Our district just completed the first quarter of this school year, mostly remotely. Because of rising infection levels of COVID-19, the second quarter will be completely remote. Here’s how this is playing out for our middle school library.

Our mission is to help students and teachers to be successful in the quest for information and good stories. Although it’s easier and more effective with a physical space too, there is much we can do virtually. In fact, I’m able to work almost completely remotely, while still maintaining the library program.

I want to be clear about one thing: Our library is not closed. Only the physical space is closed. Our virtual library is very much open for business!

We have actually had a virtual library since 2006, starting with our online library catalog and website. Of course, this has expanded exponentially recently, especially since March 13, 2020.

I stay connected with quite a few professional learning communities, on social media and in virtual worlds: librarians, middle school teachers, colleagues in virtual worlds, and more. I get ideas from everywhere, so what I’m doing is by no means unique. Here are a few of the things I’ve tried so far:

Weekly Newsletter

I’m very lucky to have such a supportive administrator on my side. Before the school year even started, my principal asked me to have a short article ready every week for our parent newsletter. He said (and I completely agree) that the library program needs to remain visible so it is still seen as necessary. The newsletter goes out by email and phone texts every Friday. Sometimes I make videos or custom graphics to include.

eBooks

I’m also very lucky to have an actual budget to buy books and materials during the school year. Almost all of my purchases so far this year have been eBooks. I started out with an order for almost $1000 worth of eBooks to support diversity and anti-racism. I continue to buy books that students and teachers request, and I spent another $1000 to buy eBook versions of some of our most popular print books.

Getting students to actually read eBooks has been a struggle over the last few years, but now we’re finally gaining some ground. Right now there are 9 students with eBooks checked out. There were 189 eBooks used so far this quarter, and 46 just this month. There were 71 eBooks used during all of last school year, and that was an increase over previous years. I made a video showing how to read eBooks, and worked with all of the 6th grade classes to introduce it. I’d like to work with the 7th and 8th graders too, but haven’t been able to so far.

Bookmobiles

Even with increased eBook usage, we still need to provide access to the thousands of print books in our collection. I’ve worked with the other four librarians in our district to develop a plan to use bookmobiles for remote delivery of print materials. Amid a fluctuating environment of food and supply deliveries, we were able to arrange for two district vans every Monday. During the lunch break, one goes to each side of our small city, and students can pick up and drop off materials while we’re there. The secondary librarians and assistants have worked out a schedule to staff the bookmobiles. Unfortunately, because our elementary librarians are tied to fixed full-time class schedules, they’re not able to participate at this time. Students can put books on hold in the online library catalog, or they can email us to request them. The books are held in the front office for pickup for the remainder of the week.

Online Read-Alouds

Our classroom teachers have daily office hours during their planning times, which vary by grade levels. (We’re on a 4×4 block schedule.) The whole school has a lunch break at the same time every day, so I hold library office hours then. I started out doing a read-aloud of one of my favorite novels, So You Want to Be a Wizard, by Diane Duane. I check out the eBook and share my screen so students can read along if they want to. I’ve branched out into showing book trailers occasionally, along with recorded author interviews and some live online conference literary events. Currently I’m starting to read The Best Christmas Ever, by Barbara Robinson.

Canvas Course

The heart of our virtual library is our course in Canvas, the Learning Management System that our district uses. Our library course has evolved since 2015, when our district adopted Canvas. I just revised the home page again last week to incorporate buttons instead of text. I hope it will make it easier to navigate. In the interests of transparency, I include blocks in my schedule that show what I’ve been working on behind the scenes – cataloging, updating Canvas, weeding, etc. I provide resources that the classroom teachers and students can use; my next step is to make my slideshows into videos, since I finally learned how to do that in August.

Online Book Fairs

Usually we have an on-site book fair with Scholastic Book Fairs in February, combined with an online book fair that runs concurrently. This year we cancelled the on-site fair, and added another online book fair with Junior Library Guild (JLG). Usually we gross over $3,000.00 at our on-site book fair. At the JLG book fair that just finished, we made just over $55.00. I’m expecting to sell a little more at the Scholastic fair, but I’m not expecting a lot. Our community as a whole struggles with being online, and just like the rest of the world, the pandemic is having a significant negative financial impact on many. That said, there was no negative impact to having a virtual book fair. It was easy to set up and manage, and there were no costs involved.

Our main goal with all of our book fairs is to promote literacy and encourage student ownership of their library collection, and I don’t know that we did that, either. In January I’ll be looking for ways to encourage both of those things, including possibly visiting language arts classes to do previews.

Reflections

I feel like there is a lot that our library can offer to our students, teachers, and parents. However, I think our actual impact has been minimal so far. I have been able to build connections with the students with whom I’ve interacted, and that’s priceless. I’m also building on last year’s connections, as with the student who, with her mother, donated books and a gift card to the library in support. I will keep on being here, and doing what I do, and continue exploring how I can maximize the help we can give. I feel very lucky to be able to do what I love, remotely.