“We’re in a magical bubble; it’s a magical place. I can remember being a high school student and that’s where I wanted to be … it feels comfortable. Often times it’s the quiet space,” said Mrs. Lizan, Library Media Specialist, when asked about why students should come to the LMC.
The Tallwood LMC has much more to offer students than just books. From printers to volunteer hours, the LMC contains myriad tools to help students. Many students only use the library as a quiet place to eat lunch or to check out a book, but there’s a reason that it’s not just the library. It’s the library media center.
“We do have a makerspace where there’s lots of just stuff that students can use … like we have the 3D printers and 3D pens and those types of things, they can freely use those as long as they’ve done some of the training,” reported Mrs. Lizan on what the library offers outside of books.
Although, it wasn’t always like this. Before Chromebooks became prevalent in schools, the library was a place of research. Students would visit and be directed to the non-fiction section, and Librarians would help students find the book that was just right for their topic. And Librarians still do this in a way.
Mrs. Lizan commented, “Now it’s teaching students how to navigate the web resources like showing them the databases … or how to use those skills because most students don’t know how to for things like academic research.” So the Librarians in the LMC are still extremely helpful for any kind of research.
The Library also hosts a variety of clubs. From Book Club to Filipino Culture Club, the library is a great space to host events. Tallwood’s Scholastic bowl uses the library as a place to train for upcoming competitions. Meanwhile, The Filipino Culture Club uses it as a meeting room and a dance floor when practicing their cultural displays.
According to Mrs. Bankes, Library Media Assistant, “We have book contests to see who reads the most books … At the end of the month we can check to see what student in each grade read the most books and then we usually give them a free book that’s been donated to us and little gadgets.”
Students can also become a library assistant in order to gain the volunteer hours necessary for graduation and help out the library at the same time. To become a library volunteer, you must have a study block or excused period and passing grades.
On average a student who volunteers at the library will earn 90 minutes for each day they spend volunteering, and can volunteer every day they have a free period. This means if you worked every A day for an entire school year, you could earn 135 volunteer hours.
When asked about her duties, Library Helper Autumn Miller replied, “We take tours, we run passes that need to be ran from the library, or if we have some files that need to be ran down to the mailroom we’ll also go file those,“ but if that seems daunting, don’t worry. There’s still plenty of downtime while volunteering to finish your work or just enjoy the peace and quiet of the library.
And for students who are interested in finding books to read, the Library still has a great fiction section as well as a manga and graphic novel section. Members of the LMC take great care to cultivate a crop of books that contain a diverse cast with representation of all sorts that still manages to be entertaining.
