Happy Connections

Why connect with other school librarians? And teachers? And administrative types? plus all those other people out there like those political types?


Do you hear about Twitter and RSS and social media networking at conferences and seriously wonder, why? Do those Twitter peeps even have a life? And do you ever find anything you can use in your school library?


Here is the story of how those connections can make you literally give out a Whoo! Hooo! right in the middle of your library.

  1. On Friday, I was giving a soon-to-be retiring teacher friend, Pinterest, the land of boards and pins that is the newest social media funsite. Great place to find hundreds of pictures of tulips and chocolate chip cookies.  (Yes, a social networking site that doesn’t mean “work”.) 
  2. While the firewall was open, searched for library infographic just to see if a cool image would pop up that I could use for the MASL presentation. 
  3. Recognized that Boiling Springs High School from the Annual School Library Reports wiki – Fran Bullington’s blog Informia was the link for the infographic.
  4. Discovered gold in her blog entry about using Piktochart to design a monthly report.
  5. Fran picked up the idea from Courtney Lewis, Director of Libraries at Wyoming Seminary College Preparatory School in northeastern Pennsylvania by way of Twitter The Sassy Librarian 
  6. Then, remembered Joyce Valenza had just blogged about making posters because sometimes you just need a paper poster – Block Posters

Result:  NHS Library Report for March posted on the school website and a paper copy to put on the bulletin board or at the sign-in clipboard in the library.

Just in case, you want to try your hand at turning your library stats into an infographic, just follow Piktochart’s instructions along with Fran’s model. Try to keep the happy dancing to your library workroom.

See more details on how the statistics were collected on the MASL Spring Conference 2012.

~Credits:

Works Cited
“Block Posters.” Blockposters. Web. 21 Apr. 2012. <http://www.blockposters.com/>.
“Informania.” Informania. Web. 21 Apr. 2012. <http://informania.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/infographic-monthly-library-report/>.
“Piktochart- Your Infographic Tool for Customized Design.” Piktochart- Your Infographic Tool for Customized Design. Web. 21 Apr. 2012. <http://piktochart.com/>.
“Postering with New Tools « NeverEndingSearch.” Postering with New Tools: NeverEndingSearch. Web. 21 Apr. 2012. <http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com/neverendingsearch/2012/04/15/postering-with-new-tools/>.
“The Sassy Librarian.” The Sassy Librarian. Web. 21 Apr. 2012. <http://thesassylibrarian.blogspot.com/>.