Richmond Hill Middle School

7:15-3:15PM
Today I went to Richmond Hill Middle School for the day. It was a pretty exciting experience for me. I learned a lot throughout the day about what the two media specialists do on a normal day. I got to see a new system for checking out and returning books (they use Sagebrush and Liberty County uses Destiny). I also got to see how another media center runs the paperwork part of their job. It was different from any other sysytem, but I liked it.
One of the things that I REALLY enjoyed seeing was how they decorated their media center. They have the most exciting displays - definitely something that piqued the interest of the students. One of the reasons it was so interesting is because they are very detailed displays about very obscure topics. For example, did you know that this month is national potato month? One of the displays was all about potatoes. It included facts printed on potato shaped paper, books about the topic, french fries made of wood, and Mr. Potatohead figurines. There were also displays about new books, happy birthday authors, Mexican heritage, pirates, and others. The media specialists change these every month to continue interesting students on different subjects.
Another great idea that I learned was about a book notebook. The media specialist went through the OPAC and searched for specific topics that students ask them about quite often and printed the results page for the topic. For example, the search topic might have been pirates and fiction. There might be a page or two of results that show fiction books about pirates. This printoff, along with others of numerous different topics, was placed in a binder for the media specialists to view and use as a collection reference when a student walked in and asked for a book about a specific topic. Some topics had one page, some had three. It was a very thorough list of topics - and one that I can definitely see the value in creating!
The media center overall is incredibly small. I was told that it met the square footage requirements for a student body of about 400. However, there are over 1200 students that attend RHMS. Their collection is over 20,000 items. They have arranged the media center in such a way that all the books fit, but barely. Some of the shelves were so full that when I went to shelf a book, I had to cram it in as best as I could. They know the shelves are this full, and had actually just gotten a new tall shelf to spread them out a little. However, it was not near enough shelf space to fix the entire problem. There is a new middle school being built that will apparently be much bigger and alleviate some of this problem. The amount of furniture and resources in the media center would make one think that it was overcrowded, but it was organized in a way that allowed movement and traffic flow in very logical ways. The one pitfall I think they ran into, however, was that there was no extra room for computer equipment. Because of this, there were only 3 computers in the media center that were for research and 2 computers used as look-up stations.
Overall, the day was an incredible learning experience. I enjoyed seeing their orientation process, viewing the website, and networking with people that have done what I want to do for a combined 55 years. I look forward to picking their brains about the job even further when I get the opportunity to move into the media center.