SO MANY BOOKS…BUT WHERE ARE THEY?!

Marsha Baucom, White Sulphur Elementary School – Hall County

Overview:  With resources from Reading First and classroom libraries abounding at our school, we needed help housing and locating materials!.  Utilizing ideas from Dawn Putney and Phyllis Snipes session, “LibraryThing, You Make My Computer Sing;…”, our teachers are now able to locate and share their classroom libraries and leveled readers with each other and stretch our resources to the max!

I was curious and intrigued when I saw the concurrent session called “Library Thing, You Make My Computer Sing: You Make Everything, del.icio.us!” .  My curiosity got the best me as I listened to and observed LibraryThing, an online cataloging program (http://www.librarything.com), being demonstrated. I realized that, perhaps, this was just the tool our school needed.  We have acquired so many resources from the Reading First program and our teacher’s have so many books in their classroom libraries.  LibraryThing might be the solution to utilize these resources fully.

Reading First (a program that focuses on putting proven methods of early reading instruction in classrooms) bought the addition of over $1,000,000 worth of books and resources to our school.  Most schools dedicate a room for storage of these materials.  Unfortunately, at our school, space is limited.  We tried storing the materials in the Media Center’s AV room.  We found that the teachers did not use the resources as much as desired.  By using “LibraryThing”, we were able to catalog the Reading First resources and put them in classrooms by using Lexile and Reading First connotations tags, i.e. “RF AD600L”.  Teachers could search by Lexile levels or titles and easily locate materials in other classrooms.

Our teachers also have large classroom libraries.  “LibraryThing” enabled the teachers to catalog these libraries with several benefits.  One benefit is evident when teachers want to promote a class study of a particular book and there are not enough copies.  By using LibraryThing, teachers may search by title and find out what classes may have additional copies of a book.  Our teachers may also tag books by Accelerated Reader levels enabling students to find appropriate titles for their reading level. 

          Teachers have discussed another student use for LibraryThing.  Students (and teachers) can review books on the site.  Teachers can also create a “Talk” group allowing student discussion about books.  The “Talk” groups can be set up either within a class, classes within a school, or on a global level.  Although we have yet to incorporate the “Talk” groups, teachers are very interested in the possibilities.

          LibraryThing has enabled our teachers to locate books easily within their classroom and the school.  It has expanded our resources for maximum use by both teachers and students.  Thanks to Dawn Putney and Phyllis Snipes we can now say, “LibraryThing you make our school sing!!”

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