Alaska Bush Library Service

This is our week for Battle of the Books competition at the district level.

Questions are ready.  Times are set.  Teams are scheduled to appear.

Now is the time to evaluate how many students does Battle of the Books affect.

1. How do I get more students interested in participating?
2. With the move to ebooks, should I provide Kindles to some schools to improve their participation?
3. What should be included in the contract with schools to ensure that the Kindles are used, taken care of, and returned at the end of the year?
4. On a price level, do I push for a book that I think would be terrific, even though it is only available in hardback?

Time to take a break and go to inventorying the library books.

Anansi and the Moss covered Rock is a book the Alaska Battle of the Books program. He was kind enough to send me two pictures. (I wasn’t clear the first time that I wanted him to be holding the book.) It was interesting as he seemed a little surprised and pleased to have his book picked to be a battle book. Look back soon as I also have picture of Gary Paulsen that should be a READ poster by the end of the day.

The last two weeks I have spent in classes. Today is the first real day back to work. I find it interesting that this is the case, because this week, I have been in my office, cleaned my desk, passed out coupons for free books, and met with new teachers to encourage them to use the media center. How many of us find that we have put in lots of time before the first day comes around?

Today is set aside for packing RIF books in boxes. We offer book giveaways three times a year. The first is at the beginning of the year. My first year was last year and my predessor had packed the boxes for the start of the year(Thank you Lois) This year, I remember how tired I was at the end of the year and that I didn’t pack the boxes. Hopefully, I will get them done today. One of the timings you have to think of out here is when will the plane fly out to the villages. I know the plane is flying out on Monday to bring teachers back to the district office for inservice. It will fly out empty, but when it flies back to the village at the end of the week, the plane will be full leaving here.

Good luck to all who start back next week.