Reflection: This is a good point to take a few minutes to think about your views on the importance of making learning resources available to students and teachers as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, many school libraries have boxes of uncatalogued material waiting for decisions regarding cataloguing and processing, or the funding to pay for this. Should we be finding temporary ways to make these available? Or, is it more important that they are catalogued and processed properly? What strategies can you think of that would allow uncatalogued, newly acquired learning resources to circulate temporarily? Or, would this result in more problems than it is worth? What is the situation at your school?
As I work at an independent school, it is my job to catalog all learning resources, both old and new. Whenever I get new resources, I catalog them right away so that they start circulating. After our Scholastic book fair, I was able to purchase $1800 worth of new resources. I cataloged them right away, and made an event out of it: 2012: New Year, New Books. I made displays with all the new books, and they were very popular. The kids seem to love it whenever there are new books. When new magazines come in, I do a very brief catalog entry, and make them available the same day. I make sure I tell the classes that come in that there are new magazines. Unfortunately, the magazines don't really seem to be that popular in general. I'm not sure why. Personally, I find magazines these days really "busy" and sometimes it seems to be hard to find the actual content.
For the special Titanic Centenary, I have purchased quite a few new books, and have them in a special display. I cataloged them as I received them, and make sure to point out new books in the display.
I guess I'm lucky that I have the time to process so quickly and get the books circulating.
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