The Book Was Better Austin Edition The Book Was Better Austin Edition
Ezine Fall 2021 The book was better, Austin Edition | 1
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Table of Contents 4-5. Table of Contents 6-7. Letter From the Editor 8-9. The New Chapter in Austin’s Library 10-13. Anatomy of the Perfect Book 14-15. The Best Book Shops in Austin 16-19 Building a Great Coffee Shop
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20-21. COVID’s VS. School Libraries 22-25. UT’s Libraries 26-29. School Libraries 30-31. LASA’s Favorite Genres 32-33 School Librarians 34-37 YA Books
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Letter From the Editors We wanted to explore literature in our magazine, especially literature and libraries in austin. We talked about everything from the UT libraries to how covid affected the high school libraries. From librarians day-to-day life at their libraries to how coffee stores play a major role in literature in Austin. We wanted to really explore all of the different pieces of literature throughout Austin and how they’ve played a role in shaping the Austin that we know today. Throughout the magazine, we have plenty of different special articles and stories that’ll take you on a trip through Austin and what makes our literatury scene special. I hope that you enjoy reading our magazine and have a fun time exploring Austin.
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What’s up? I’m Avani Ganne. I’ve done a lot of hobbies from fencing to an Indian form of classical dance, and I listen to all genres of music (EXCEPT FOR COUNTRY). I especially like listening to Dayglow, Marina, and Sir Chloe, and doing Tae Kwon Do!
Hey, I’m Maryam. I’m really into fashion, art and movies. My favorite music artists are Måneskin, and Stromae. My favorite TV shows are Criminal Minds, and Hannibal. I also really like to paint in my free time.
Hello, my name’s Joaquin HernandezGold and some of my hobbies include playing soccer and listening to music. My favorite music artist is Mac Miller and I have one sibling named Isaiah, who went to LASA last year and now goes to CU Boulder for college.
Hi, my name is Lola Buitron. I like to read fantasy and mystery. My favorite books are the giver and we were liars. I like volleyball. I take it as a class and it’s my favorite class because It’s a really nice break from doing work and I get to play volleyball and see friends.
Ayo, I’m Jackson Adame-Covey, I am 14 and I wrestle for LASA Highschool. I like listening to music and watching television shows.
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The new chapter in austins public libraries October 6, 1960
Howson Banch Manchaca Road Branch 1974
Febuaury 1926
People will usually spend up to 30 minutes at this location. The Branch’s regional identity was dropped in 1980 and the branch is located at 5500 Menchaca Rd. Austin, Tx 78745. Photo courtesy of Austin Public Libraary
Austin Public Library
The Austin Public lbrary cost $125 Milllion to build. It also has 20 libraries, some of which will be on this timeline from 1926-2009. Photo courtesy of Austin Public Library
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Little Walnut Branch
This library was built to mainly serve North Austin and North Travis county. It’s located at 835 W Rundberg Ln, Austin, Tx 78758 and first opened on Febuaury 9, 1979. Photo courtesy of Austin Public Library
The best time to visit the Howson Branch is at 1pm. The branch is named after Emilie Wheelock Howson and there’s a picture of her at the branch. The branch is located at 2500 Exposition Blvd. Austin , Tx, 78703. Photo courtesy of Austin Public LIbrary
Febuauary 9 1979
Yarborough Branch Hamptan Branch
January 1999
This branch was named after Austin Civic leader, Will Hampton, who died on Septemebr 24, 1996. It’s located on 5215 Convict Hill Rd, Austin Tx 78749. Photo courtesy of Austin Public Library
The Yarborough Branch was a former theatre. The branch was originially started in 1956 and is located at 2200 Hancock Dr, Austin, Tx 78756. Photo courtesy of Austin Public Library
May 30 2009 April 26 1997
Spicewood Springs Branch
North Village Branch
November 4 1985
The best time to visit the library at 12 p.m. The branch actually begun in 1979, and circulates around 30,00 books anually. It’s located at 8637 Spicewood Springs Rd, Austin Tx 78759. Photo courtesy of Austin Public Library
They officially opened in the North Village Shopping center. The library has only moved once in the past 30 years and has one of the biggest DVD collections in all of the APL branches. It’s located at 2505 Steck Ave, Austin, Tx 78757. Photo courtesy of Austin Pulic LIibrary
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High schools AND COVID The effect of covid on high-schools and their libraries BY AVANI GANNE
Picture of students in the beginning of the school year decorating a banner that now hangs from the wall in the front of the library, courtesy of Elizabeth Switek.
