SOS for New LMS

1. SOS for New LMS Stony Evans, Hot Springs High First Year LMS 14 Year Educator & Rachel Shankles, Lakeside High 20 year LMS 39 Year Educator

2. Rachel’s Do list for New LMS • Take one or two professional journals and read them and tear out pages • Join Professional Organizations like AAIM, AASL, ArkLibAssoc and attend as many conferences as they will let you including HSTI in June • Visit other libraries • Post to the AAIM list when you need help • Find some good wikis and websites to use

3. Stony’s To Do List • Find some Patience – Getting Started seems daunting but remember to set long term goals and be patient – you can not slay the library dragon in one year • Find out who holds the purse strings in your school - Money and Purse-strings go together • Engage the staff - with email announcements, let them have input, provide some inservice, and allow them to evaluate the LMC at end of year • Engage students - Open those doors and show them the New Books & New Look, do programming, have contests and events • Use student workers for help and input

4. More Things to Do • Advertise what you do in the paper • Make a short newsletter of your monthly activities for staff and send it to the ‘powers that be” in the central office • Write grants or raise money to decorate and have contests • The first thing you need is a digital camera – keep photos of all your activities and bulletin boards and displays all year to put into a PhotoStory to use in your evaluation conference • Find out about free programming ideas • Check out Rachel’s wiki just for librarians with all sorts of event, contest, decorating, and framework ideas—and PPts to teach students and faculty HTTP://AAIMLIBRARYWIKI.wikispaces.com

5. Don’t • Overlook how much you will depend on the janitor • Overlook using parents as volunteers • Forget WalMart as a donor – write one or two donation letters per year for like $60 each • Forget to invite the Superintendent to your events • Never do duty outside the library or close it while you go to duty – against the law • Go without lunch b/c you try to keep library open; eat early or late or have a rotating duty person for library • Never stress out over overdues since you really do want the books to circulate – but get the asst. principal to back up your pleas

6. Things Stony has learned: • Mentors are wonderful • Find a few by visiting other local libraries • See if you can form an area library consortium of some kind that will meet and exchange ideas • Bounce your ideas off of someone else and get input from other school librarians on how to manage what you have come up with • Check out our WeDewey Wiki at Http://wedewey.wikispaces.com/

7. Things that worked well: • Music in the library during Black History Month (March is Music in the Schools Month also) • Inviting the Superintendent to read aloud during Black History Month and then she bought new flooring after seeing the condition of the carpet • Offering to teach Internet research techniques to classes (credibility & collaboration) • Newspaper article/ picture submissions

8. The best thing I tried: • Multimedia presentations to the entire school during lunch (new books, top ten books, and book- movie trailers) • Asking for input from students and teachers

9. Rachel’s best advice to you: • Get active in AAIM and meet librarians you can email and call to ask questions • Email me anytime and I will point you in the right direction • Stony’s best advice to you: • Be patient and realize it cannot happen all in one year. Create a 3-5 year plan. Create a “support” network of those you can call on for advice/ AAIM listserv • Email me anytime and I will share what I know with you ( or point you to those that do)

10. Contact Info Rachel Shankles • Lakeside High School, 2871 Malvern Ave., Hot Springs, AR 71901 PH 501-262-1530 Email Rachel_Shankles@LS1.dsc.k12.ar.us or Shankles@cablelynx.com Stony Evans • Hot Springs High School, 701 Emory St., Hot Springs, AR 71913 PH 501-624-5286 Email evanss@hssd.net or evanss@catc.net