Thursday, August 28, 2014

Librarian's Job is Never Done: What happens after the Summer Reading Program

Last year, I did a post for the YALSA blog on this subject. This year, Abby the Librarian inspired me to take another look at the time after the summer reading program and in gearing back up for the school year. While in some ways, it's relaxing because the several programs a week is over, I'm not sitting around waiting for something to happen. It's busy.

In August:

After the finale, there is lots of clean-up involved with the prizes and the program itself

This year's prize closet
1. Prizes: What went over best that I need to purchase more for next year (Headphones), what prizes didn't go (DVDs).
2. I need to find a location to store the leftover prizes
3. Sort the books for other places (I give the high school ARCs to Erin who works with me, but also works as a Math teacher as the local Technical High School. She takes some for her library classroom. And I give the full books that we already have in the collection to another Librarian who works at the Reference desk during some shifts while her main job is the Librarian at the same Technical High School. And others I keep to use next year.) I should add that all the books have been from BEA, conferences, or review books form this blog.
4. Summer Reading Report - I need to gather up the STATs from the current year and compare them.
5. After looking at the STATs, I brainstorm ways to make next year's summer better (Tweak the finale - it was too long this year and there wasn't enough food - is just one of the ideas)
6. Share the STATs with people my bosses and with the schools

Then there are the specific year to year tasks
1. Getting ready to move my collection into a new space (My collection has been split over the summer during the construction time at my library - which has made summer better and worse in some ways)
2. Helping to plan the second NFA Expo coming up in October (more on this later)
3. Working on the NERTCL social media (I'm one of two representatives for Connecticut)
4. Creating YA Book Brochures for important teen social issues for those embarrassed to ask about topics and some topics that are generic so people don't have to be embarrassed looking that rack of brochures. (Right now I have Body Image, Cutting, Bullies, Life After High School, Death, Drugs, Alcohol, Depression, Poverty/ Homelessness, Suicide, Dating Violence, and Faith)

Then there are the day to day tasks
1. Ordering books for fall now that I have a new budget for the year
2. Figuring out fall programs
3. Gearing up for Round Tables (This year, I'm co-chairing two: a YA one and a Marketing one)
4. Helping last minute readers find a book for summer reading
5. Keeping up to date on our social media sites
6. Answering Reference/Computer help questions
7. Helping out in the library as needed at other desks.

Coming up in September:
As the teens and kids head back to school, I have lots of projects on my place.

1. Move into my new room
2. Get my office settled
3. Decorate both my office and the Teen Area
4. Inventory (weeding and collection development too)
5. Finally change my new books to old (I ran out space in my old room on the shelves and kept too many books at new for spacing reasons)
6. Hang up a slotted shelf on the wall for the newly printed Teen Brochures
7. Talk with school librarians on ways to Collaborate this year
8. Make some PSA for the NFA Book Expo
9. Host some programs in the new YA Room
10. Create some videos about the construction project for our Grand Opening in October to show off our renovated spaces.

Phew! 
What are you up to this fall in your library/job?

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