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The school year has just begun and the world is still struggling, contrary to the thoughts of many when the world was first notified of this tragically life-changing event. Students walk the halls feeling overwhelmed by the sudden resume of their life, as if they have been dunked into ice cold water and immediately put onto the track to run. They’re still suffering from the shivering cold while the competition goes on without care for the students.
into school is; especially when it comes to their interpersonal relationships with the other students. “It was their one place that they could be before school, and it was the one place that was open after school,” Switek said. “So, you’re going to sit here. Maybe you’re more likely to check out a book. I feel that last year for whoever was on campus, the precedent was set that it’s a safe place. It’s hopefully a welcoming place.”
Since the year of 2020, COVID-19 has impacted those who attend school (especially middle and high schoolers), and are in the most important part of their lives when it comes to discovering and creating their future, personalities and identities. Even though they may not be the first people that most think of when talking about the isolation and severe disconnection with other students, librarians have seen it first-hand. Many of them work to help these kids, from scheduling weekly arts and craft projects, to installing a slide in the middle of the library. Elizabeth Switek has been the librarian of the Liberal Arts and Science Academy for around two years, but her career as a librarian started 17 years ago. She is a core member of the LASA school and staff. As someone who has been here even when the majority of students stayed at home, she knows first-hand how important the reintegration of students
To combat that issue, she has been hosting arts and crafts every week for students to have fun in an artistic way and make friends. It’s a new tradition that started in the year of 2020-2021, and still continues this year because of the positive effect it had on students in the previous year. “Ninth grade is when you’re going to make a lot of new friends that are going to be your friends for the next three or four years or even longer.” Switek said. “So how do you do that? Plus, you’re stressed about all this stuff, and having that crafting table where it was chill and quiet and, we would just sit and people would just chat and talk and have conversations. And this group, these two girls came and there’s these two boys, and they don’t know each other. But by the end, they’d be talking about something now, whether they ever talked again, I don’t know.”
Shawn Mauser is the
school librarian and is on the frontline of tech support at the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders, and has been for 15 years since the school opened in 2007. They said that due to the harmful effects of COVID-19, students should be given room to breathe and help to cope with the extreme changes their whole world has suffered. “As far as our approach to the kids, I’m really proud of our faculty,” Mauser said. “They really worked hard to keep the wellbeing of the students at the forefront of their mind, and the kids might disagree, but the reality was that there were a lot of discussions about how much leeway we needed to give because everyone was in their “grief brain” and when you’re involved in grief, which we all were; this experience has triggered grief and PTSD for a lot people, your brain does not work at its optimum.” Mauser said that while many people have spoken about the “acceleration of learning” for students to catch them up on what the Coronavirus has made them miss, it is much more imperative to focus on the mental health and overall wellbeing of these students who have gone through the trauma of a pandemic. “I know there’s been a lot of stuff on the news lately about “How are we going to accelerate learning?” and it’s that we’re not worried about accelerating learning right
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A group of students taking a picture in the main part of the library for Hispanic Heritage Month, courtesy of Elizabeth Switek now, we’re worried about taking care of kids and making sure they’re okay, so that they can move forward and learn.” Mauser said. “You can’t force those things because grief won’t let you, and trauma won’t let you. You have to deal with those things when they come about. And if that means that you’re not a straight-A student right now, then that’s okay because your brain needs other things in life, so so I was really proud of that.” Ann Richards has been focused on the re-introduction
of students into their life resembling previously in the one they had before the pandemic while still keeping the students’ mental health in mind. “There’s been a lot of discussion and a lot of figuring out how we could give the kids a sense of normalcy,” Mauser said. “Yes, we expect you to do your work to a point where it was comforting that this was going to happen on this day, but also having the flexibility to go ‘Okay, your world just
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completely melted, so let’s take a step back and it’s going to be okay.’” Many other schools like Anderson High are also doing what they can to re-integrate students back into the school environment. Librarian and Tech Support at Anderson High School, Shelby Counts has worked at the school for five years, and is passionate about the students there and how she can help them.
