily risen with thousands of articles being read each month. (This month, over 2300 full-text articles were accessed.) With our relatively small student population (just over a hundred students a class) our monthly physical circulation is strong, and more than justifies shelving and bound-and-paper books. Last year, physical circulation rounded out at about 5 check-outs per student. This month, 342 resources made it into student hands.

Featured Resources
This month I attended the California School Library Association's Southern Section conference, and attended a great session on web tools "for productivity, creativity, learning and inquiry." Here are a couple that jumped out at me:

•  See and listen about the Eiffel Tower. Qwiki makes encyclopedic information come alive with a combination of a computer read-aloud and slide-show images. A more interesting way to introduce a topic that creates a dynamic visual. (P.S. Do a search for 'Sage Hill School'...)
• Tripline offers the ability to tour the world from home. You can add text, pictures and multimedia to map locations. Tripline automatically assembles a video from the input. Check out The Lewis and Clark Expedition. Tripline also allows for mobile and iPhone app use, a good idea for some of those science trips, perhaps?
• Students can create online flashcard sets with Quizlet, then practice or test themselves. The best thing about the site, however, is that it archives other sets, including some language and standardized tests. How's your SAT vocab?
• Speaking of vocab, watch the way Visuwords connects words with meanings by visual relationship. Take a stroll through a dictionary.

Wellness Seminar: Internet Responsibility
Last month I was able to speak to all of our ninth graders through a seminar coordinated through Mer's P.E. wellness program. The topic was internet responsibility, and I focused very heavily on social networking and online reputations, responding to the outbreak of cyberbullying-related suicides and online incidents. After 11 suicides across the nation in last September alone, a conference was held at the White House on March 10th to focus heavily on this topic, attended by the head of Facebook security, the author of the book the movie Mean Girls was based upon, and others. (Rosalind Wiseman's follow-up book, Queen Bee Moms and Kingpin Dads, can be found in the Educator's Library portion of our collection.) My goal, like that of this conference, was to initiate discussion and awareness of this issue among our students rather than preach my opinion.

I also discussed online safety, online reputation, and privacy issues.

The seminar began with three breakout groups, each of which received a scenario. The scenarios were each drawn from an actual incident that occurred this month, which I revealed only after I asked the students how they would handle each issue. (You can read the discussions and find linked news articles by clicking here .) I felt the students were extremely engaged and I had some wonderful discussions with many of them. During the presentation following, my hope was to get students thinking about their presence and actions online and share the consequences other teens are experiencing. (You can see my presentation on GoogleDocs by clicking here. Hit “Actions” on bottom left to pull up another window that says “Speaker Notes”; you can scroll through the presentation and see my notes at the same time as long as you can see both windows.)

Research Projects
As always, don't hesitate to contact the library to reserve research time or to collaborate on a project. I would love to visit your class, and I'll bring with me some tuned research tips to help.

State of the Library: February Edition

Hello all,
It's a short one this time around, but you'll find several attachments and articles of interest. Happy weekend!

New Additions

There have been many recent additions to the collection, the vast majority at the request of various members of the community. You can download the list here and peruse requests for psychology classes, current issues, English, and science, with subjects ranging from Calvin & Hobbes to Jackie Robinson. We added recent speaker Kortney Clemons' biography as well as some other interest books on the military and The Paralympic Games.

We have also recently received a generous donation of fantasy and science fiction books. Visit http://library.sagehillschool.org/, click "Sage Hill School Library", then on the left click "Resource Lists", and then click the tab on the right "Public Lists" to view continually updated lists of requests for various classes (and from students!).


Featured Resources

The new edition of Independent Schools features the article Gordon mentioned in the staff meeting, highlighting schools with a strong public purpose. The library subscribes to Independent School, which is published by NAIS and publishes four issues a year. (I found the article on "They Myth of the Model Minority" in the Winter edition very interesting.) You can read the article on Sage in the current issue in the downstairs library, as it is not live on the internet yet.

Also downstairs are other periodicals on education you might find intriguing, including The Chronicle of Higher Education, which has lately featured articles on financing college and the digitization of education.

Usage
We had over 160 books go out last month (significantly less than January but still high!) and our students accessed more than 1,700 full-text articles from our various databases. Nothing to sneeze at! Check out the wiki for more detailed statistics.

Note that Oxford English Dictionary statistics aren't available for the last two months; their new statistics program is glitchy, but they promise me numbers soon!

Library Environment
We're in the home stretch for the end of the year, and the library is very busy this season. If you would like to bring your classes into the library, please give us time to put it on the calendar so we can ensure adequate coverage--and if you want some research backup, I would love to assist, so I want to make sure I'm immediately on hand! Email me with times and classes, and I'll be able to better support your projects.

State of the Library: January Edition

Hello colleagues,

Welcome to the January edition of the State of the Library, which reviews the month previous. December was taken over by finals, with very few instructional days, so I skipped ahead to January, and there’s a lot to say!

Find this and other State of the Library update emails archived at http://libraryatsage.blogspot.com. (With images edited to protect copyright, and names edited to protect the innocent.)

In-Service Day

If you’re interested in getting started with PBworks but couldn’t make my session about it, you can download the handout here and watch videos, or come talk to me about using this website-creator tool in your classroom!

Usage

Things started up again with a bang at the library, and usage has shot up to higher than any other month this year. Electronic circulation went over 1,000 full-length articles searched, and book circulation is almost twice any other month so far at over 260. I’ll let the numbers speak for themselves!

As always, you may see more detailed statistics on the wiki.

Mission Statement

After months in the making, the library’s Mission Statement and Collection Development Policy is finalized and live on the web for our community. It’s important for every library to have a policy that guides acquisition of resources and keeps community goals in mind—I encourage you to take a look. The document is meant to be continually revised!

Featured Resource: ARTstor

ARTstor is an image database that shows art objects, paintings, drawings and even buildings in high resolution. The image view tool works in your browser and you can zoom in to items to see the smallest details, from cracks in plaster to fine brush-strokes. ARTstor also has a detailed image information feature that shows you measurements, collection locations, and more. Please check it out by visiting library.artstor.org while on campus. Register a name for yourself if you would like to visit off-campus. Let me know if I can guide you through the amazing features of this database!

Library Instruction & Class Visits

Multiple research projects are underway right now, with the history department leading the charge. Ninth graders in Patterns of Civilization are working on their National History Day projects. Nikole S. and Chris D. were kind enough to invite me to their classes to remind tenth graders in European history about our available resources as they begin research for their second semester papers, and also went over some database searching tips they’ll find useful as they continue their academic careers. The Chinese classes are studying Chinese culture with papers of their own, and Donna O.’s visual art classes received some detailed instruction on the featured database (below) ARTstor.

Resources

Tyler Z.’s science classes are working on comic strip based projects while Nathan H.’s current issues classes are delving deep into the Cold War and intellectual freedom issues. We’ve also had some arts requests for artist biographies and ceramics history, and a student request or two! Please let me know this month if you expect to request some library materials, as we are being careful with collection funds.

Service Learning

Our partners at Killybrooke brought some of their fifth graders into the library last Service Learning Day to partner with their buddies while they researched their science experiments. Fifth and ninth graders participated in a brief activity on why citation is important and then let loose to find sources and background information on important science concepts. The library is going to host third graders from El Sol at the end of this month for a similar activity! Click here to see the first handout.

Library Environment

Khara has been invaluable in the lower library over the past few months, and we both put an extra effort in during final exams to make the library a study environment, a new endeavor that was largely successful! Things are back to normal with a bustling library atmosphere that often has a couple classes at once, so let me know if you would like to schedule some time for your classes to focus here in the upstairs library.

Feedback Welcome

Khara and I have also discussed the library’s resources and policies quite a bit with our CAIS committee. Everyone has provided valuable feedback and we appreciate your surveys, commentary, and messages. Please don’t hesitate to communicate feedback to me about what the library has to offer! We’re always improving.

State of the Library: November Edition

Thank you all for your kind words about this communication, if you find it useful, please do let me know! – N.

Usage

As is typical this time of year as students begin reviewing for finals rather than launching new projects, library usage has dropped; both electronic and physical circulation. Electronic circulation has almost halved with over 360 full-text articles accessed, and physical check-outs rounded out at about 100. However, our magazine and periodical circulation doubled to about 50 documented uses. I hope next year I’ll be able to coordinate with a few more of the classes that visited last month, as I would be happy to make some resource-oriented activities for students exploring current developments in their subjects.

As always, you may see more detailed statistics on the wiki.

Library Environment: Finals

The week of finals, beginning with December 13, Reading Day, the entire library will be a quiet, individual study environment. I plan on making announcement Monday the 6^th, and with the help of facilities, Khara and I hope to make the downstairs library space a good spot for students to focus on reviewing on their own, rather than in rowdy groups. Please note the upstairs library will be closed all day December 14-16 as students with accommodations test there.

Databases & Magazines

Last month I asked some members of our Athletics & Wellness Program and members of the Library & Research Committee to evaluate a potential addition to our database collection, Teen Health & Wellness. The database offered a free subscription for a short time to evaluate the material. After some discussion, the committee is on the lookout for a more advanced database as the tone of some material is aimed for younger teens. However, I would love any additional opinion on the matter, and if you would like to visit www.teenhealthandwellness.com , the trial subscription is live until December 15.  Ask me for the connection info!

• Many of our databases are exploring options to make information mobile. ARTstor has recently released a beta (test) version of iPad, iPhone and iTouch software for image exploring, and Gale (Opposing Viewpoints & eBooks) already has a mobile application. I am exploring ways to promote these options while still respecting school cell phone policy on campus.
• Stay on the lookout for an updated Oxford English Dictionary layout, as it has recently been revamped. To see it now, go to http://www.oed.com/ and ask me for the password! The timeline of the English language is particularly interesting.
• There have been some updates and additions to our JSTOR academic database, and I will feature just a couple of them here in the hopes they might be of interest to you in your classes.

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublication?journalCode=filmquarterly

“Film Quarterly, published since 1958, provides readers with insightful analyses of film, the film industry, and international cinemas. More than a glimpse behind the scenes, Film Quarterly offers serious film lovers in-depth articles, reviews, and interviews that examine all aspects of film history, film theory, and the impact of film, video, and television on culture and society.”

JSTOR only offers issues of this periodical three years older and previous, however the historical commentary might be of use to serious film, theatre, and art students.

For more current info, the library subscribes to Backstage West, a weekly bulletin for actors, and American Theatre, a magazine with reviews, previews, production schedules and articles. Both of these periodicals may be found on the downstairs shelves.

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublication?journalCode=amerjmath

“The oldest mathematics journal in the Western Hemisphere in continuous publication, the American Journal of Mathematics ranks as one of the most respected and celebrated journals in its field. Published since 1878, the Journal has earned and maintained its reputation by presenting pioneering mathematical papers. It does not specialize, but instead publishes articles of broad appeal covering the major areas of contemporary mathematics. The American Journal of Mathematics is used as a basic reference work in academic libraries, both in the United States and abroad.”

JSTOR offers content from 2005-2010. In this field, the library also receives monthly issues of Math Horizons and The College Mathematics Journal.

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublication?journalCode=anthquar

“Anthropological Quarterly, also known as AQ, is a peer-reviewed journal published by the George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research. AQ was founded in 1921 by the Catholic University of America and was published from 1921 to 1953 under the name Primitive Man. While continuing to publish outstanding, original, data-driven articles that advance ethnography and anthropological theory, AQ also asks intellectuals to contribute to on-going public debates relevant to contemporary experiences and public debates. Topics include: war, racism, poverty, nationalism, globalization, human rights, and the social, legal, and ethical implications of new genetic technologies. Essays on such timely topics are published in our ‘Social Thought and Commentary’ section.”

The library also receives Policy Review, New Republic, The Economist, Atlantic Monthly and Foreign Affairs, all of which discuss current issues in depth. Read these and other current periodicals in the downstairs library.

Good luck to you all as finals season begins, and I wish you a very happy holiday as it draws near.