Week #2

(30.09.-04.10.2024)

Mäntytie (ES)

Mondays usually start with checking what the kids put back wrong on Thursday and Friday. With creative variations: upside down, put on top of other books, spine to the back, hidden behind the books,... possibilities are endless. Only bad if they put it back without us checking it in first. Happens sometimes. Especially if they came to loan a book and you ask for the other that has been overdue for 3 weeks now and then they try to sneak it past you into the shelf after they got it from their classroom. Some with astounding accuracy actually. This Monday we also had the assembly to announce the "Virtue of October". It's part of the education program they have, I forgot the name of it... Maybe I will add it later. So after that we updated our "Virtue of the Month" shelf with books about curiosity.

Reshelving, check out, check in, reshelving check out check in, reshelvingcheckoutcheckin, RESHELVINGCHECKOUTCHECKIN! So many kids, so many books! Never fast enough to actually get stuff done in between class visits. - Tuesdays in a nutshell 😅

Wednesdays are a little less stressful and we actually get some stuff done. I hung up book recommendations from students for students onto the recommendation walls in the hallways, we switched out the book presentation project bags with new ones, I sorted out some books, deleted them from the system and stamped them "poistettu" (removed), covered some books and thought about a new design of the white board on the inside of the library door.

Valimotie (MS-HS)

Days in middle school / highs school are very relaxed compared to elementary school. No class visits and students suddenly think about other things than to mess up the order of the library shelves. We do have a lot more textbook work on the desk though. In Mäntytie the teachers manage them on their own. Reshelving is always done everywhere at any time but the check outs of books for free time can be counted on one hand a day usually. We started off Thursday by storing textbooks and covering some other textbooks. Then we searched for book recommendations for "thrilling books" and printed the covers to hang them up in the hallway in front of the library for October. The ones we had in the library got a sticker. I was responsible for the English books. Sherlock Holmes, Japanese ghost stories (Kwaidan), Frankenstein, Ajin, The walking dead, Dracula, Hollow, How to survive your murder, Demon road, Lord of the flies, etc. To end the day I registered some textbook loans from a teacher's list into the system.

Friday I selected books for a theme table for the "phone-free week" next week. Students will not be allowed to use their phones and we hope they might come to the library more (hope dies last as they say). This time I also had to search the Finnish books with some help of course. I chose topics like sleep, effects of social media, survival stories: Why we sleep, some fiction about social media disasters, Pää tyynyyn (Put your head on your pillow [Finnish version of "go to bed"]), 10 syytä tuhota kaikki sometilit nyt (10 reasons to delete all your social media accounts now), Selviytymispeli (survival game)... And I had to design a note for the table on my Mac. I did my best. It came out not too bad. While I was working on that my mentor did the new VotM curiosity shelf. After that we visited another school library: Munkkiniemen Yhteiskoulu (school for all genders). The librarian told me about the renovation of the library that was finished not long before and we had a nice professional exchange. I was a bit envious of all the space that my mentor doesn't have and I hope they will get a lot more room for the library in the plans for the new school building of EngS. (Probably still needs a few years.)