In most cases, our weekly meeting speaker come to our meeting for their presentations. This week we did the opposite.
Immediately after breakfast, members adjourned to Salem Elementary School and met in the school library.
Tammy introduced School Librarian Glenda Thornton who obviously loves making connections between books and children. Yes, although the internet is increasingly used as a source of information, children still read books!
The Librarian outlined what happens after our book donations are handed in to the school. The Dewey Decimal system is used for classification. Each book is identified by a bar code, and each pupil has a 10-digit number so everything is done by computer. New pupils are automatically entered into the system. The books are processed with the help of volunteers. Every book is strengthened with adhesive transparent plastic. Each book is initially put on a display panel.
The school has about 370 pupils in 19 classes. Each class gets a half-hour Library period per week. Grades 2 to 4 browse the shelves themselves to select books; Kindergarten and Grade 1 pick from books laid out on tables for them. Books are taken out for one week at a time. The school has a Library Club so that pupils can help with basic library tasks.
One box of books illustrated what can happen to books at home: they get chewed by the dog, damaged by water, scribbled on, or just plain lost. One book lost at the end of December was discovered the following November: it had been put away in the box with the Christmas lights.
The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew are still popular, and so are Rocks, Dinosaurs, Star Wars and Lego.
The Librarian expressed thanks to Rotary for their book donation program. Most needed at the moment are low-level French books, and books on First Nations (Canadian/local if possible).
Darrell expressed thanks for a most interesting and informative talk and noted that this was the one occasion when the speaker got to keep the book.
Glenda accepted from Stacey a Gold Mine cheque for $625 on behalf of Salem Elementary School.
