Librarian Talk – Jill Adler – St. Anthony's High School
Welcome to Librarian Talk, the place where Librarians get to discuss about their roles, their unique situations and how Accessit Library has helped them. This week we speak with Jill Adler – Library Director at St. Anthony’s High School about her library and the types of challenges that she faces being a high school librarian.
This is my 5th year directing the library. It’s a second career for me. I work with 2 fantastic ladies who help support my mission to make our library the best resource it can be. I have a daughter graduating college this year. Thankfully, she already has a fantastic job lined up in NYC, so she will be close to home, YAY! I love riding my peloton, riding outdoors when it is nice, being outside and reading of course! My husband would probably say my favorite hobby is making lists. I make lists for everything. I just finished 2 personal development courses through ISTE- U. One focused on digital citizenship and the other focused on open educational resources (OER). I learned so much. The courses were supposed to take 15 hours each however, I think I spent about 30 hours on each because there was so much to learn. I think my staff and I have been doing AMAZING support for our school community and thanks to Accessit Library we are able to offer so much out to our students and teachers.
Superhero of choice
Captain Marvel
Tell us about your library! What makes it unique?
We are only as unique as the people who come in and use the space – and let me tell you we have a few “unique” people! We are a private, catholic high school and students can join us any free periods that they have. No pass needed – we pack the house most days, most periods.
What is a challenge that you faced in your library recently?
It’s an ongoing challenge getting people to go to our library page that we work so hard on and houses all our resources!
How did Accessit Library help you solve this challenge?
Although we have not solved it completely, we are EXTREMELY proud of what we have been able to create. The look of the dashboards are so much more engaging then what we could do before. We feel much more confident in pushing people to visit us.
How has your attitude changed towards the challenge you solved with Accessit Library, now that you’ve worked through it?
We feel very confident that we are putting out a great product. We love that the system is integrated allowing us to make dashboards for whatever we need. Before we were just using a static LMS platform and a separate website. We had to send updates to our webmaster. We had limited space and we could not do much with it. Now we have a very interactive and lively place to showcase.
What do you like the most about Accessit Library?
How easy it is to use. Most of the library day to day functions took us forever to accomplish – when we figure something new out we are like – wait, is that it? It was so easy! We also love the flexibility of it allowing us to use it as central hub for all our Library resources.
What tips could you give to librarians to help improve their remote learning experience?
Don’t be afraid to ask if the system is not doing what you want it to. Customer Service Team is awesome at taking suggestions and offering solutions. You can teach yourself almost every aspect of the program by using their tutorial videos.
Here are stories from other American librarians making the most of their library management system that may be of interest to you:
Toni Vahlsing — Abington Friends School
