Adopt a Book 27-28 Nov 2008

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To boost our book collection, we have started a book drive with the parents. Adopt A Book kicked off today with our first group of visiting parents. Parents select titles they want to pay for from a booklist prepared by our Curriculum Coordinator, Suzy. This order will be put into Follett, our book provider, before 15 December so that we are eligible for a special discount (barcoding and MARC records are free).

A big thanks to our generous parents for increasing our collection.

EBSCOhost at ASP!

It turns out the school has an existing subscription to EBSCOhost for each grade level as well separate access accounts for parents and teachers. The school is part of the EBSCOhost consortium because it is an ASOMEX school. Although the school has had the subscription for three years, it has not really been used or promoted. EBSCOhost has several advantage for the school:

• qualitative and comprehensive articles and information that are both current and historical
  
• it has boosted our periodical collection from nothing to over 2000 (not all are full-text, but many are)
• several age-appropriate encyclopedias and dictionary
• increases our collection with reports, books and other primary sources
• gives our library a virtual 24/7 presence
  
• provides an authoritative, comprehensive and accessible online alternative to the Internet

Besides students, teachers who are doing their Buffalo State masters degree by distance at our school will now have quick access to current research articles for their studies from the educational databases in EBSCOhost.

Visit to ASF Monterrey

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The Destiny session ended around lunch so I spent the rest of the day in Monterrey visiting the two campuses of the American School Foundation of Monterrey (ASFM). In addition to the usual great ideas for library design, Beau Cain, the Librarian from the Middle/High School, highlighted the advantages for collection analysis from Titlewise, a component of Titlewave from Follett that will give you collection analysis information. This will provide useful data as evidence and arguments for library budgets and for the SACS accreditation team.