[Publib] "Teacher Loan Cards"

[James Casey]

I would be extremely wary of issuing any special borrowing privileges to
k-12 teachers.  Our objective should be to serve the needs of the
students and their parents rather than catering to the convenience of
teachers.  I have had teachers demand that we pull books for them to
swing by to pick up because they were "too busy" to come to the Library
and find the books for themselves, insist that longer loan periods be
afforded for "classroom collections", have fines waived for them
"because I'm an underpaid teacher", etc. over the past 34 years.  Keep
in mind that public libraries almost invariably have multiple schools
and often several school districts in their service areas.  Many school
districts have diminishing or zero commitment to keeping their own
school libraries in operation to help support the curriculum and thus
the full burden is expected to fall on a public library already serving
several school districts and parochial/private/home school clientele as
well.  Catering to the special demands of one teacher could effectively
deprive dozens of other classes and hundreds of students studying the
same units (at the same time) of access to materials.   

 

Occasionally, there are teachers who really want to understand and
promote the public library to their students.  These teachers will
almost invariably come to the Library and spend the time/energy needed
to use it themselves, want to know how they can cooperate with public
libraries (using homework alerts), want to understand how their students
will interact with collections, and most important of all, realize that
valuable learning takes place outside of the classroom.  We had several
classes (140 kids AND their teachers) visit the Library for a
bibliographic instruction several days ago.  It was a big success
because the teachers who gave the term paper assignments were aware that
the success of that assignment depended upon effective use of the public
library.   And it was in NOVEMBER --- before work on term papers is
about to begin --- rather than MAY when the year is running down and
teachers are apt to fill time with "field trips" with the kids basically
in Summer vacation mode and paying little attention to anything related
to research and study.  

 

Cooperating with teachers can be fine as long as the focus is on helping
the students rather than catering to the teacher's own personal
convenience.

 

James B. Casey --- My own views.

Director of Oak Lawn Public Library

ALA Council Member

 

 

 

From: publib-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:publib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Ralston, Jennifer
Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2007 2:01 PM
To: publib at webjunction.org
Subject: [Publib] "Teacher Loan Cards"

 

Our library is investigating the idea of creating a teacher loan card to
provide an additional service to teachers in our county. (I know that
many other library systems have different types of teacher loan cards).
I was hoping to tap into some of your expertise as part of my overall
research.

If your library currently provides teacher loan library cards, would you
be willing to share how they work? For example:

1.      Do you have a limit on the number of titles that can be checked
out from a particular subject area? (There are concerns about whole
sections being "wiped out" during heavy assignment times.

2.      What is your loan period? Longer than the normal loan period? Do
you renew? 
3.      What do you do about fines/fees/lost items? 

Any other pearls of wisdom, etc? 

Thanks so much for any input you can provide. 

Jennifer Ralston 
Materials Management Administrator 
Harford County Public Library 
1221-A Brass Mill Road 
Belcamp, Maryland 21017 
ralston at hcplonline.info 
410-273-5600 x2273 
fax: 410-273-5606 

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that". 
-Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling, 1997 

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