Atlanta Archdiocese Media Specialist Meeting

March 18, 2003

 

The third and final meeting of the Atlanta Archdiocese Media Specialists was held at Immaculate Heart of Mary School.

 

Jim Boone from Econoclad was the first presenter.  He offered reduced costs on Accelerated Reader tests with the purchase of 50 or more books.  The cost would be $.99 as opposed to the $2.58 charged by AR.   He also talked about Sagebrush’s Benchmarc tool, which is provided free at the Sagebrush site.  This can be used for collection development and cleaning up your catalog.

  Jim also mentioned that Dekalb County has expanded their reading bowl and is looking for participants from all over the states – including the private schools.

  Rhoda Mayfield from the Gale group presented on the Gale group’s on-line subscription databases.  She showed the new elementary database (K-6) called Kid Infobits.  They are offering a free trial at http://trials.galegroup.com/K12/.  The database includes Gale’s reference material as well as magazines and newspapers.  The cost per site will be $495.00.

  For high schools, Rhoda offered the Opposing Viewpoints database.  This includes Current Controversy that is geared to lower reading levels.  There is a free trial through April 15th.  User id:  term, Password: paper.

  Debbie Massengil presented from Marshal Cavendish/Turtleback/Demco.  She is offering a 22% discount for the Archdiocese through Turtleback.  They have a 97% fill ratio and will provide 2 shipments within 45 days.  She also offered reduce pricing on some reference material from Marshal Cavendish. 

  Angela Williams provided an update on Battle of the Books.  She passed out a schedule for the final competition at OLV on April 3rd.  Schools involved are to e-mail Angela with names of students and chaperone’s participating on April 3rd.  Librarians will be helping with the games held between the first competition and the final competition.  Librarians also need to check to ensure that all students can have their picture taken for the Georgia Bulletin.  Some schools mentioned the problem they were having with transportation and that this may be an issue in the years to come.

  Robin Tanis gave an update on the electronic database subscriptions.  This year there will be no consortium.  Most of the vendors will honor special pricing but there can be no central billing.  This will allow more individual choice.   The renewal date for the databases is September 1st.   All contracts require the signature of the principals not the media specialists.  Robin passed out pricing sheets for Grolier, Gale, EBSCO and Nettrekker.

  Schools interested in Nettrekker need to contact them by April 1st.

  Pat Hodges volunteered to find out subscription information on World Book.  Robin will e-mail the pricing on E-library.

  It has been confirmed that private schools can access Galileo by obtaining a school library card. 

  Hannah Martin mentioned that each principal should approve a purchase order before ordering any of the on-line subscriptions.

  The meetings for next year were tentatively scheduled.  They are as follows:

  September 25, 2003 at Pius

January 13, 2004 at St. John Neuman

March 9, 2004 at St. Peter Claver.

  Valerie and Marc McMullan presented information about Follett and Titlewave. 

  There was a short discussion on summer reading.  

 

 Laura Ayala

St. Thomas More School