TMS Library Update

The library is finally looking like a library! One day I returned to school after being away for Peace Corps meetings and the principal surprised me by telling me she ordered a bookcase. We were worried when we got an initial quote for $500 BZD for ONE case. We would not have been able to set up the library at that rate. Fortunately, she found a Mennonite carpenter (most carpentry is their work, but we’d started with connections we thought would give good deals) who made the case for $160BZD! It looked good, so we ordered 3 more, plus two tables and ten chairs (all with the grant money many of you so kindly provided) – they arrived today! Anthony and I (and a group of students) spent the afternoon re-organizing books one final time! Since we have nearly 4300 books we were unable to finish shelving all of them, but we did get all the children’s books and board books on the shelves; just have the chapter books, special category books, subject books, teacher resource books, and reference books to finish. Yes, that sounds like quite a lot but I will spend every minute in there next week until it is finished so we can get those Library Tours going and have an opening at the start of June!!

A few weeks ago, when we weren’t sure what would happen furniture-wise, I spent a day moving books and then Anthony joined me the following day for an afternoon of cleaning out the room and setting up baskets of pre-selected books which we would have the children borrow from since the stacks on the shelves are not conducive to browsing. Now that the bookcases are here, those baskets found a new use for the hundreds of board books and for class sets of borrowed books for the lower division.

Prior to setting up the browsing baskets, I visited every class and gave a Book Tour Lesson in which students learned about the features of books, discussed appropriate treatment of books (they did great at coming up with all the rules on their own – such as not throwing them on the floor or “whopping” other kids with them), how to find appropriately leveled books in our cataloging system, and the types of books we have for borrowing. I wondered if I would need to cover all the features, but it was definitely helpful since many of the students had never been specifically taught this information before – including the upper division classes. Once the shelves are set and the library is ready, I will be taking each class for a tour and then the borrowing will begin!