Tag Archives: SCASL

SCYABA Voting

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I just turned in my school’s votes for this year’s SC Young Adult Book Award Nominees.  To say I was disappointed is an understatement.  We have 300 students in our school.  I sent one ballot for every student to our English classes = 300 ballots.  The ballot asks students to circle the titles they have read and write the title they want to win on the line at the bottom.   This allows me to track which of the titles are being circulated as well as recording votes for the program.  I received a total of 32 ballots back, with only 10 containing votes I could record.  Sigh.  While the number of votes I can record is usually low, I typically get at least half of the ballots back with some votes on them.   Since the number I received back are so few, I can’t run any statistical analysis of the titles this year.

Now, I have to figure out what went wrong this year.  Two (of four) teachers emailed me back stating that the kids said they didn’t read any of the titles.  Hmm, but the books stayed off the shelves, so SOMEBODY checked them out.

We did all of the usual promotions:

  • Bulletin board outside the library
  • Display of the books at the circulation desk w/ Follet bookmarks
  • Books were taken to classrooms for the book swap activity
  • When kids asked me for a good book, I always talked up the YABA books before taking them to the shelves to find books

Possible reasons why “nobody” read them:

  • limited copies (only 2 per title)
  • our long circulation period (3 weeks) plus ability to renew means one person monopolized a book the whole time = highly possible
  • apathy = kids just didn’t want to participate (in reading them)
  • apathy = kids just didn’t want to participate (in the voting process)
  • not enough and/or enthusiastic enough promotion of the books

Possible solutions for next year (in addition to our normal promotions):

  • Purchase a class set of at least one title to use for book club and English novel assignments (budget permitting) – Two members of the YABA committee are from Aiken and I’ll get their recommendation on which one(s) to purchase
  • Have (ahem – MAKE) English teachers participate in the banner completion
  • Utilize the school’s website to promote (both front page and media center page)
  • Partner with the public library’s Summer Reading program (“Own the Night”) and have something special (sigh, yeah prizes) if students read a certain number of books from the YABA list AND write a review on our library’s blog 2 Read or Not 2 Read or comment on another person’s review with their own review of the book

What else can I do?  Have any suggestions, please comment!

2011-12 SC Young Adult Book Award Nominees

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Presentation1The nominees for next year’s SC Young Adult Book Award have been announced.  Why not get ahead by checking one (or more!) out today.  The titles include:

Angry Management by Chris Crutcher
Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
Brutal by Michael B. Harmon
The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams
Diary of a Witness by Carol Ryan Hyde
Dirty Little Secrets by Cynthia Jaynes Omololu
The Ghosts of War: The True Story of a 19-year Old GI by Ryan Smithson
The Girl in the Arena by Lise Haines
Gray Baby: A Novel by Scott Loring Sanders
Hate List by Jennifer Brown
Hold Still by Nina LaCour
Into the Wild Nerd Yonder by Julie Halpern
King of the Screwups by K.L Going
Leviathan by Scott Westerfield
Muchacho: A Novel by LouAnne Johnson
Once a Witch by Carolyn MacCullough
Purple Heart by Patricia McCormick
Rock n’ Roll Soldier: A Memoir by Dean Ellis Kohler
Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
Unsigned Hype: A Novel by Booker T. Mattison

Voting for the 2010-11 nominees is open through February 28th.  Ask your library media specialist how you can cast your vote!  Remember, you must read at least three nominee titles to be eligible to vote.

SCASL Webinar Series Continues Feb 3rd

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Screen shot 2011-01-29 at 1.27.01 PMMARK YOUR CALENDARS! 

The next SCASL Webinar will be Thursday, February 3rd from 7:00 – 8:00 pm.  

We will continue our discussion of eReaders and eBooks by talking about how they are being implemented in our schools and library programs.

Our guest speakers for the event are: 

- Tamara Cox, librarian at Palmetto Middle School in Anderson District One

- Shirley Smith, consultant with the SC Department of Education involved in the Digital Textbook Pilot

- Donna Teuber, Technology Integration Coordinator for Richland District 2

If you are using eReaders/eBooks in your school/library, please come and share with us, too!  

In a change from our last session, we will be using Elluminate instead of OPAL for this webinar.   Elluminate is a more stable interface and as an added bonus works for both MAC and PC users!  

I will send out the link to the webinar next week.  

In an effort to prepare for the session, you may want to look at the following tutorials/resources:

Elluminate Support for First Time Users: http://www.elluminate.com/Support/?id=62

YouTube Participant Orientation to Elluminate Live! - http://www.youtube.com/user/Elluminated#p/a/u/2/fKQZM4slwzA