This document provides an annual report for the 2010-2011 school year from the Stillwater Middle-High School Library Media Center. It summarizes circulation statistics, classes served, student visits, collaborative projects with teachers, professional development activities, goals for collection development and expanding educational technology resources. The report outlines the library's role in supporting the school's curriculum and students' information literacy skills.

1. Stillwater MS/HS Library
Media Center Annual Report
2010-2011
Stillwater Middle-High School
Stillwater Central School District
1068 Hudson Avenue
Stillwater, NY 12170
518-373-6100 x30034
http://tiny.cc/scsdmshslibrary
Amy Carpenter, School Library Media Specialist
Carolyn Hayner, Library Aide
6/24/2011

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Jun. 24
Program Highlights: Building Partnerships for Learning
TEACHER ~ (Collaborates with school staff analyzing learning and
information needs, locating and using resources that fulfills those needs
and understands and communicates the information the resources provide)
Collaboration and Research Projects (Teachers and Students)
We served 320 class sessions between September 8, 2010 and June 24, 2011 in our
media center. Our peak usage occurred in October 2010 with 53 class sessions. We
did not serve as many classes as we might have, due to the lack of library staff
coverage. Classes occasionally had to be turned away or taught in a shortened time
span because of lack of staffing. The library also occasionally had to be closed to
non-scheduled visitors, such as study hall students, while the library media specialist
was teaching, again, due to lack of staffing.
We operated on a flexible schedule during 2010-11 with library hours of 7:00—3:00
daily. Students were able to visit before and after school and during free periods. We
saw our highest number of student visits during March 2011 with 2,944 student visits.
Classes Served September, 38
September
October, 53
October
November, 34 November
December
December, 28
January
TOTAL, 320 February
January, 42 March
April
February, 34 May
June
March, 36
April, 20 TOTAL
June, 4 May, 31
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3. Stillwater MS/HS Library Media Center Annual Report
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Approximately 17,781 students were served by the media center during non-
scheduled class visits in 2010-11.
We continue to see an increase in the quantity and depth of collaborative research
projects with teachers. Several of the projects that we have traditionally done with the
English and Social Studies departments were altered or replaced entirely to reflect a
much more inquiry-based approach. The Science and Business departments
continued to increase their use of the library and its resources, including the librarian,
this school year. We incorporated new tools and technologies into projects whenever
possible. Topics and skills included but were not limited to:
 Database instruction
 Various presentation tools including Glogster and Fakebook walls
 Google News (including News Timeline), Google Scholar, Google
WonderWheel, Google Books
 Ethical digital citizenship, including Creative Commons License---what it is and
how to evaluate a license for using a work licensed under this agreement
 Video skills with iMovie, Animoto, Moviemaker and PhotoStory
Involvement on School Instruction and Leadership Teams
 Amy Carpenter, Technology Core Team
 Amy Carpenter, Professional Learning Community Core Team
 Amy Carpenter, WSWHE BOCES SLS Communication Coordinator
 Amt Carpenter, WSWHE BOCES SLS Council
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4. Stillwater MS/HS Library Media Center Annual Report
Jun. 24
Professional Development Trainings and Conferences Attended
 New York Library Association/School Library Media Section Carol A. Kearney
Educational Leadership Retreat 2010
 WSWHE BOCES School Library System General Membership meeting
 Presenter at WSWHE BOCES School Library System Spotlight Professional
Development—Animoto for Educators
 Presenter at CASDA Conference for Library Media Specialists and
Administrators
 WSWHE BOCES School Library System Communication Coordinators
meetings
 WSWHE BOCES SLS Council Meetings
INSTRUCTIONAL PARTNER ~ (Identifies curricular content,
learning outcomes and a wide variety of resources for instruction)
Design of authentic learning activities and collaboration/involvement in
meeting subject matter standards
We have continued to work with faculty to incorporate and weave information
literacy skills into New York State Learning Standards through our collaborative
partnerships in all subject areas this year. We have also been investigating the new
Common Core Standards and how to best work within them to continue to make our
students savvy, information literate, digital citizens. We continue to introduce and
support inquiry-based projects both in and out of the library. One fantastic
Participation in Government project this year culminated in Ms. June’s students
writing to our state legislators in support of libraries and library systems. Mrs.
