Library Media Tech Talk

Beginning Again: The Journey Back to School Librarianship I accepted the opportunity to return to a public school as a middle school library media specialist in July 2025. Since 2020, I've enjoyed a long stint as an Army National Guard Warrant Officer, both full-time and part-time. Most recently, I worked in public library management full-time. During the entire journey since 2020, I've missed the interactions I had as a school librarian. So I've come full circle. It is exciting to be back after 5 years away from this part of the profession.  Beginning Again It is overwhelming in many ways to return. At the time of this writing, I've only spent 8 days with students. There are new books, new authors, new standards, new teachers, and new technologies. I'm also in a newer school facility. I actually worked in this district years ago during my last year as a school band director before transitioning to school librarianship in 2008. The facility is new and updated compar...

Back in 2015, I decided to pursue an ALA-accredited MS in Library Science from the University of North Texas. I already have an MS in school librarianship, but I wanted to expand my opportunities and knowledge beyond my public school career. After working on the second degree in librarianship part-time at UNT for five years, it finally came to completion this spring.  I decided to do a study of Arkansas' school library budgets as a major research project for a two-semester seminar class. Since 2009, I've read articles about how numerous library budgets and staff have experienced major cuts in all types of libraries. For the blog this month, I want to share highlights from my final paper and a link to the full document for those that want to read it. I also want to thank the 109 participants in my survey instrument from the membership of the Arkansas Association of Instructional Media (AAIM) for making this study possible! Below are the highlights from the research paper. Y...

This has been one of the most active years for me professionally. I'm nearing the end of a third master's degree program with an ALA accredited MLIS. There have been several opportunities to publish over the past year. All these activities have made it difficult to write blog articles as frequently as I would like. I simply had to make time to write a reflection about my first time to attend an American Library Association Annual Conference! I am very grateful to the Lakeside School District for sending me, and I want to share some of my big takeaways from the event. I will also share what I hope to bring back to campus this year as a result of the experience. Michelle Obama It was very exciting to hear Michelle Obama speak in the opening session of the ALA conference! She spoke primarily about her new book, Becoming , a memoir about her life.  I recall that she talked about the importance of the library in her life when she was growing up. She reflected about reading t...

This is a list of my top 5 most read blog articles of 2017 on Library Media Tech Talk: 3 Ways to Shatter The School Librarian Stereotype Our First Book Tasting Event 3 Things I've Learned About Breakout EDU Keeping Work Neat With Google Keep What Can A Library Be? Thank you for a great year. More content coming in 2018! My table of contents for the blog is here! I have a monthly email newsletter for the subscribers of the Library Media Tech Talk blog. If you are interested in exclusive content not appearing on the blog, be sure to subscribe by submitting your email address!  Subscribe here! Contact Me/ Follow Me Email:  stony_evans@lakesidesd.org Are you on Twitter? Follow me : @stony12270

Back in the spring, the Lakeside High School Principal, Mr. Darin Landry, shared an app with me he used constantly with his staff. The app is called Google Keep. I had never heard of it before in my experiences with Google tools. It looked fascinating to me, but I decided to table learning about the app until summer 2017. Overview of the App I never forgot about the app, and this summer I have done exactly what I planned to do by getting acquainted with the tool! I used it first by downloading the free app to my iPhone. I signed in with my school Google Gmail account and immediately starting creating to-do notes for practice. I found it easy to create notes of summer tasks that need to be accomplished each week. It was also simple to label the lists by week for easy reference. After I spent several days with the app, I was ready to share the notes with Kaitlyn Price (@Kait_Price11), co-librarian with me at Lakeside High School. Sharing was as easy as selecting the collabor...

Back in December, our Physics teacher, Mrs. Linda Self, asked me if her students could display their paper roller coaster projects in the library. I was very excited by this request. After visiting her classroom and seeing their work, I couldn't wait to share them with the learning community in the library! It has been a challenge for us to collaborate with mathematics and science classes. This was a perfect opportunity to allow the library to be a public viewing space for student work. I'm thrilled to be joined by Mrs. Self in this post as she shares her thoughts on the project. Mrs. Self's Reflection  Roller Coaster Physics: Roller coasters are often used as a real world application for the Physics of Motion.  Change of location, changing speeds and changing heights are the very basics for motion studies.  Then, there are the turns!  My class built paper roller coasters during the unit on Circular Motion.  The classes learn about the forces that cr...