The school’s library officially closed for the year on Friday, April 19 to prepare for the upcoming summer break and to allow for Librarian Rachel Miller to shift her focus to another important part of the year: testing.
Miller also serves as the school’s testing coordinator, which means she organizes, monitors, and administers the tests. She spends most of her day making sure everything goes according to plan. She simply does not have the time to manage the library and be the test coordinator simultaneously.
“We don’t have the staffing available to put a substitute teacher in the library for all of that time, so the best solution is to shut it down,” said Miller.
Students who would like to check out a book from the library after it closes on April 19 are only allowed to do so if they need it for one of their classes.
Returning the books is easier than checking them out. Miller will still be around after the library closes, so if there are any books that need to be returned, you can try to flag down Miller to return them. If you are unable to catch Miller, you can leave your book in the box in the guidance office.
There will still be recognition awards given out to the library’s patrons on Friday, May 10. The prizes will be randomly selected from the sign-in log, and most visits, and there may even be some surprise awards as well.
“The library staff and I love our patrons so much, so we will definitely be celebrating with library awards,” said Miller.
Miller is not only the school test coordinator and librarian but also the freshman English Honors teacher.
“The biggest struggle is knowing that something for one role is faltering while I’m working on something for another role. My ultimate goal for myself no matter what job I have is to encourage people to read and help them understand how powerful books can be,” said Miller.
Miller is making some improvements to the library. This summer will kick off the last leg of the nonfiction revitalization project. So now students or anyone who would like to check out a book can easily find and check out their books. New signage will also be installed to help students find books more easily. These changes will be great for the library, considering that there have been 6,000 student visits to the library this year.
“In the future, I hope our library sees more teacher collaboration. In the past I have worked with English teachers extensively, but also Spanish, Ag, social studies, and science. I offer a lot of services to teachers to help make their jobs easier, and I am open to helping in any way they need. Eventually, I would also like to see us increase our digital collection to make accessing e-books and other digital materials easier,” said Miller.
If you would like to know more about the school’s library, contact Miller or follow the library’s Instagram page @phs.lib.
