School Culture and the Library

Andrew NCHS Class of 2014

In preparation for tomorrow's edweb.net/emergingtech webinar, Pitching the Library: How to Explain What School Librarians Do, I wanted to share a project one of our New Canaan High School seniors created for his documentary filmmaking class last year. His assignment was to make a video that addressed school culture. He emailed me the day before he came down to capture most of the footage. Here is an excerpt of his email:

I am currently taking a Documentary Film class and our assignment is to create a film on a school "climate" Our group decided to choose the library media center as a focus for the film because when most if not all students think of the library, ... the library as enjoyable as it is. 

We were hoping to interview you about the library media center and factors about it. 

Hope to hear back from you,

Andrew

On the day of the interview, I was presented with 3 questions right before the filming. I wish I could remember exactly what they were, but I am certain I answered them in the video.

About three weeks later, he sent me a link to this:

My response follows:

OMG!!! I LOVE this! I am so honored that you chose this topic. I was a little scared when you first told me about it, but I am truly, truly, touched that you found our culture worthy of a documentary. I will be sharing this via Twitter and my blog, but I would love to include an interview with you about what inspired you to make this movie. We could do it on Skype if that is easier, but I would love to do it face-to-face if you are going to be around. What is your schedule for the next few days? Can you stop by? Again, thank you so much. I shared the link with [principal] Dr. Luizzi. I can't think of a better way to explain what the library means to our students. Thank you!

:-)ML

Here is a link to the subsequent interview.