Carpenter had the honor of talking to our legislators and delivering these letters on
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5. Stillwater MS/HS Library Media Center Annual Report
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behalf of our students. This is a project that we hope to grow and develop next year,
while we continue to foster inquiry in all classes.
INFORMATION SPECIALIST ~ (Provides leadership and
expertise in acquiring and evaluating information resources in all forma ts
and models for students and staff strategies for locating, accessing and
evaluating information within and beyond the media center)
Technology integration/inclusion in instruction
Technology plays a major role in library instruction at Stillwater Middle/High School.
We continue to tap into the powers of Web 2.0 tools to communicate with our
patrons and to facilitate instruction. Our library web page continues to be popular and
is becoming a first stop for many students working on research.
Use of electronic resources
Downloadable audio books have been very popular this year. We discovered that our
mp3 players were among the top ten most circulated items. These were utilized by
staff and students. While it was anticipated that these players would be heavily used
by our students with special needs, regular education students enjoyed them as well.
Due to the success of this pilot, we have invested in more audio book and EBook
titles that will be exclusively available to our district for the future. We have also
written a grant to purchase additional mp3 players and e-readers to expand upon the
success of this program.
Our databases continue to be invaluable resources of information for our students.
Database access provides our students the opportunity to learn outside of the normal
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school day. Our access to the NOVEL databases provided by New York State and
our paid subscriptions to several other databases through the WSWHE BOCES allow
multiple classes to access material quickly and efficiently, 24/7. We continue to offer
extensive instruction to help students determine how to analyze resources on the free
web to determine what is most useful, authoritative and current for their needs.
Our online information resource purchases are curriculum driven and impacted by
what is being used by our students and staff. Our database subscriptions change
annually to adjust to the changing needs of our school. Due to the increasing
scholarly nature of research projects and the needs of our college-level classes, we
have added the well-respected JSTOR database to our roster for the 2011-12 school
year and look forward to its use.
Our databases continue to be very popular for student research. We compile a list of
useful databases for each class that comes to the library for instruction. After
reviewing usage statistics this year and talking with teachers about changes to projects
in the upcoming year, we have made some changes to our roster, as we do annually.
CultureGrams, American History Online, Thomson Gale’s Opposing Viewpoints and
EBSCO’s Points of View are among our most popular databases. This year we added
ABC-Clio’s World History: Ancient and Medieval Eras and World History: The
Modern Era to better support our curriculum.
We will continue to gather statistics and anecdotal reports from our patrons regarding
which databases best suit their needs and will make future purchases accordingly.
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7. Stillwater MS/HS Library Media Center Annual Report
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Circulation Data
Overall, our total circulation remains healthy. We tend to have steady circulation
numbers, with the exception of the month of June, when we try to get most of our
books back for the summer. We ran the numbers by grade this year and were
interested to see that our 6th grade accounts for about 30% of our total circulation
while the 9th, 11th and 12th grades each account for an additional 15%. We were
pleased to see that circulation numbers are approximately evenly split between the
middle school (53%) and the high school (47%). We encourage students to be life-
long readers and are pleased to see that our upper grades are reading. We have
continued to actively solicit input from our students and teachers as we strive to grow
a collection that reflects the needs and interests of our patrons. We also make
excellent use of the interlibrary loan system coordinated by the Washington-Saratoga-
Warren-Hamilton-Essex BOCES School Library System and our interlibrary loan
statistics continue to grow as we make use of the broader collection pool to serve our
patrons.
Circulation Statistics September, 594
October, 945
September
November, 584 October
November
December, 536 December
January
January, 796
TOTAL, 6614 February
February, 605 March
April
March, 775 May
June
April, 776
TOTAL
May, 683
June, 320
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8. Stillwater MS/HS Library Media Center Annual Report
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Last year we served as a pilot school for the implementation of a new, open-source
library automation system, OPALS. This new system has now been deployed in most
districts in our BOCES and has been very well-received. It is extremely user-friendly,
and all comments from our patrons have been positive.
