Tips and Other Bright Ideas for Secondary School Libraries: Volume Three (review)

Review

Need some tips and tricks to help make your daily life easier? If you are a secondary school teacher–librarian then you are in luck! Tips and Other Bright Ideas for Secondary School Libraries: Volume Three is a great addition to your professional development collection. This book, an update of the 2nd edition published in 2000, is part of a series of two titles with the other title being Tips and Other Bright Ideas for Elementary School Libraries: Volume Three. Together these books intend to give teacher–librarians tips and tricks to use for all aspects of the job.

This book is a quick read that is easy to pick up and put down as you have time. The nine sections of this book consist of suggestions from an array of teacher–librarians, covering a variety of topics: library management, working with students in the library, teaching research skills, collaborating with teachers, using technology in the library, reading promotion, public relations, working with helpers, and a section entitled "Managing Tips for the Librarian."

For the most part the suggestions in this book are helpful. These tips solve common issues and make life easier for the teacher–librarian working in a hectic fast-paced environment. Several of the ideas presented in this work are useful in any school library, with many being especially applicable to an elementary setting. Suggestions for using recent technology, such as digital cameras and web pages, are sure to prove useful.

However, this book is not without its problems. Some of the suggestions are outdated and impractical, such as maintaining a handwritten address book of valuable websites. Not all the information pertaining to software programs or hyperlinks is current, and some technology items are already outdated—with articles from 2001 and 2002. Lastly, the final section seems somewhat superfluous and could have had its contents included somewhere in the earlier eight sections. Hopefully Volume Four will remedy these issues.

Overall this book will provide insight to current teacher–librarians wanting to know what tips and tricks are out there, and to student teachers wishing to surprise cooperating teacher–librarians with new ideas. This book would also be a handy tool for beginning teacher–librarians who desire a well-organized media center for use by an active student population.

Reviewer's Bio

Logan is a student at the University of Buffalo in his final semester studying school librarianship. His undergraduate coursework and field experience are in Spanish with adolescent education certification in New York State. Logan has a strong interest in information literacy as well as technology integration into any curriculum.

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