Counts said that throughout most of the 20202021 school year, she acted as a “virtual librarian,” always there doing her best even when it was over a screen. “Through Zoom, I facilitated online book clubs, research lessons, library orientations, online resources review, programming events like March Book Madness, etc,” Counts said. “I also spent a lot of time as tech support via email for password issues, chromebook issues, online resource questions, etc.” In addition, Counts said that she noticed that the Anderson High library is as popular as ever, averaging around 300 visitors a day and having implemented interesting activities, and even the smaller details to ensure that students The library in the morning in the front of the room with the cart feel comfortable in the library. holding the books for Banned Books Week ready for students to come and take a look, courtesy of Elizabeth Switek “We offer self-directed makerspace activities that also been missing during the worst added books they asked for l bring in students to the library like Amulet, Bone, and Raina part of the pandemic where beyond just checking out a Telgemeier to our shelves in a they weren’t able to attend book, getting tech support, continued attempt to make the school or see their friends. studying, doing research, or transition back to face to face needing to print,” Counts said, learning even smoother.” “One thing I noticed “Last week we just put out upon the students’ return to beads and cord and that As COVID continues the school is that many of brought in a lot of students to be a large factor in both them are seeking out books who might not usually come to they remember from before the the lives of students and the library as often.” the decisions of the schools pandemic (the last time they they attend, each librarian spent in the school library)...” All three librarians said mentioned things they had that they noticed students Counts said. “It seems to almost achieved and will continue reading books that they had to make their libraries safe be a comfort to them. So for read before and enjoyed; spaces for these kids in the our 9th graders, that reporting that the kids were foreseeable future. Well, even going to familiar stories for that was 7th grade, and I have more so than they already. sense of comfort they had were, of course.
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Best book Shops in Austin From Half Price Books to Book people, Here's the scoop Book People Was founded in1988 by Ted and Nicola Smart in the heart of downtown Austin. Since it’s inception, and to this day, the iconic store is one of the most beloved authenically-Austin book shops in the city. Book People is located on 603 N Lamar BLVD.
Book People downtown framed between trees. Photo provided by Book People.
Malvern Books is one of the most exciting book shops in the city of Austin. One of the biggest draws to Malvern Books is their plethora of lesser known authors and features. It is located on 513 W 29th st.
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The colorful displa Monkey Wrench B Picture Provided b Monkey Wrench B
The wonderful sign of Malvern Books. Picture provided by Malvern Books
ay of Books. by Books.
Half Price books is one of the most cultured, interesting widespread book stores in Austin. HPB primarily sells used books and goods and features a wonderful variety of unique books, authors, collectable goods, and souvenirs.
The large sign of HPB. Picture Provided by Half Brice Books.
Barnes and Noble is one of the oldest, most established book shops on the planet as its been aroun since the late1800’s. Besides being one of the oldest book shops on the planet, the store also has one of the largest book selections in Austin.
One of the many locations of Barnes & Nobles. Picture Provided by Barnes & noble
Monkey Wrench Books is a local book store off of 110 Loop Blvd E. The store is known for its off the wall vibe and overall uniqueness. Monkey Wrench Books is also known for being primarily volunteer based and having a radical, new-age store.
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COFFEE
BOOKS & & people
How to craft a wonderful store environment
A tree sprawls across the front of Houndstooth Coffee. Phot taken by Jackson Adame-Covey.
