Public/School partnerships

[SudiHope]

This year I'm working hard to establish a strong partnership between our school library and the public library. We're handing out applications, training on some of their databases as well as our own, and trying to promote both libraries as information sources.
Has anyone else done this before and what issues (good and bad) have come up with such projects inthe past?

[shannon]

I just met with our public library's Young Adult librarian today! We are working on a library card drive for our freshman and I am thinking about using our English teachers to hand out and receive the applications, I will verify the adresses, and the public library will create the cards. I am excited about working with our public library especially for summer reading lists. They help us by buying the books for the students during the summer. I am also going to show students the additional databases and resources they offer during a general library orientation. I purchased a few databases this year, but may not be able to in the future and partnering with our public library may be the best way to provide all the information our students need to succeed. My concern is that the student may not have a card or may not have it with them at school and won't be able to access the databases. My goal is to provide the resources for my students at the media center and not make any additional obstacles. I wish the public library could issue a generic school library card for me to give to students to use to gain access. That way I could tell them to use that # and they will be able to have a number of different resources to use for research. I don't see how that will hurt the public library. They will still have the statistics they need and can track it down to our school's usage.

[SudiHope]

The generic number is a good idea. I like that one.
It's a little different at teh HS level, but a friend of mine who is a MS librarian said she had the children write their library card numbers in their planners. I was kicking around the idea of adding the public card number in as as extra line in students' records, but that could be a data entry nightmare, so we're just pushing responsibility. (Carry your ID, carry your card.)
Are you trying to get a homework alert going with your local public branch?

[shannon]

I was thinking about finding a way to let the public library know when a research assignment is assigned. I would love get a homework alert going -- what is the best way to do this?

[Lesley Edwards]

I have an Assignment Alert form that I fill in and fax over to the public library. It gives the grade level, topic and due dates as well as the number of classes doing the assignment. If the teacher has given me the assignment as a handout I include that as well. If the teachers email me the assignment it can all be done that way as well. The public librarians are most appreciative to get the advance notice.

[bj neary]

We have had a partnership with our public library for a few years now; we had a Reading Olympics discussion once a month with pizza and soda. We discuss with our public reference librarian databases we have and what new ones they are getting, we have handed out and had on hand any offerings like science databases at the public library (teachers were given cards with free access for a year), career nights at the public library; the librarian from the public library has attended our Back to School Night and talked to interested parents with aPPLICATIONS handy. We give our summer reading lists to the library for distribution to patrons. The only issue with Reading Olympics was there was poor student participation after the lst year and continuing years and last year we didn't have the meetings at the public library. But we keep in touch and feel comfortable calling and visting as they do us.

[Renee Rowcliffe]

We are fortunate because our public library is within a 5-minute walk from the high school, so our English classes walk over sometime in the fall, and the public librarians meet and greet and encourage. I keep in close touch with them regarding research topics, and the YA librarians regularly visit our classrooms with book talks. I've tried not to duplicate the public library's database offerings, but they won't let us teach their databases even though we make every effort to see that each student has a card. They don't have a classroom with enough computers to be able to teach our students there.

[SudiHope]

We've handed out the cards now. I collected 318 applications and four were invalid. That's about half of the kids who claimed to not have cards last year, so I think the numbers are pretty good. One of the English teachers did a great activity where the kids come in and find books, explain how to put books on hold, and why they should have their public library cards at school. It was a good warm-up exercise. My next step is to give an orientation on the public library resources so they can create an assignment that requires use of one school database and one public database. All I want for this is forthe kids tocatch on that there's so much more at the library than a bunch of old dusty books.

[Lesley Edwards]

The Young Adult Services librarians from our local public library come into the library to do book talks either to specific classes or at lunch hour. Last year they spoke to several English classes on specific themes, did a duct tape creations demo during the lunch hour, promoted our provincial Stellar Book Award titles and talked with students about graphic novels.
The only downside was when one of them did a demo of online databases. They spoke well above the kids' heads in terms of vocabulary and the kids were not engaged. If I did it again I would find a way to team teach rather than just handing the class over completely.