New School Year New Schools

Tammy Cummings Library Media Specialist Binghamton, NY

    Well this year has already been full of adventures.  Just over a year ago I switched school districts.  This meant working in two school libraries and moving to a new area.  Binghamton NY is now my home.  I've officially settled down or at least I had thought I settled down.  The district hired another librarian (or rehired one) and switched up who was working at which schools.  This meant two new schools and two new collections.

    Last year was the chaos of the pandemic and teaching asynchronously for part of the school year. Plus getting to know two new library collections. One school had over 700+ books that needed to be sorted through and cataloged.  Luckily I had help with that from Library aids and School Library Services.  Then having to make space for Covid testing in the library for part of the year and push into classrooms at both schools.  Towards the end of the school year I was finally able to have classes in the library!  I survived the school year, but then they sprung on us the switch up of locations!

    Start of this school year I found myself assigned to two different schools both of which the school library had undergone renovations!  All the books were in boxes at both schools!  Luckily at one school (School A) I had the help of other librarians in the district to unbox the books.  Managed to get this done before school started but it was still organized chaos.  Unfortunately at the other School (School B) I didn't have help unboxing the books until after the school year started, but the boxes were out of sight and I could start teaching right away.

    School A is a great space but the smart board is not up so I cannot project anything!  I do have two monitors so I use the second larger one to show students videos and such.  I only lost a little bit of shelving in the renovation at school A.  The collection is in desperate need of weeding.  About 900 books have been weeded as we were shelving.  The picture book section still needs to be weeded. 

    School B is an awesome space but shelving is very limited!  That has been the biggest issue with school B.  Very little was done before the school year started, but what was done the students did not like.  The principal had older tables put in the library so students had a place to sit to work.  At some point this school year the library will get new tables and chairs.  Learned the hard way that the projector does not work for the smart board and I am waiting on it being repaired.  Luckily there is a smart TV in the library and I use that instead.  The boxes of books were stored erratically in the band room.  I felt bad about taking up this teachers space and pushed myself to sort and weed fast!  Total so far of weeded books at School B is around 2000.  But all those books really needed to be weeded.  I still have my book budget for this year and need to get the orders placed.  Now I am am down to the books that really should stay.  I have almost completed the Non-Fiction (Informational Text) part of the collection, the biography section, readers, graphic novels and Fiction sections of the collection.  That leaves the picture books to get shelved.  Not enough room to shelve them plus I need to decide on how to shelve them.  Thankfully I do have help now with completing this library.

Things that I learned during this process:

1. Librarians don't get to pack boxes up at their pace and many non librarians will pitch in to get the work done!

2.  Boxes once packed will be moved an mixed up during the renovations!

3.  Librarians most likely won't get a say in the renovation.  You will be asked to spend a ton of time planning it but then the decision is not in your hands.

4.  Take care of yourself.  I pushed myself too hard and ended up sick for almost a week.

5.  Principals will say take your time and take care of yourself but they really want it done as quickly as possible.

This is the end for today.  I will start my next post about the decisions that I had to make and share some before and after photos of the progress so far.