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A beautiful display on the interior of Houndstooth Coffee. Photo taken by Jackson Adame-Covey
You walk into a coffee shop and experience the wafting scent of roasted beans sifting into your nose. The whole shop is entranced in a thick wonderful aura that begs you to sit down and relax. You just have to take up a seat and read a book. It is wonderful. As you sit down, you begin to wonder what exactly the people at the store do to keep such a nice place. Houndstooth Coffee is a wonderfully sleek, modern-inspired coffee shop with multiple locations in and around Austin.
Houndstooth was founded by brothers Sean and Paul Henry in 2010 with the idea of creating a great, quality environment that anyone can enjoy being at the forefront. Over the years, Houndstooth has expanded throughout Austin and Dallas, though has remained one of the most genuinely home-built coffee shops in Texas. Holy Grounds Coffee shop is a coffee and book shop located on 301 East 8th Street Austin, TX 78701 in St.David’s Episcopal Church. Holy Grounds is one of the
most authenticallyAustin Coffee shops in the city and has marked itself as one of the most hospitable places in Austin. In this story, we will be studying and looking at how each of the above shops attempts to foster a great environment for their customers and employees. Taylor Cloyd is a manager at HolyGrounds Coffee Shop and previously a barista for many years. She loves to build a calm environment for her customers to enjoy their drinks. “If you’re
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A wonderful sign on the entire of Hounstooth Cofffee. Photo taken by Jackson Adame Covey
looking for a safe space to unwind, relax and enjoy a great company including yourself and kind baristas. Holy Grounds is the place to be,” Cloyd said. “... That’s the way I like to kind of describe it.” Holy Grounds placement in a rougher part of Austin primes it to be a shining light in the sometimes dangerous aura of Six Street. The phrase “safe haven” wonderfully describes Holy Grounds and what it aspires to be. The serenity aspect of Holy also plays a large role in crafting such a warm, inviting environment. “I would say our store is special because it is a safe haven in downtown Austin,” Cloyd said. “We’re pretty close to Sixth Street. So dirty six, not that those places aren’t safe, but there’s connotations. We’re like a serenity in the hustle and bustle of downtown Austin. We’re like a serene place that you can find that you can unwind and calm down in the grand scope of downtown. Serenity is important to Taylor when trying to manage the immense amount of stress and
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daily to-dos working at Holy Grounds. Her mindset while problem solving also serves to smooth the entire process out, aiding in creating a store that invites any and everyone to their doors. The lack of anger and bad energy in Holy Grounds also serves in a similar way. Holy Grounds’ place as a calm in the storm, Cloyd says, can be attributed to one thing. “ [The] number one thing is Customer service, [it] is very important. That is being nice and kind to everybody and I guess getting to know them without pressing them but just kind of getting to know who they are, what their names are.” Cloyd said when asked what she does daily to improve the environment at her store. “ So they can establish relationships with the coffee shop and want to come here because they know the people at the shop.” At Holy Grounds the importance of community shines through above everything else, with Cloyd attributing her success in fostering that
community to her boss, and head chef, Ray Trono. “I would say my [biggest inspiration is] my boss actually,” Cloyd said. “I have a higher up. His name is Raymond Trono, and he actually runs another company inside St. David’s church called Cafe Divine, and they’re like a restaurant/ catering restaurant. He inspires me every day to be better, to provide, to be kind to everybody, and to work hard.” Once again, Holy Grounds’ ideals show with their devotion to serving their community, spreading their ideals, and creating a safe haven throughout downtown Austin. These ideals of spreading kindness through coffee and fellowship through customer service connections heavily contribute to their environment within the shop. “I would love to [get more customers],” Cloyd said. “Maybe not customers in a negative way of like trying to obtain a certain thing. But just getting to know the people who live in Austin. Getting to know more people [and] getting to meet them. Having that avenue of like, sharing kindness through coffee and just kind of that fellowship and hospitality.” A safe, relaxing, kind place is what Holy Grounds strives to be. These features all make Holy Grounds one of the premiere spaces in Austin for readers, coffee enjoyers, and writers alike. Paul Henry is one of the founder’s of Houndstooth
The exterior of Houndstooth Coffee. Photo Taken by Jackson AdameCovey
