On Thursday of last week, our School Library Council and Communication Coordinators met for our quarterly liaison meeting. Here are the highlights:

Library Automation/Follett: Sally updated Five Systems in August and will update again over February break. The export uses server resources, so she can’t do this while school is in session. She has also imported the student pictures for all schools except Webster and East Rochester.

Arts in Ed: If you have decided on an author, illustrator or storyteller for this school year, please submit your Celebrities in the Schools form to Wendy Petry as soon as possible.

Authors are often sending contracts to schools for visits. Please read any contract carefully and sign it if you feel your school can follow the requests lined out. Their contract usually contains a list of requirements for their visit, covering class size limits, availability of books, and any needs for the day of the event.

BOCES generally does not sign author contracts because we send out a contract from our office with the arrangements for initial payment, hotel stay and reimbursement of expenses. Outside of these arrangements, the school will provide what is requested during an author visit.  The author’s representative can provide specifics on what is needed.  You can always touch base with our office if you have questions or want to discuss what is requested.

Electronic Databases: Barb is in the process of obtaining statistics for many of our purchased databases and will hopefully send them out by the end of the month. Stats will cover July through November.

Upcoming PD: Liesl presented a list of upcoming workshops. She also reported on our “We Buy It, You Try It” kits and how to request them. See the attached documents for the listings and instructions.

Multimedia: Safari has changed its reporting process on the backend. This is why Sally has been unable to pull reports this year. We met Friday morning to learn their new process and you should receive statistics again soon. The beginning of this year will be grouped together, but after that it will be pulled monthly.

Directors Report: Katie reported that MyOn is leaving SCORE, so this will no longer be available through Library Database Purchasing. She also reported on the SLS Mini-Grants that were awarded and the purchasing caveats for Overdrive ebooks and audiobooks. She clarified for us that the MacMillan lending model that has been so widely publicized does not currently affect school library purchases. It only affects public library purchases. Also, SORA is the preferred ebook reader for our Overdrive collection. The only ebooks we currently can’t access through SORA are the old ebooks we purchased as .pdf files. If you want training on SORA or to discuss an Advantage collection, Katie can come out to talk with you.

Reports from around the table:

• Pittsford Elementary librarians have been taking a deep dive into the standards and selecting focus standards
• Irondequoit Public Library has a new Director. He was at Gates prior.
• Howard Enis says thank you to the five systems team because he has been borrowing a ton of books through ILL for 9th grade. FRES had Nikki Grimes for an author visit, and a book fair. Twelve Corners will be redesigning this summer.
• East Rochester had a book fair as well. They also had a wonderful free author visit by local author Kathy Foster.
• Rush Henrietta is updating the districts ICT scope and sequence (which is the integration of tech skills). They are working on identifying places they can build in research through common learning experiences.
• Ana Canino-Fluitt was recently elected to NYLA council and got to attend her first council meeting. Next month is advocacy season. It’s great to have someone who can provide this level of insight into NYLA at our table.
• East Irondequoit HS has had ongoing dialogue with Irondequoit Public Library Y/A librarian. Has been a great experience.

Don’t forget to do your HOUR OF CODE this week!