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.

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.

Superhero of choice

Levar Burton. But I guess that’s probably not the type of superhero you’re asking about. 🙂 So, Shuri from Black Panther.

Tell us about your library! What makes it unique?

As cheesy as it may sound, the patrons make the library unique because the library is built around them, or at least that’s what I’ve tried to do. I’ve made many changes to each campus library this past year to better serve the population. The elementary campus serves PK-3, the intermediate 4-5, the junior high 6-8, and the high school 9-12. The elementary campus holds mainly picture books with a smaller section of chapter books. This library also has the most consistent schedule besides the junior high. Students come each week to return and checkout books and have a lesson once a month. The intermediate has no schedule, but students come through the doors all day long. The junior high students come twice a month for a lesson, but I only teach there once a month so that I can be at all libraries throughout the district. The high school library has the lowest rate of checkouts, but I’m hoping to change that with Accessit Library and a bit of a facelift.

What is a challenge that you faced in your library recently?

As with many responses, choosing one is difficult, but one that affects all campuses is getting patrons to use the catalog. Our previous catalog was quite dull and looked almost like an early DOS system. Students felt that it was clunky and didn’t want to use it. Some didn’t even know we had a catalog they could use.

How did Accessit Library help you solve this challenge?

Accessit’s Web App makes searching the catalog MUCH easier. There are book cover images, thorough summaries, reviews, etc. without a huge extra fee just to display images. Though the challenge isn’t completely solved, I know that it will vastly improve once students are back in school and can checkout physical books again.

How has your attitude changed towards the challenge you solved with Accessit Library, now that you’ve worked through it?

It no longer seems like a challenge. Every challenge looks a bit different once you find the right tool to fix it. I’m empowered to showcase Accessit Library’s capabilities with students and staff so they can see the vast amount of resources available to them.

What do you like the most about Accessit Library?

The people! Every single person I’ve worked with from my first email from Bonnie to my current training with Linda has been an absolute pleasure. David and Dominic never once made me feel belittled by my lack of knowledge from their technical side and graciously walked me through steps.

And the Management App. That is a game changer! I love that each section is identified, and users can easily find what they need without switching between multiple tabs. It’s so easy to catalog and change/update resources.

What tips could you give to librarians to help improve their remote learning experience?

Most importantly, be kind to yourself. Most people in the profession are probably not as familiar with remote learning. That’s okay. Complete the remote training in small chunks. Find someone who can help you and use TeamViewer. I absolutely love that software, and it’s been an asset while being trained and training others. Also, the Accessit Library Customer Portal is your friend. The videos and articles are incredibly helpful.

If you were a superhero, who would you be?

Elasta-girl (but I would use the term Elasta-woman). She can adapt to help in any situation.

Tell us about your library! What makes it unique?

My library serves grades 5-12 and it is gorgeous. It has a lot of windows, so it is always easy to tell what the weather is outside. The metal roof lets us know how hard it is raining, too. We have a lot of books, over 25,000, with a smallish student population. I feel really lucky to be able to work in such a resource rich, beautiful space. (I miss it terribly during quarantine.)

The library also has its own personality and plays tricks on me. Sometimes it can be helpful. One time, a small book fell from a high shelf and hit me on the chest. It was a book I didn’t know we had but fit with our theme for our school year. Another time the book “Fallen” was sitting on the floor open. There are many more stories about how the spirit of the library has helped me or made me laugh.

What is a challenge that you faced in your library recently?

The governor of our state has closed our school for the remainder of the school year. We face two challenges. How to get our current loans back, and how to get books to students who might want new reading material.

We are considering a curb-side drop off and pick up of requested materials.

How did Accessit Library help you solve this challenge?

Accessit Library will help us manage our holds. Single sign on (SSO) is so easy for our students that they will be able to sign on and request materials by just dragging the photo.

How has your attitude changed towards the challenge you solved with Accessit Library, now that you’ve worked through it?

I feel more confident that this will work. In our old system, students had to log on with a student ID, which they did not know, and a PIN. If the crises, and our administration are open to our curb-side pick-up, Accessit Library will make this so much easier.

What do you like the most about Accessit Library?

I think truncated searching. The students and I can search for resources with only parts of the words we are looking for is so helpful, especially for items that we are not sure of the spelling for. Also, the fact that I can search for students’ names with just part of their name has really saved me time and embarrassment.

What tips could you give to librarians to help improve their remote learning experience?

Try to be as visible as possible to your students. Now that we’ve gathered lots of e-resources for teachers and students, we are offering social events in our “virtual library” to help us connect with each other. The first three we are trying are trivia games, read-a-louds of picture books to high school students, and a place for students to recommend books to each other. We also issued a book challenge. Students are sending in photos of themselves reading aloud to their pets, reading upside down, among many other choices.