Coffee, an Austin-founded coffee shop that has established itself as one of the best coffee shops in the Texas area. The hospitality, Paul Henry says, makes Houndstooth special. Paul Henry has stated multiple times that Houndstooth’s hospitality is extremely important in making it an extremely comfortable place, and creates a store where you feel fine to be who you are and have a great cup of coffee. “People have made connections with our baristas.” Henry said. “They’ve made connections with each other in the cafe. Hopefully, our hospitality will lend itself to people remembering that this is the place where they feel like they want to go and where they want to spend money.” Once again
Houndstooth’s hospitality shines through as the number one thing that makes Houndstooth Coffee a wonderful place to be. That and their innate human connections both help the shop emanate warmth. “[We can not start] forgetting who we are, which is a hospitality company,” Henry says. “People like the way they feel when they come to our cafes, and we want to try and maintain that as much as possible.” At the end of the day, Houndstooth simply wishes to make people’s day with a comfortable place to sit down, read, and have a great cup of coffee. This is their mission, and what makes them so uniquely warm. Houndstooth Coffee and Holy Grounds Cafe share one common ideal: personal connections
make companies great. Whether it’s having unique connections with their customers and creating a safe haven in downtown Austin or spreading hospitality throughout each of their stores, both companies cite customer relationships as their greatest aid in creating a warm, lovely environment. Going forward Paul Henry said he wants to simply keep their human and employee connections good and not necessarily change what they’re doing but keep doing the good stuff they are. For Taylor Cloyd and Holy Grounds, going forward it’s all about trying to continue to attract as many people as possible to their doors with their serene mindset and overall kindness.
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THE IDEAl book BY: AVANI GANNE
Interesting Plotline
Arguably the most important part of any story, many people say that the most important thing in any book. no matter its genre, is its storyline. The protagonist getting captured by the villain or quest to find true love; any way you put it, it’s the backbone of the whole story.
Captivating Beginning
It’s the hook that draws the fish in, isn’t it? Many avid readers who’d be very interested in a certain book, feel themselves turning away from it when te beginning fails to pull them in. It’s perfectly fine to start slow with exposition,ust don’t drag it on for too long.
Clear Imagery
Even if you’re writing a non-fictional piece of writing, the use of imagery and figurative language is imperative to any story. A “tall, dark, and brooding pricess“ is much more appealing than a mere “princess“ of course!
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Influenced by the answers of active readers, this is a look-see into the puzzle of the “perfect book.” In other words. this is what readers look most for as they read, right here to help as you write.
Realistic Characters
Love them or hate them, good characters are more than likely to be anyone’s favorite part of the book. The trope doesn’t matter; if you have good 3D characters with hopes and flaws like any real person, you’re set!
Strong Syntax
Though it’s not what immeditely comes to mind when you’re thinking about piecing together the perfect story, sentence structure is incredibly important. It dictates the flow of your writing, and if you demonstrate a bad use of it in your writing, you might findthat readers aren’t able to continue reading.
Satisfying Ending
Just as there is always great beginning to any good book, there bust be an ending that ties together the loose ends and leaves your readers happy with how each plot point ended, excluding cliff-hangers of course. There can’t be loose ends hanging around or else your readers won’t be able to understand the time-line of it
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A trip into literature
This is a photo of Robert B. Rowling Hall on the UT campus. The photo was taken around 2 p.m. on Monday, October 11. The student, Cole F.(AHS Freshman) is exploring the UT campus for fun.
Whats been going on at the UT libraries over the past couple of years? When you walk around the University of Texas campus, there’s a hidden treasure that is often overlooked. You walk around and look for an unusual, rectangular-looking building. As you start to walk towards this building, you see things that you didn’t notice at first. You see beautiful paintings in the window, enticing you to explore deeper. You’ve stumbled onto one of UT’s famous libraries,w the Ransom Center. The UT libraries aren’t talked about enough. There are lots of librarians that have
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interesting stories about their work that they want to share. Some of these librarians explained their day-to-day occurrences and what made them want to become a librarian. Along with this, the libraries have been changing a lot over the past couple years. John Kuhn works at the Ransom Center, where he specializes in collecting works from many different authors. He believes the Ransom Center and the University of Texas are special places.
