Featured Resources

What a gloriously uplifting term! What it really means?

Weeding.

Whether you’ve just inherited an old collection, you haven’t had the time to look at your catalog, your administrator or school culture doesn’t like to get rid of books, or you have difficulty making those difficult decisions yourself, you most likely have a collection that needs to be weeded. It’s a struggle that School Librarians face continuously.

As we purchase new materials, we need to consistently weed out old materials. Therefore, we’ll be writing a couple of posts in the next few days that provide information vital to keeping your collection up to date, easy to navigate, and useful for your students.

Today we’re going to start with WHY?

Weeding your school’s library collection is vital for a variety of reasons:

1. Weeding helps to keep the information in your collection up to date and relevant.
2. Students will be better able to find the books they want or need.
3. If you don’t weed, you will eventually run out of space.
4. A clean, weeded library shows that the librarian cares about the collection and the patrons who access it.

Yes, we know you already know all of this. But sometimes it’s difficult to put into action, and sometimes it’s even more difficult to convey it to others. So here are some articles you can share when you need to convince someone else.

Weeding to Let My Collection Grow by Christine James (Knowledge Quest, 2017)

Weeding without Worry (American Libraries, 2016)

Keeping Your Library Collection Smelling F.R.E.S.H! (The Adventures of Library Girl, Oct 2013)

From Managing and Analyzing Your Collection: A Practical Guide for Small Libraries and School Media Centers by Carol A. Doll and Pamela Petrick Barron (ala.org, 2002)

Most importantly: Before you dive into a full-blown weeding session, make sure you know your school policy on removing library resources from the collection. We hope these resources are helpful to you.

The Women’s Movement was a diverse social moment in U.S. history. It sought equal opportunities for women in all aspects of their lives — personal, political, economic, etc.

PBS has put together a collection to quickly find resources for teaching the history of women’s rights.

Explore Resource Collection

There are a number of digital archives around the world that are free and open to the public and therefore, available to students. This past November, the British Library digitized 800 medieval manuscripts. These are accessible at the British Library.

The Library of Congress has thousands of items that have been digitized and made available online to the public. It houses anything from Presidential letters to to Civil War Maps to notated sheet music, famous and not so famous photographs, newspapers, and legislation.

The World Digital Library is a project of the U.S. Library of Congress, carried out with support of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), and in cooperation with libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations from around the world.

The WDL makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from all countries and cultures including, Chinese rare books, Mozart’s original manuscript score of the Magic Flute, works by Galileo Galilei, primary documents from US history, and more!

The Library and Archives of Canada has archives and digital collections which include governmental records, immigration records, photographs and a collection on indigenous heritage.

The National Library of Australia has a few digital collections accessible from its home page. This includes Trove, a group of collections from hundreds of Australian cultural organizations.

The National Archives of Australia also has a number of digital collections available to view.

Trinity College in Dublin has also made the Book of Kells (a 9th-century gospel manuscript famous throughout the world) accessible in a digital format.

Treehouse is an online learning platform focusing on developing technical skills with more than 200 courses on topics such as web design, game development, digital literacy, and more. As we are members of the Rochester Regional Library Council, we may request access to one of their 10 licenses for a two-week period at no charge. This includes school librarians in our Monroe One region districts. Accounts are available for individual persons and will be activated on a first-come first-served basis.

Click here to request your FREE two-week license.

At the end of your access time, your account privileges will be deactivated, although your account will remain open so that you may request access again by filling out the form below, as you need more training. Certificates of completion are available by request; after a course has been completed, contact cbroomfield@rrlc.org to request a certificate. Once your request has been processed and verified, RRLC will email your certificate.

The New York State Library has confirmed that the current collection of NOVELNY statewide e-resources  will continue through the coming year, and will be extended for an additional year through June 30, 2021.

Barring unforeseen circumstances and pending availability of funds, the following databases will be available July 1, 2019 through June 30, 2021:

Business:

*Business Insights Essentials (Gale, a Cengage company)

Education:

*Educators Reference Complete (Gale, a Cengage company)

General Periodicals:

*Academic OneFile with InfoTrac Collections (Gale, a Cengage company)

*Expanded Academic ASAP with InfoTrac Collections (Gale, a Cengage company)

*General OneFile with InfoTrac Collections (Gale, a Cengage company)

*General Reference Center Gold with InfoTrac Collections (Gale, a Cengage company)

*Informe Académico (Gale, a Cengage Company)

Elementary Level General Periodicals:

*Kids InfoBits (Gale, a Cengage company)

Secondary Level General Periodicals:

*Research in Context (Gale, a Cengage company)

Encyclopedia

*Encyclopedia Britannica (Britannica Digital Learning, a division of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.):  Includes Britannica School, Britannica Academic and Britannica Escolar.

Health

*Health Reference Center Academic (Gale, a Cengage company)

Issues

*Opposing Viewpoints in Context (Gale, a Cengage company)

Newspapers

*InfoTrac Newsstand including New York State Newspapers (Gale, a Cengage company)

Technology

*Computer Database (Gale, a Cengage company)

Trying to find ways to fit STEAM activities into your library? Check out this article at the Teachers are Terrific website, “5 Powerful Ways to Join Reading and Science“.

This site is written by a teacher, and not only has some great ideas on joining Science and Reading, but includes book reviews, helpful tips, and lots of other STEM/STEAM lesson ideas.