Elementary Library Routines Wiki: A Godsend for Newbies

Monarch Academy librarian Keisa Williams is a Twitter user.  Early this summer a conversation with fellow Twitter users led to her creating a wonderful resource for all elementary library media specialists:  The Elementary Library Routines wiki.  Though only in its infancy, this site has grown quickly, as many experienced library media specialists have contributed their routines and management techniques for the greater good of the profession.

I contacted Keisa last week to ask her if she would share some of her motivations for creating this wiki.  She replied:

This wiki was created after I shared my procedures with another librarian. (@lovemylibrary). She urged me to share it out on Twitter. I decided to create a wiki, #1 because I love creating wikis and #2 I wish I had a resource like this when I started out.

I populated the wiki with all of the ideas that I worked out with my instructional coach during my first two years of practice. After a while, I asked a couple other librarians to share the admin role with me. They all added their expertise and it took off from there.

Just this week I used the wiki to create my own beginning of the year “to do” list. This is my 5^th year at Monarch and I had never gotten around to making this list. This year, I was able to start with 2 lists that were shared on the wiki and tweak it to fit my own needs. This is the kind of sharing that I hope inspires my teachers to create their own wikis. I introduced them to this wiki at our staff retreat. I think I sold most of them on the idea. I can’t wait until they create their own J

I urge all elementary librarians to not only look at this wiki, but to join the wiki, engage and share your good ideas.  Through collaboration such as this, we and our profession become stronger.  Thanks, Keisa and co-administrators Catherine Trinkle, Regina Hartley and Jamie Camp for the work you continue to do for us.