Photo courtesy from Jim Kuhn, at the HarryRansom center. Walking around the UT campus, photographer Jim Kuhn takes a photo of the Harry Ransom center during the middle of the day around 1p.m. A still photo portraying the archaic Ransom center in its best beauty.
The Ransom Center “I’d say the thing that distinguishes the Ransom Center the most is the collections,”John Kuhn said. “There’s a lot of living creative artists whose work is held at the Ransom Center, from all different kinds of walks of life and types of creative activity. We’ve got people who write novels, people write poetry, people who are actors and producers of plays and movies. We’ve got the collections of photographers, and fine artists.”
“UT has a really incredible ability to be very large, but finds ways to pay attention to each person individually, in a really positive way,” Barnett said. Barnett even talks about his own experience at UT. He had gone there for college and knows the personal experience first hand. “I’ve been there for a long time,” Barnett said. “I went there as a student, and I’ve been there ever since. And I’ve seen them make a lot of changes over the years to keep trying to find ways to help each student have an individual experience.”
Doug Barnett, the Chief of Staff for the Vice Provost at UT, oversees the university’s many libraries. It is one of the largest university libraries in the country and caters to many different student and Margaret Schlankely works faculty needs. It is a reflection at both the Dolph Briscoe of the university. Center for American literature
and the UT library as a librarian. She said there were many different factors that made UT library collections a lot different than other libraries. She also talked about what her favorite collection was, and why it’s her favorite collection. “I think that the letters and the materials and the James Farmer collections are things that I go to a lot, but also the UT archive,” Schlankey said. “That has stuff about when they integrated UT, and the issues that they had, and the reluctance that the university had to integrate,” Those aren’t the only things that make the UT libraries special. Schlankey has worked there as a librarian for a very long time and knows each part of the
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Photo courtesy of Dolph Briscoe Center This is a photo taken of the Briscoe center. It showis one of their many exhibits throug the museun.
Briscoe Center. She also explained how the Briscoe Center had lots of special collections. “I think the thing that differentiates us is our focus, and we have a very broad focus,” Schlankey said. “I mean it’s all history, but we have materials on Texas, and the American South, we have materials on photojournalism news media, we have stuff on
the oil industry. These are all things that dovetail together. We cast a wide net, but it’s all US History. It’s all related to US History. That’s what makes us [special].” Kuhn talks about how the libraries are starting to be utilized more and more. Along with this, he brings up the fact that collections and books are starting to get digitized and how that’s been
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affecting the Ransom Center. “UT has a really strong library system,” Kuhn said. “One thing that is true of UT as well as other academic libraries, is that the numbers of circulation of physical materials are going down. But the number of uses of electronically available resources is going up. That’s for the general libraries. For the Special Collections
libraries, the use of our digital collections is only going up and up and up.” Kuhn also talks about how the number of students visiting and taking classes at the Ransom Center have been increasing. “We’re trying hard to get more and more students into our classrooms at the Harry Ransom Center,” Kuhn said. “For four or five years, recently, the number of students that were coming into our classrooms kept going up, it finally plateaued at around 8,000 students.” While the number of students has been slowly going up, the COVID pandemic had a big impact on UT. Not only did the libraries get shut down, but the whole campus was mostly closed down for a couple of months. Kuhn talked about how the libraries were affected during this time. “[During COVID] we gave away a whole lot of digital images,” Kuhn said. “Ordinarily, we charge for them, but because we were closed and couldn’t provide full service, we were giving them away.” Schlankey also talks about how COVID affected the Briscoe Center, another library on UT campus. These were two separate libraries, so COVID had a significant and special effect on each of them as libraries. “We pivoted fast, and people had to start working from
home, but we got [a lot of] people set up with [other] projects,” Schlankey said. “A lot of people started working on getting resources ready for that. We kept doing references, we started doing remote references. If we had electronic materials that could answer a question, then we did that.” This wasn’t the only effect that COVID had on the Briscoe Center, Schlankey said. She also talked about what she and her coworkers had to do when they worked online and in person for the library. She explained how they needed to form cohorts so that there would only be a set amount of people in the building. “We developed cohorts,” Schlankey said. “[We] had cohorts, [where] max [6 people] would be in the building. We’ve got a big building and we developed a sign-in system. We are all still wearing masks in our building. So I think we adapted really, really well.” Not only did the libraries have to adapt, but the college did too, Barnett explains. “The university went from being concerned about COVID to going completely online in about a month,” Barnett said. “We had to really scramble and work hard to figure out how to do that. And it caused us to shift a lot of what our work was doing. We sent all of our staff home. A lot of things that we used to do [couldn’t be done].”
