This was an exhausting, emotionally draining week for me. The retiring middle school librarian had a substitute this week in the library, but she did spend a bit of time early in the week cleaning out and packing up. My replacement at the elementary library started on Monday. I spent the week in limbo — mornings at the middle school and afternoons at the elementary school. I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to do this. It allowed me the chance to tie up my loose ends at the elementary school and get myself situated at the middle school.

Being the techno-geek that I am, I made some changes to scheduling and morning routines at the middle school by infusing technology. I went crazy with the Google forms and I’m loving it! Mornings at the CMS library are very busy. Thankfully, there are several awesome teachers who have library duty to help out. Not only do students flock in to study, use the computers or printer/copier, return/check-out books, etc. but the library also takes care of selling temporary and replacement ID cards. These forms are now being used for students to sign in:

The ID Business form has been especially successful since the ID station is in the computer lab and the spreadsheet can be pulled up at that station so the names pop up as they are entered.

I went round and round trying to decide how I wanted to do scheduling. I needed to keep up with scheduling for the main area of the library, library lab, and 4 mobile labs available for check-out. Nan from Rhinelander High School shared her format for digital scheduling, and I loved it! You can check out here site here. So I took her idea and ran with it:

You can go here to see my live form with the Google calendars below. I think once the teachers get used to filling out the form, they’ll really like the ability to schedule whenever they want from where ever they are. I’m going to be looking to drum up some business and do some collaborative projects. Exciting times ahead!

As tough as this week was, I really felt the love at both schools. CMS is very happy to have me back and they have made me feel so welcome. TES let me know how much I’ll be missed, which really made me feel good and made it hard to leave at the same time.

So here’s to the next phase of my library career! I can’t wait to see what it holds.