Book Leveling Labels

There has been a lot of talk lately on LM-Net listserv about leveling books, and how to label the books with their level. Many of the libraries that I have been in label these books using dots on the side. I do not like this method. Using Destiny at the high school, I added Lexile level as a search category, but added nothing to the books. This allows the student or the teacher to look for a book with the appropriate level using the online catalog. This means that the student or teacher has time to practice their search skill, and the pretty spines of our books are not covered with stickers. We already have the call number on our spines. I think it is unnecessary to cover the spines any further. I also think that labeling the spines of books will limit what students choose to read. Students will immediately search out a book at a certain level rather than browsing and finding a book they might enjoy. One solution that a fellow listserv member pointed out is that we place level and AR quiz information on the inside cover or first page of the book. I think this is a much better solution than filling the spines with stickers. In my future library, I believe that I will have the levels as searchable fields in the library catalog, and include this information on the inside cover of the book. How do you handle leveling in your library? What do you think about the solution I have chosen?

Textbook Circulation

When I was in school, it was the teacher's job to keep track of textbooks. We would sign out our textbooks at the beginning of the year, filling out a form that included our textbook number, its condition, and our agreement ( or our parent's) to pay for any damages or lost books. At the end of the year, or whenever we finished the class, we had to bring our book to the teacher and fill out the rest of the form stating any damages and the fine cost. If we lost the book or there were damages to it we had to pay. I don't remember what the consequence was for not paying, but I'm sure there was one. At the high school I am currently student teaching at, we were just informed that the media center will be responsible for circulating books next year. We were told in a very rude email that the board decided that textbooks will be returned to the media center where they will be checked out to students next year. I understand that this may better help to keep track of the books, but with no library aides and so much the media specialist has to take care of, this seems like an overload. What are the textbook circulation policies in your school? What do you think about this new policy?

ELM Stories

ELM stands for Electronic Library for Minnesota. It is a collection of databases funded by the state of Minnesota which can be used by public library patrons and in the schools. These databases are particularly important for schools with limited budgets who cannot provide subscriptions to databases. I'm sure we have all used databases for projects in our own education, and we have used them while teaching our students how to perform research. We know students have become accustomed to using Google, Bing, and Yahoo as search engines. We also know that the websites they find can be inappropriate or inaccurate. This is why it is so important to have databases available to students. We must do everything we can to help them succeed. This means providing accurate and reliable resources such as databases.
So we know that databases are important, and that ELM provides them for free. I want to make sure that you also know the current status of these databases. They may become unfunded, and no longer be available to use in our schools! In order to ensure that they remain available we simply need to advocate to our state representatives and to our governor. But an even simpler help is to go to elm4you.org and click on the link to share your ELM stories. I have also provided a link to the ELM Stories form on the left side of my blog. ELM stories simply tell the people who fund ELM the various ways that you have used ELM. Share the best stories you can remember!
Have you shared an ELM story? What was it?