Kuhn explained why it’s so important to work in person at a library, especially at one of the UT libraries. “It’s not the work that we would have expected to do because really, at a library, like the Ransom Center, you have to work with the physical objects.” Kuhn said In addition, Kuhn brought up the fact that he thought that the Ransom Center, and most libraries at UT are undervalued for what they really are. “One of the things about the Ransom Center is that it’s world famous, but it’s, in fact, one small piece of UT Austin,” Kuhn said. “One of the goals that I would have, would be that every UT student finds a reason to come to the Ransom Center. Many of them don’t know anything about it, but there are [around] 50,000 students. If every single student came through the Ransom Center at least once during their time at UT, that would be great.” There is lots happening on the UT campus. In fact, if you check the UT calendar right now, you can find many different events happening on the website such as band performances or live football and basketball games. But when you go to visit UT, make sure to check out its libraries. You’ll find some incredible and unique treasures and meet some interesting librarians.
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Austin Schoo;l Libraries
how school librarians are doing after covid By:: Maryam Abdulazeez So many books to organize, so many to get rid of, so many that need to be bought. God, how do people find time to do all this? Read alouds? Online books? That too? Lets face it, being a school librarian is a tough job and they don’t get enough recognition. From organizing the books to helping plan events for the students, these people do a lot. Douglas Temple, the librarian at Gullett Elementary School says that being a school librarian is never a dull moment. “There’s just so many different things going on,” Temple said. “So many different kinds of hats that I have to wear throughout the day.” Temple was a teacher in Asheville, North Carolina. He was a second grade teacher that taught all subjects. “So I realized that, being a classroom teacher, there are things I loved about it, but there are also things that I was
not enjoying,” Temple said. After he realized that, he discovered that the school library was more his thing so he made that choice. Yvonne Steckel, a librarian at Lively Middle School says that being a librarian is a busy job. “If you build your library, so people want to come, it’s very busy,” Steckel said. Like Temple, Steckel was also a teacher before becoming a librarian. She was a science teacher that taught sixth grade. To become a school librarian, you need to have a masters, and a teaching certificate. You also have to have at least two years of teaching experience. Steckel already had a masters in public affairs from The Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. All she needed to do now was go back to UT and take five more graduate classes to get her school librarian certificate.
