A Belated Year-End Report for 2022-2023

I can’t remember whether this is one of the places I’ve announced it or not, but I am currently on leave from my job at the local public middle school library so that I can go to grad school full-time. The choice for me at this stage of life was relatively straightforward. I can either work 50-70 hour weeks for 5 years to get my Masters in Library Science (MLIS) degree while continuing to work at the middle school library, or I can take an 18-month leave, go to grad school full-time and be done with my MLIS in 2 years. This latter option has the side benefit of allowing time to do whatever parenting the now 16-year-old still requires.

School started at my former middle school last week and I have to tell you, I have two feelings about this. TL;DR: OMG I miss working in the library so much and I am so happy to be able to decide for myself how to use each day. So, you know, the usual blend of things.

I realized this morning as I watched the troops of middle schoolers walking down the street to begin their new school year that I never did post my year-end report from last year. I did one, of course, as a complement to the Teacher Librarian’s main annual report. I posted it outside the library the last week of school for students and staff to view. My Teacher Librarian also published it along with her annual report in all of her usual spots, but I forgot to post it here. Let’s fix that, shall we?

The 2022-23 School Year in Numbers

As you may remember, at the end of the 2021-2022 school year, I spent a week rebalancing all of the books in our fiction, graphic novel, series, story collection, audiobook, and nonfiction collections to eliminate gaps created by weeding and to create space to put as many forward-facing books on display as possible. (Completing this in a week was made possible by the fact that my daughter volunteered to come in and relabel everything.)

During the 2021-2022 school year, we typically had 300 books on display at any given time. By the time my daughter and I were done rearranging everything, we had space to keep 1500 books (or 10% of our collection) on more or less permanent display throughout our library.

In practical terms, this meant the library went from looking like this: The library as it looked on opening day August 2021. In the foreground are the fiction stacks. Each stack has 12 books on display on top. Most of the shelves underneath are packed with spine-out books. One or two of them have one face-out book, but the bulk of the display books in the fiction section are the ones on display on top of the stacks. In the background, you can see the nonfiction stacks. In 2021-2022, the nonfiction section had a few face-forward books, but for the most part our nonfiction section was wall after wall of spine-out books. Great for storage. Bad for browsing. (Photo: Shala Howell)To this: The library as it looked on opening day in August 2022. We increased the number of books on display on top of the fiction shelves to 18, and as you can see, there are now 2-3 forward-facing books on display on every shelf underneath. We also added forward-facing books to every nonfiction shelf in the background, although it is harder to see that in this photo. (Photo: Shala Howell)

My hope in doing all this was to boost total circulation and make the library feel like a more inviting and welcoming place to be. So did it work? Let’s look at the numbers.

12,186: The number of print books checked out or used in-house

During the 2022-23 school year, 12,186 print books were checked out or used in-house. That’s almost 23 books per student, and a healthy increase over last year’s print circulation of 8996 books (roughly 17 books per student).

(Note: In the 2021-2022 report, I reported total circulation of 13,975. That number included both print and ebook circulation. Midway through 2022-2023, our ebook provider stopped reporting ebook usage by school, so it became impossible to tell which ebooks had actually been used by students at my school, so I couldn’t include ebook usage in my total circulation for 2022-2023.)

35: The number of times our most popular book was checked out during the 2022-23 school year

Our most popular book during the 2022-2023 school year was Raina Telgemeier’s Drama. Students checked out Drama 35 times that year. Other popular books included:

Refugee by Alan Gratz (WWII historical fiction)  The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (realistic fiction) One of Us is Lying by Karen McManus (mystery) Living with Viola by Rosena Fung (graphic novel)  Spinning by Tillie Walden (graphic novel memoir)  Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper (realistic fiction)  The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen (graphic novel)  To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jennie Han (romance) New Kid by Jerry Craft (graphic novel) Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (fantasy / dystopian)

Every book on this list was checked out more than 20 times over the course of the 2022-2023 school year.

(Note: The above paragraph and list includes affiliate links to Bookshop.org. If you use them to purchase books from Bookshop.org, I’ll earn a small commission. Read more about why I decided to use affiliate links here.)

75%: The percentage of students who checked out a book for Book-a-Thon this year

Our big reading event, Book-a-Thon, happens during the Spring Semester. For Book-a-thon, we ask students to check out (and read) at least one book for fun between mid-January and early March. There are no book reports, although we do ask students to fill out a Google Form telling us the number of books they read and as many of their titles as they can remember. 

Students who both check out a book and remember to fill out the form are entered into a raffle to receive one of more than 100 prizes donated by faculty and staff. Most years, we get a participation rate of between 50-60%. This year, 75% of the student body checked out a book during Book-a-Thon. I am pretty proud of that. 

Naturally, they didn’t all remember to turn in their forms. Still, 67% of the student body both checked out a book and remembered to fill out a form telling us about it. (For comparison, only 53% of the student body both checked out a book during Book-A-Thon and submitted a form telling us about it in 2021-2022. Definite improvement there.)

6880: The number of short stories printed from our short story machine

We are one of the few (only?) public middle schools in the U.S. to have a Short Édition short story dispenser. The students love it and use it constantly. Teachers frequently come by (or send a student) to grab a story from it as well. We have a block schedule which features 90-minute classes, and some of our teachers have gotten into the habit of using 3 or 5 minute stories from our machine as brain breaks in the middle of class. 

Our Short Story Machine is also the centerpiece of our three yearly Short Story and Art contests. We publish the winning entries to our Spooky (October), Winter (January), and Spring (April) Writing / Art contests on our machine. After we announce the winners, there is always a rush of students coming in to print out their own copies of their classmates’ work from the machine. 

Last year, students and teachers printed 6880 short stories and comics from our Short Story machine – roughly 13 short stories per student (Spooky!)

332: The number of class visits to the library in 2022-23

During the 2022-23 school year, 332 classes visited the library to work on various research projects. We also had 735 individual student visits to check out books, work in smaller groups, or do homework. Four classes (Spanish, Marine Biology, Drama, and Art) used the library as a mini-art gallery to display artwork of various types this year. It was absolutely wonderful to have students come into the library to admire and discuss their schoolmates’ work.

In short, it was a wonderful year, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Fingers crossed for 2023-2024.

Related Links:

A year-end report and why it matters (Caterpickles)