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| JSTOR Database |
Friday, March 01, 2013
Friday, January 18, 2013
State of the Library: December
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| Bretford Mobile Shelves (from their website) |
Space Update
Mobile
shelves have arrived downstairs and were promptly assembled. About half of the
fiction section is being moved downstairs and has already seen an increase in
usage, undoubtedly from browsing and visibility. In the next year, the library
will look at moving the entirety of fiction downstairs for usage and logistical
reasons.
eBook Update
The
library has enlisted the largest eBook service in schools to provide Sage Hill
with an eLibrary. OverDrive is now fully operational, and a private beta was
introduced to the faculty over the break. It will be rolled out to the students
over the month of January. OverDrive provides ebooks and audiobooks in several
formats for use on private devices as well as school-provided computers.
Technology in the Library
One of
the two iPads purchased at the end of last year for library use was stolen from
the downstairs library on a busy service learning day. The remaining iPad is
still available for community check out but is locked to a desk upstairs unless
requested. The iPad’s ability to switch languages in settings has been used to
write a paper and several of our print subscriptions are also available to read
with its updated operating system. Laptop use in the library is slowly climbing
every month.
Friday, November 30, 2012
State of the Library: October/November
Space Update
We saw
a big return in our summer investment in the library space. Acoustics are a
hundred times better, best demonstrated during the administration of
extended-time PSAT tests in the upper library October 17th. The
lower library was very busy after all the regular-time PSAT students were
released, but our extended-time students enjoyed a much quieter environment
than we have been able to offer before. The furniture in the lower library is
also being well-used and well-loved, particularly the couches,
newly-upholstered chairs, and the low table with chess and checkers games
available. (Chess Club has been revived as a student activity, and so far it
has fostered good-natured sportsmanship across grade lines and social circles
amongst our students.)
eBook Update
The
library has enlisted the largest eBook service in schools to provide Sage Hill
with an eLibrary. OverDrive is used in the entire Orange County Public Library
system as well as in our own Newport Beach Public Library, and it allows
community members to check out eBooks the library purchases on popular consumer
devices such as iPads, Nooks, Kindles, Macs and PCs.
The eCollection is very young and
small, but we hope to continue investing in it as we do the physical
collection, which will probably hit a “ceiling” of around 20,000 to 25,000
books in the next ten years judging from growth and physical space limits. We
currently have a collection of around 16,000 that is still in robust use.
iPads in the Library
Two
iPads have been purchased for in-library use and were briefly on loan to the
Admission Department for Open House. We’re currently calibrating the iPads,
purchasing protective covers, and working out ways to keep them available
within the library space, perhaps with a tether or a sign-out process. They
should become available by the end of the month or the beginning of November.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
State of the Library: September
Space Renovation
Summer
saw a great many positive changes to the library as the school sought to
support a change of tone in the lower library that would accommodate student
use of the space as a social environment and changing priorities in education
toward collaboration and independent learning. Isolated single-seating desk
space was all but eliminated in the downstairs space, and outdated stationary
desktop computers were replaced with a set of new laptops available for student
check-out in the library space. Upstairs, new desktop computers replace the old
and offer robust computing in the quiet study areas for students that prefer
isolation. Comfortable seating in the reading area by the magazine stands was
added and a small table with mobile seating was also added for impromptu
meetings. The biggest investment was an acoustic renovation to render the huge
stone, wall, and high-ceiling area welcoming to many small groups all talking
at once. Panels with high-end sound dampening material were installed on two
walls and all along the ceiling, making an incredible difference when the
library is full of conversation. We’re already seeing a difference with the
amount of school-oriented study work and comfortable conversation in the
different spaces created in the lower library by areas of furniture and
equipment.
Database Accessibility
All of
the school’s subscribed database links have been moved to
virtualclass.sagehillschool.org, where students go to access their class and
course information. The hope is this will make it even easier for students to
utilize library resources, recommended links, and help information.