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Other than organizing books and taking care of them, they also have other jobs at the library. For example, building the collection. “For example if I notice that we don’t have a lot of books in Spanish, I want to focus on that and build that part of the collection,” Steckel said. Having really diverse books is always one of her main priorities. At Gullett, Temple sees all the classes. They come every week for a 30 minute block. “During that time you do a read aloud or library lesson with them, and then help them select books to check out,” Temple said. He also has the library open for independent checkout and research. “So there are a lot of additional things outside of just the library stuff that take up a big chunk of every day,” Temple said. “It really takes a team to run the library.He relies on volunteers to help him sell library books that they don’t need anymore because things like
that are really time consuming.” Buying books and getting rid of books is another responsibility Steckel and Temple have to do. “We hold meeting books, which is kind of like retiring older books that we no longer need in the library so that we can keep the collection more up to date and relevant and responsive to the needs of our students,” Temple said. Steckel had the idea of having a free book fair to get rid of all the books they didn’t need anymore. “And I was just like, you know, here’s a book, take some free books, it was great for getting everybody ready for summer reading and everything,” When asked what she thinks the difference between public librarians and school librarians is, Stecke said in public libraries you get a lot of colleagues that are also librarians around you. “And I think that would feel a lot different, you know,” Steckel said. “And they can just focus on those things. And like, they can do programming. I do programming too, but I’m also doing all this. Like, you’re kind of a one person shop. When you do all of those things. And in a public library, they divide the things out.” Temple said that he knew he wanted to be an elementary school librarian as opposed to
A place to hang out and read at the library at Gullet Elementary. Photo taken by Rand Noaman.
middle school or high school. “I loved teaching, I wanted to stay in education and work with young children,” Temple said. “I never thought about being a librarian until after I had started teaching. It’s not one of those things that crossed my mind before I started.But getting to know the librarian at the school where I taught, and also talking with other school librarians. Just in doing some research, it sounded like exactly the type of thing I was looking for. And so I went for it and, and was very happy that I did it. This is my 11th year as a school librarian.” An obstacle that Steckel
has faced in her career as a librarian is staying flexible when COVID hit. “Last year, we needed a place where the people that were on medical leave can leave their students,” Steckel said. The teachers would leave their students in the library. “It was hard in the sense that I couldn’t have a normal library. But it was important to be able to do that, because that’s what the school needed at the time.”. Temple said that funding is always a challenge. “Our library budgets are pretty
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Temple said. “So it requires a lot of fundraising to make enough money to buy new books, and to get author visits and to do the programming stuff that builds excitement for the library program” One time, the school district thought about reducing the number of librarians in the dis-
trict and having one librarian cover more than one campus. “The only sense it made was financial. It would not have worked,” Temple said. “The only thing that they do is be able to check out and check in books, maybe. Important stuff would have to be gone.
sense it made was financial. It would not have worked,” Temple said. “The only thing that they do is be able to check out and check in books, maybe. Important stuff would have to be gone Another problem is finding material that represents the community of the school.
Computer area at the library at Gullett Elementary School. Photo taken by Rand Noaman.
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The library at Lively Middle School. Photo taken by Yvonne Steckel.
“So, there are a number of schools in north Austin that have very large Asian communities,” Temple said. And so trying to find books in those languages, or that represent those cultures in any way. can be [difficult].” Temple’s favorite project that he’s worked on is a really interesting one that has a nice story to it. It was at Pease Elementary school and at that school, they always had a big celebration on it’s anniversary every year, Like a birthday party. “And leading up to my first
year there,” Temple said. I had some fifth graders who were interested in learning more about the school’s history. And so I just found boxes and boxes of archival material, about school photographs and letters and all kinds of stuff like that dated back, you know, over 100 years. And so I started a project with a group of like, fifth grade, GT [Gifted and Talented] students, and some graduate students at UT, who were getting their master’s degree in archiving in the School of Information.” They all got together and went through and organized
the archives and cataloged everything. “It was totally student driven. It was like their interests sparked this project. And yeah, it was great.” Steckel said that if you still have a library book that you owe to another school, you can just give it to your current school and they will send it back for you. Temple said that volunteers are always welcome to help out at the library and he could use all the help he can get.
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How does your age affect your Reading BY LOLA BUITRON
For people of ages and maturities. They may like or gravitate towarda specifictype or genre ofbook. Here we can find out, Does your age really affect what kind of books you like to read. Well when asking a bunch of different age groups. The results are a mixed bad. The age groups that were asked were 0-12, 12-18, 18-30, 30+ It is up to you to decide what the results mean...
Age Group 0-12
Blue- 26.7 Orange- 20 Dark Purple- 6.7 Black-33.3 Light Purple- 13.3
Key Blue-Fantasy Orange-Fiction Dark Purple- Romance Black- