It is challenging promoting books during distance learning.
Teachers who are teaching from home just don’t have access to the physical library.
Often times, teachers will send an email requesting a book. They even pop in first thing in the morning to look for a book they’d like to use that day to support their teaching.
Because of this, they don’t see the books that are new to the library. They don’t see the books that are on display.
One way to get around this is with a You’ve Been Book’d program.
You’ve Been Book’d is a book promotion program that provides classrooms with books to read aloud. I first heard about it in the Future Ready Librarians Facebook Group.
You’ve Been Book’d is a great way to:
After first hearing about You’ve Been Book’d, I got started with designing informational fliers and purchasing some sweet bags for our schoolwide program.
It was up and running pretty quickly and was a huge hit. Teachers love getting gifted a bag of books to share with their students!
Hosting a You’ve Been Book’d Program
With the pandemic, You’ve Been Book’d has taken on a new look. Particularly with part of the staff teaching in person and the other part teaching remotely.
For those teaching in the building, the program remains fairly similar. Teachers get a bag of books to read aloud to their class. Although, instead of passing the bag off to a grade level teammate, they return the bag to the library.
This provides the opportunity to quarantine and wipe the books down. Then deciding which to pass on to another teacher.
Fliers that area just a click & print make it even easier to explain what to do with the bag of books!
It is important to keep remote teachers engaged in schoolwide events. Book promotion is no different!
As long as there is an eBook platform available, remote teachers can be Book’d!
Our district eBook platform is MackinVIA. It is synced to Clever which makes logging in super simple for all patrons.
There are 2 potential ways to BOOK teachers through MackinVIA.
One way is to create a group.
With this, you would create a group called Grade 2’s Been Book’d. Pop a few different books into the group for teachers to choose from.
A benefit of this is that there would be a number of books available for teachers to choose from. Another benefit is that you could book an entire group of teachers at once, including those that are teaching in-person.
One of the downsides of this is that anyone can access the group and checkout the books in that group.
The second way to book remote teachers is to create assignments in MackinVIA.
One benefit of this is that a time frame can be set for the assignment.
This makes the book unavailable to anyone else. Which means the book cannot be checked out while it is assigned.
Teachers get a unique code to access that book.
One of the downsides of this method is that only one book can be assigned in an assignment. This means that each books has a unique code.
Creating a virtual or remote You’ve Been Book’d program keeps the school reading. It also encourages everyone to use the eBook platform. Which mean those statistics of usage and circulation will increase!
You’ve Been Book’d does not have to be limited to MackinVIA!
It can also be created with Destiny Collections, EPIC, and more!
After creating the digital version of You’ve Been Book’d, teachers need to be surprised with it!
These editable templates are perfect for a You’ve Been Book’d treat! They give teachers all of the info they need to access their book(s).
