I’ll take testimonials for our books where I can get them. A couple weeks ago, Sara Kelly Johns, American Association of School Librarians president-elect and a library media specialist in Lake Placid, New York, walked by my office and stopped for a moment to chat. I keep our most recent titles faced on my bookshelf, and she noticed New on the Job, by Ruth Toor and Hilda K. Weisburg. Sara told me she has shared the books from her professional collection with a soon-to-be-certified colleague who is educating herself with library literature. This reader praised New on the Job for its practical overview of the field. Her regret was that the book wasn’t around soon enough to be the first that she read.

I asked Sara to talk it up, and she must have. We recently received a state-wide order for 150 copies. Wow! Talk about results.

New on the Job is the latest iteration in ALA’s tradition of offering a basic manual for school librarians. I can trace it to the 1975 publication Steps to Service, by Mildred Nickel, who revised the book in 1984. The two editions sold 25,000 copies. It was succeeded by Policymaking for School Library Media Specialists (1989), which took a more philosophical approach, but was decidedly less popular. Early on in my time at ALA, Don Adcock, then deputy director at AASL, urged me to publish a successor. Then, maybe still, the most common information request to AASL was for advice on basic procedures of how to run a school library media center. He recommended Ann Wasman as an author, and we published her New Steps to Service in 1998. Also successful, the book is often used as a complement to Information Power in introductory courses on school librarianship. Wasman is retired from the field, and when it came time for the next book, I needed to look elsewhere.

Consulting editor Susan Veccia recruited long-time writers Toor and Weisburg to the task. For more than 25 years, they had been publishing practical advice for the field in their newsletter School Librarian’s Workshop, and they delivered as we knew they would.

It’s job-hunting season for school library media specialists. If you’ll be new on the job this fall, take a look.

I have space allocation on the brain these days. My husband and I are in the process of modifying the layout of the condo we are purchasing. Square footage is a premium in highrise apartment living, and modifying the space to suit the needs of our lifestyle (heavy kitchen use, multiple computers and other tech, a boisterous two-year-old, overnight guests, etc.) has been a complex process of analysis and design.

Libraries everywhere are in similar situations. Chances are your library has added or modified services in recent memory in order to meet the changing needs of those served. How were those services handled in terms of physical space and furnishings? Was the space altered to suit the new service, or was the service modified or limited because of spatial constraints?

If your library has a habit of implementing workaround solutions when it comes to facilities management, I encourage you to take advantage of the advice that Cheryl Bryan delivers in our newest PLA Results Series book, Managing Facilities for Results: Optimizing Space for Services. Starting with the fiscally sound premise that library space is a valuable asset, not to be neglected or misused, Bryan walks through the processes of

• project definition and planning,
• committee organization and data collection,
• resource requirement determination and allocation,
• gap analysis and recommendations, and (perhaps most critically)
• recommendation presentations and reports.

The 23 workforms will give you and your committees a running start in assessing needs and implementing changes to best support your library’s services, and can be included in your recommendation presentation as evidence of preparedness for the project ahead. And my personal favorite feature, the Toolkit for Calculating Square Footage, offers a host of quick reference information, such as

• a comprehensive list of square footage requirements for public-use furniture and equipment
• typical square footage needs for staff office and cubicle layouts, and
• guidelines for calculating shelving space allocation.

I’ll let you know how my space planning turns out. If you have success stories that you want to share, I’d love to link to some before and after Flickr pics as inspiration for others.

It’s the end of the semester for me, the last semester after five years of studying part-time for my library degree from UIUC. I feel a bit like I’m losing my mind. School has been a good thing all around, and recent courses have been highly relevant to my current projects, but I look forward to putting that effort toward my Editions work.

For this Friday’s Fiction, I’ve selected one of Jennie’s pieces that reminds me of my current state of mind, and perhaps yours too on a Friday . . .

Losing Oneself

Getting lost in the stacks was a common occurrence. Staff members would go to the stacks to check a title, never to be seen again. Occasionally, one would resurface weeks later, appearing from nowhere, dazed and confused. As a Coordinator of Off-Campus User Services, she was immune to this, instead losing herself in distance services . . .

An introduction to our Friday Fiction Series and Jennie’s bio can be found on our first Friday Fiction post.

It has been on my list for some time, and late last night, when I wanted to go to bed though my kids were still doing homework, I did join. On Jenni Fry’s advice, I upped the commitment to a lifetime membership, taking advantage of the low introductory rate of $25 while it lasts. As I went through the impressively streamlined administrative process from basic to fee-based membership, I received each time the enthusiastic confirmation message “Happy cataloging.” Happy cataloging? What the heck am I doing, I thought. Do I want to spend my limited free time cataloging my books? Is accessing them really a problem? Not considering all the other stuff around the house that needs doing. Of course, I’m joining Library Thing because I’m a publisher. I made a mental note to save the receipt and deduct the $25 at tax time.

I’m not a book collector. As a publisher’s sales rep in the late eighties, I would receive a steady stream of free books. They were a source of clutter in my apartment; then a source of side income by sales to used bookstores or tax-deductible donations. Still many I saved thinking I might read them later. Some I kept because an older rep tipped me off that first editions of our low print-run books might actually be valuable some day. Six years ago, I moved from a 2-bedroom apartment to a small house with lots of windows. Lacking wall space for bookshelves, I had to get rid of a lot of books, including a full-set of Encyclopaedia Britannica, another freebie from when I worked there. Now I see book-buying as a zero-sum game. For every one I buy, one has got to go. Instead, I use the library.

Nonetheless, what Library Thing lacks in utility for me will be made up for in Wow factors. I was particularly impressed by how fast its Z39.50 search engine pulls records. Our Guide to Reference project pulls records from Library of Congress and, for a few weeks more RLIN, but not lickety-split like this. Also a kick to see how many records Library Thing holds for your books. Walden, by Henry David Thoreau was among the handful of books I pulled from my shelf to test out. The edition was an old one that I had pulled from my childhood home and kept all these years (OK, I collect a little), part of a Time-Life series with a 1962 copyright and no ISBN. After a bit of search refining (and letting go of the urge to just pick any old Walden), I actually found the record. I learned 1,600 users had this book. Surely not my odd edition? I dug around some more and learned that those numbers account for the Work (it’s a FRBR thing); though indeed three others claim to own my edition.

Becky Spratford, author of The Horror’s Readers’ Advisory, is featured in a column in suburban Chicago’s Daily Herald. Sarah Long, director of the North Suburban Library System, posts the column to her Web site, along with a podcast. While you’re getting to know Becky and her emergence as a horror maven, note how Sarah Long is using the Web to get the word out to patrons on library services they may not know about.