From the President's Desk
As another academic year comes to an end I want to take this opportunity to thank all of our customers for their support over the past year.
COMPanion had a great year, with new customers from all over the world managing libraries in corporations, universities, colleges, public and K-12 schools. We’ve released updates for all of our products in the past year, and will update much of our product line yet again this summer.
We are working very hard on some major new projects I’m looking forward to showing all of you in the coming year. Trying to create the best products possible with first class technical support and customer support is difficult, but well worth it when we read the many positive comments you’ve sent to us, told your friends and posted on list servers. Thank you!
Bill Schjelderup, President.
Kaaren's Corner
By Kaaren Linton, Librarian/Alexandria Trainer
Libraries and First Class Education -- A Dream or a Nightmare?
If you were to ask parents and educators if they want a first class education for the children of their area, you would probably hear comments like, “Of course,” “Certainly!” and “Absolutely!” Who doesn’t want the best for their students? Test scores are seen as a measure of a school’s success in providing a first class education.
Studies have shown that students at schools with better-funded library media centers tend to achieve higher average reading scores, but when budget cuts loom on the horizon, it is not the sports programs, but libraries that suffer significant cuts in funding. Now a new threat looms on the horizon for school libraries—First Class Education.
Judy Barnett’s article, “Coming Soon to a State Like Yours!” in the August - September 2007 issue of Library Media Connection discusses First Class Education, a Washington D. C. based organization, that is promoting the idea that 65% of the funding for education be spent in the classroom —and the library is not a classroom! Under the “65 Percent Solution,” libraries would receive funding from the remaining 35% along with administration, plant operations and maintenance, food services, counselors, nurses, transportation, staff development and curriculum.
Just how can this movement affect you? It is the goal of First Class Education to get the 65% legislation and ballot initiatives adopted in every state. In addition, governors can decree by executive order that schools should spend 65% “in the classroom”. This has already happened in Texas. The Texas State Education Commissioner included libraries as classrooms, but the Texas State Board of Education chose to follow the guidelines proposed by the National Center for Educational Statistics, which do not include libraries.
What can you do? Obviously, educating your legislators and your voting public about the importance of libraries is primary. Backing up what you are saying with statistical data of your own is an excellent idea.
How can Alexandria help?
• Alexandria provides many statistical reports that will be very useful to you. Alexandria keeps statistics based on Patron and Item policies. One librarian in Connecticut has established patron policies that combine grade and gender (i.e. 6th grade girls, 6th grade boys, 5th grade girls, 5th grade boys, etc.) and then does a comparison of the reading scores for the various groups with the circulation statistics for those same groups.
• Show that your library is being used. Run weekly, monthly and yearly reports showing the number of items circulated. Does your principal know how busy you are? Can you show an increase in usage from year to year?
• Are you using the Statistics mode to record in-house usage of your items? Statistics mode enables you to easily add usage statistics to items used in your library by merely scanning the barcodes. (Type Y and press <enter>, then scan the barcodes of the items used in the library. Type a period (.) and press <enter> to exit the Statistics mode.)
• Account for how you spend your time. Can you give statistics on how much time you spend teaching library skills, collaborating with teachers, doing reader advisory, ordering materials, reading professional literature, etc.? Alexandria can help with that. See our tip of the week, Emphasizing Accountability with Alexandria.
• Support teachers and their curriculum by cataloging websites which support their curriculum units, and tie those websites to their curriculum using the Curriculum Code feature. Incorporate bibliographies and reading lists into Alexandria using the Bibliographic Code feature and do it easily using the Assign Key Words command (see Command Help—Assign Key Words).
• If you are using Lexiles to measure the students’ reading abilities, consider the Lexile module for Alexandria, which will allow you to not only see the current Lexile level for the student, but will keep a history of the Lexile levels for the student for the entire K-12 period.
• Teach your students library skills. For starters, you can teach them how to effectively search your library’s holdings. We have provided free lesson plans for teaching Alexandria Researcher (go here and click on Researcher Lessons to download the pdf file).
• Think, Pair, Share—Use Alex-Net to share ideas on how to use Alexandria to increase the value of your library in your school and/or to show that your library is a necessary and vital part of your school. If you are not a member, join today. Go here to join.
So be prepared. Use the tools that Alexandria provides to gather data to support the need for well-funded, well-staffed libraries in schools. Be heard before it becomes an issue. Be aware of what your legislatures (and school boards) are thinking and doing.
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Collection Cleanup Challenge — May
We have been cleaning up your Publishers using the Authority Control feature of Alexandria. This month, we continue to clean up publishers working with those from M through Q. Do what you can and remember that Authority Control cleanup is a never-ending process. We are going to be working on publishers for a couple more months, but if you can’t resist working ahead, go for it!
Challenge Steps:
• Go to Show on the menu bar and select Authority Control.
• Change the drop-down menu in the upper-left corner of the window to Publisher.
• Look at the publishers that are listed. Do you see variations of the same publisher (e.g. A.A. Knopf, A. A. Knopf, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., Alfred Knopf)?
• If so, decide on the one that you want to use, and then, double click on one that you wish to change, and a window will open.
• Change it to what it should be, then click on OK.
• Repeat this for every incorrect Publisher. Remember, deleting the entry here only deletes it from the index and not from the records. You change the record when you click on Save.
• Click on Save in the upper-right corner of the Authority Control window. Alexandria will go through your item records and replace the incorrect publishers with the corrected ones.
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