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August 21, 2013

Working Without A Clerk

I don't have a full-time clerk at my new job.  But it's not as bad as I feared and I'm making some adjustments to make it even better.

There is a woman here who is called an "Instructional Clerk," which means she has a room off of the Media Center in which she makes all the copies.  She also does a lot of graphic design, scanning, runs the laminator, etc.  She also runs the slide show which has all the information like the weekly menu, the Specials rotation info and any announcements.  If I'm out she knows how to run the morning broadcast and the bus dismissal slides.  In a pinch she can step out of her room and help check out students.

So she's a big help, even though she's not really checking out or shelving books.  I do have one helpful volunteer who has been coming most days and is like a machine at shelving, getting almost all the books shelved (and well!) most days.  With back to school nights coming up, I'll try to rope in a couple more.

And using the iPad Mini for the morning broadcast is finally paying some dividends.  For the first week or so we were making a new show every day for the next morning while we figured stuff out and made adjustments.  But now I can tape the show Friday morning and edit a long version for Monday with the Principal's announcements and a shorter version with just the moment of silence, pledge and basic announcements for Tuesday through Friday.  That way I have Monday through Thursday mornings totally free to actually do, you know, librarian stuff!

The biggest adjustment is making sure I keep near the circulation desk (something the clerk always did) and trying to help shelve some.  I hardly did that at all when I had a clerk.

The previous Media Specialist would use Book Fair money to hire someone to come in on Fridays to shelve and run the circulation desk.  I'm trying to avoid that if I can, or at least put it off for a while.  See how crazy Fridays are first and if I feel I really need the help or not.  I'm just now finished with Orientations and so the schedule will start to be a bit more normal after this week of pre-testing.  Next Friday will be a more realistic picture of what it will be like.

Other than that, so far so good!  I'm finally about ready to start AR with the kids.  Then to set up the Reader's Rally Book Club, prepare for the first Book Fair (apparently it will be huge compared to my last school) and just try to keep making everyone happy.