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Our library is a real "Information Center" at Kenmore Junior High School. It contains about 16,000 items, of which most are books. The library also owns a wide selection of videos, filmstrips, study prints, atlases, over fifty magazines, and a few newspapers. Of course, it is also home to several computer workstations, some dedicated to research, others open to students for school-related Internet access or individual projects. Our library opens for student use at about 7:40 each morning. Students generally find the library open during all three lunches, and even after school, until about 3:30 PM almost every day, year 'round. Increasingly, technology and information go hand in hand. To find magazine articles on any topic, the library uses a computer CD-ROM database. Students can locate articles from magazines we subscribe to, and they can have articles from magazines at other secondary libraries in the Northshore School District faxed to our school for their use. Other CD-ROM resources available include The Seattle Times, SIRS (a full-text science and social studies database), and the Grolier Electronic Encyclopedia. Six iMac computers are reserved for students to use for word processing jobs, and one other computer workstation serves as a dedicated desktop publishing center for students. Every fall, our seventh graders attend a two-day library orientation with their language arts classes. Library projects are integrated into their classes. For example, there is a library project that goes along with most social studies units. Students may check out materials from the library on any school day. Generally, students may check out most library materials for up to three weeks. However, since the due date will always be a Wednesday, a book checked out on a Thursday or Friday will be due back at the library on the third Wednesday following the date of checkout. Students may check out a reference book for only one overnight -- that is, it must be returned before8:00 a.m. the next morning. Finally, the librarian sometimes places certain materials "on reserve" for a particular class project. Students may check out reserved materials for a period of just two school days. |
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