Ethical use of information in all formats (Teachers and Students)
We used lessons on Bibme.org as a springboard for conversations about the ethical
use of information and intellectual property. In addition, these lessons are a medium
for discussing forms of plagiarism and academic honesty.
We have continued our instruction on Creative Commons Licenses utilizing
Soundzabound, the Search Creative Commons website, Flickr and Google Images
advanced search function.
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9. Stillwater MS/HS Library Media Center Annual Report
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PROGRAM ADMINISTRATOR ~ (Collaborative member of
school learning community defining media program policies and activities,
advocate for media program and leader for school’s vision of 21st century
school environment)
Management of media staff, program budget, equipment and facility
Program Budget
Our total budget for the 2010-11 year was $27,277; this amount includes our district
budget and the monies allocated through our BOCES COSER for coordinated
cooperative collection development and database purchases. Our purchases included:
 Additional fiction and nonfiction titles requested by students and faculty (more
than 1200 new items including books and audio books)
 Two new databases: ABC-Clio’s World History: Ancient and Medieval Eras
and World History: The Modern Era
 2010-11 Periodical Subscriptions (more than 60 titles)
 Renewal of database access fees for existing databases, including CultureGrams,
World Book Online and Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center
 Bookmarks and posters from ALA and other vendors
Media Center Staff
Our media center is staffed by a certified media specialist, Amy Carpenter, MSIS and
one library aides, Carolyn Hayner. Mrs. Carpenter undertakes all teaching
responsibilities, lesson plan design, selection of library materials and administrative
tasks as well as primary responsibility of circulation, passes, and general maintenance
of the library media center commons area. Mrs. Hayner assists with all aspects of
daily operation including maintaining the integrity of the library catalog and is
responsible for clerical work related to the ordering of library materials and book
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10. Stillwater MS/HS Library Media Center Annual Report
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processing. Mrs. Hayner also assists with circulation, passes, and general maintenance
of the library media center commons area and is responsible for processing and
repairing books. Her work in these areas is critical as her efforts keep the library
media center running smoothly and efficiently and allow the media specialist more
time to focus on instruction and collaboration. We had a reduction in staffing for the
2010-11 school year, so many additional tasks have been picked up by both Mrs.
Carpenter and Mrs. Hayner. This year we were also ably assisted by a series of
volunteers who were required to complete community service hours for their
Participation in Government classes and for National Honor Society. These students
helped out by shelving books, magazines and other materials, straightening shelves,
running errands and doing other small tasks as assigned. While their help was
invaluable, it did not replace the work formerly performed by the person in the library
aide position that was eliminated for the 2010-11 school year. We strongly
recommend reinstating this position as soon as possible.
Media Center Interns
This year, our library media program hosted two students from SUNY Albany. One
was near the beginning of her degree and simply came to observe our library program
for 25 hours. The other, Alison Lattimore, was nearing the end of her degree
program and was with us as an intern for 150 hours in the spring. Mrs. Lattimore had
the opportunity to work with teachers on collaborative, inquiry-based units, teach
classes, learn about the processes of collection development and maintenance, work
on a grant that was currently being drafted and participate in the day-to-day
operations of our library. Additionally, Mrs. Lattimore was able to travel to Albany
with Mrs. Carpenter to advocate for libraries in early March. While hosting an intern
was an extensive time commitment, we feel that it is important to support and
advocate for school libraries and librarians whenever possible.
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11. Stillwater MS/HS Library Media Center Annual Report
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Goals for 2011-2012
Overarching Goal:
To continue to build a program that is exemplary and responsive to the needs of our
learning community.
Future Directions for 2011-12
 Continue to build and maintain a collection that is current and reflective of the
school’s curricular needs and achievement goals.
 Draft a long-term strategic plan to guide the future direction of the library
media program.
 Develop a plan for student assessment in the library media program.
 Embrace the digital era and expand our eBook and downloadable audio book
collections
 Develop an action plan for creating support and marketing the library media
program within the school community and advocate for school libraries in the
greater community.
 Expand the development of collaborative, inquiry-based projects with
additional faculty.
 Continued integration of technology and instruction of cloud computing and
Web 2.0 tools for student productivity and content creation.
 Development of an up-to-date, comprehensive professional collection for use
by faculty and staff.
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