Photo taken by Jesaias Benitez.
The K-8 school libraries have started to reorganize their book collections, which was started by Stephen Nedell, the new travelling K-8 librarian for Malden Public Schools.
As this is his first year as a travelling K-8 librarian for Malden Public Schools, Nedell stated that it has been “a very challenging job” as he is at “five different schools working with five entirely different cultures” as the school and library layouts are different. A challenge that he had faced was building “relationships with the teachers, administrations, parents, and PTOs.” However, Nedell believes even though it is challenging, it is also very rewarding because “the students are wonderful” as they are “hungering for a chance to read more”.
As the Malden Public Schools were not able to have a librarian at each of the K-8 schools for the past few years, Nedell felt that “even though [they] were able to maintain the collection [of books” with the help of parent volunteers, it is very disorganized now, and it needs to be organized so material can be easily found.”
A challenge with reorganizing the K-8 school libraries is “trying to reorganize the libraries to their individual strengths”, as the previous librarians from the K-8 schools had organized their collection in ways they felt appropriate.This is because over the past few years, since there has not been a constant presence at all K-8 libraries, the collections are not well organized.
Nedell is very happy with the support that he has gotten from the individual school administrations, district administration, superintendent’s office, and teachers” as they are “eager to get [students] to read some more” and especially get greater participation for students from K-8 in Malden Reads. He has had “nothing but a great experience” so far with them.
What Nedell is planning on doing with the school libraries in the future is “removing material that is out of date” as it is losing interest, along with bringing in more new material. He plans on making sure students have a more bibliographic orientation, to have a place of information, and a place to build literacy at the libraries as it is a challenge to help students “find good information and process it correctly.” He is also planning to “use the library to build and help support the curriculum” at the K-8 schools.
