Video tutorial: Locating books with the library’s online catalog

Here is a video tutorial about how to use the school library’s online catalog to look for books in the library. I’m asking teachers to consider sharing and reviewing this process with their students because being able to locate books through a library’s online catalog is an important life-skill.
https://youtu.be/Bm5jZz_I1TA

UCM’s Graduate Student Achievement Award

I am the appreciative recipient of a Graduate Student Achievement Award, as selected for 2025-2026 at the University of Central Missouri. With this video, I want to express my gratitude.
https://youtu.be/X_OvPf08_98

Book-Talk: Wish I Was a Baller by Amar Shah

I’d recommend this graphic-format memoir to a variety of young readers: especially kids who love sports, who aspire to careers in journalism, maybe even to kids who combine both interests.
https://youtu.be/7fSr8qYfONg

H.R. 7661: Truly disturbing and frightening!

As a follow-up to the essay I posted earlier, here is a brief video I uploaded today about H.R. 7661. Introduced in late February by U.S. Rep. Mary E. Miller, H.R. 7661 defines “sexually oriented material” to include any material that involves “gender dysphoria or transgenderism.” It’s truly disturbing and, in the words of Sam Helmick, current president of the American Library Association: “H.R. 7661 isn’t fundamentally about protecting kids. It’s about giving politicians broad authority to restrict whose stories are allowed on our shelves.”
https://youtu.be/UbDjU8uh7Jk

Cultural humility and a diverse library collection

Building and promoting a diverse library collection begins with materials selection. In an earlier writing I talked about the fact that communities served by libraries are increasingly diverse. “Race, ethnicity, language, physical and mental ability, socioeconomic status, gender expression, and sexual orientation are just a few ways diversity is reflected in [students’] lived experiences” (Hughes-Hassell, 2020, p. 21). My goal when building a library collection is to serve this increasingly diverse community by ensuring variety among the books in the library’s collection.

SRCSA library ‘Top 25’ for 2025-2026

What books are students most frequently checking out from SRCSA library?

Most popular types of books in SRCSA library

From among 3,318 circulations so far this school year (from Aug. 16, 2025 to March 9, 2026), what were the most popular types of books checked out from SRCSA library?

West Coast’s ‘largest book club’ to feature ‘They Called Us Enemy’

One Book, One Coast is a shared community reading program among more than 194 library systems in California, Oregon, and Washington that will read and discuss George Takei’s graphic-format memoir “They Called Us Enemy” this spring. Contact your local library system and encourage it to join in if you don’t see it listed among participating systems.

Scholastic Book Fair at SRCSA

Scholastic Book Fair took place this past week at Santa Rosa Charter School for the Arts, bringing with it a fresh infusion of new books for the school library. ’Tis now my happy task to prepare these awesome books for use. Appreciation to the many volunteers who made Scholastic Book Fair possible!