Teacher Talk
by Kim Jones
February 10, 2009
The 2008-2009 school year has brought changes to the EHS Library
for students and teachers alike. Karin Busiere, Secondary
Librarian, set three major goals at the beginning of the school
year: to offer additional outreach programs to students and the
community, to continue to improve the quantity and quality of
materials available in the library, and to improve collaboration
with teachers at the middle- and high-school levels.
As part of the outreach goal, the library continues to be open for
evening hours on Tuesdays in order to provide additional study
opportunities to students and on-going extended hours to members of
the community. The Democrat has been especially helpful in a second
aspect of outreach efforts by publishing many articles written by
students concerning the many library programs being offered to
students and the community. As a final outreach effort, the annual
Scholastic Holiday Book Fair has become a regular feature of the
library’s calendar.
The second goal, improvement of materials, is being approached
through purchase of additional publications – especially
high-interest magazines and fictional books. These items can be
purchased at a reasonable expense. However, improvements to the
nonfiction collection are more expensive and will take longer to
accomplish. (The average 200-page nonfiction book costs about $35.)
Through the Library Legacy Program, as sponsored by the Friends of
Elsberry Literacy, many nonfiction titles have been added as
donations in honor of loved ones. Ms. Busiere continues to write a
variety of grants to provide additional funding for nonfiction
books. The new automation system, once used to its fullest
capability, will provide an additional tool to monitor additions
and withdrawals from the nonfiction stacks.
Finally, teachers at both the middle level and in the high school
have continued to bring their classes to the library for research
and further instruction. One of the library’s recent missions is to
assist students in becoming more discriminate in their use of
internet sources – learning which sites are most suitable to
reliable research. Further, teachers have been emphasizing to
students the importance of checking out books to read for pleasure,
and circulation figures have risen dramatically. The underlying
goal is to see improvement in student scores on the MAP reading and
writing tests.
Goals for the 2009-2010 school year have yet to be established, but
continued improvements in both fiction and nonfiction sections of
the library will be of greatest concern. Access to an increase in
technological tools will also take center stage for the coming
year.