Collection Management
The
annual inventory was completed in the middle of the summer slightly ahead of
schedule, and the library is already processing replacements for the books lost
and damaged over the course of the year. To reflect the available technology in
the school, the library is removing outdated media formats (audio tapes, VHS
tapes) and sorting the remaining media (CDs, DVDs) for easier browsing. Further
collection expansion will be temporarily halted for a month or two while we
wait for additional shelving to arrive.
Plans for the Future
The
library has received a generous donation to reupholster all the existing
armchairs from last year, and those will arrive within the week to offer more
comfortable reading seating upstairs and downstairs. In addition, small side
tables will be added and there are discussions to acquire a handful of mobile
reading and browsing devices (such as iPads or potentially other ereading
devices) for check-out and student use before the year is out. These plans are
still in the works.
After the survey on the use of
eBooks at school last year, the library has been watching the leading available
ebook and audiobook providers in the hopes that their pricing plans will change
to reflect the times and a small independent school environment. A plan is in
place to launch the most flexible and viable of the available services when the
school is this year.
Wednesday, May 09, 2012
State of the Library: May
eBooks
Congratulations
to our drawing winner, Mr. Nguyen! J
The recent survey distributed to the community brought back very interesting results. 157 students, teachers, and staff members responded. The majority of respondents (70%) read ebooks, but about a third of those preferred print. For reading devices, iPad was the big favorite followed by Kindle and Mac computers. Only 42 respondents checked out resources for personal interest this year (as opposed to checking out for school use). A surprising number expressed interest in audiobooks (37%) and 26% already listen to them. Again, iPads and iPods were the device favorites for audiobooks. The majority of respondents didn’t think Sage Hill was quite ready for ebooks in the classroom by a narrow margin, but on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being “I think we’re ready for them now” just over half chose a 4 or a 5.
With so very few of our patrons
utilizing the library for personal use, it’s unlikely the library will pursue a
personal reading ebook collection in the next year unless the classroom
environment fully embraces them as well. At present the price is too high to
justify catering to such a small number of users (personal interest patrons who
read exclusively in e-form). However, the library will definitely investigate
audiobook options and, perhaps, cheaper ebook services.
The library hosted the spring meeting of the Independent School Library Exchange (ISLE), a group of independent school librarians facing the same dilemmas with e-books. To that end the meeting hosted ten e-book vendors to provide more perspective and hopes for a better cost-to-value ratio. The little mini-conference was very successful and offered more options and opportunities to follow the progress of the educational ebook market.
If you’re interested in this topic, I would be happy to discuss it with you and obtain even more input.
More Handy Stuff From
Your Library
I recently added several hundred ebook titles to the library collection (http://library.sagehillschool.org) thanks to Project Gutenberg. These titles are out of copyright, and there are links from our library site to theirs, which offers free ebooks in many formats. Click “Catalog” and enter “Gutenberg” as a keyword to see a listing of these titles, which includes many classics.
For more free ebooks, you can check
out Amazon’s Free Library for your kindle or kindle reader on iPad here: http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=2245146011
and visit http://archive.org/details/texts
for even more obscure out-of-print collections. (Check out, in particular, the
facsimile of the original author-illustrated, hand-written edition of Alice’s
Adventures Under Ground by Lewis Carroll: http://ia700305.us.archive.org/7/items/alicesadventures19002gut/19002-h/alice_1.htm.)
Library Use
Historically library circulation declines in the last two months of the school year, as other programs, including arts and service learning, put on final shows, performances, and visits. Circulation is at its lowest during testing times (December and May), when no new material is introduced, which is as it should be. There were still 238 physical resources that left the library in the month of March, and electronic resources nearly met February with 1268 articles accessed. Visit www.sagehillschool.org/library to see more of this year’s statistics, both physical and electronic, as they become available. We’ve also added many new titles, including local flora and fauna guides suggested by the science department, to our collection.
End of Year
Please
encourage your students to return their books to the library by May 21. We are
starting inventory soon and we want as many of our resources as possible to be
available for next year’s students. I’m also taking volunteers the next few
weeks if you find the idea of scanning every book in our collection irresistible.
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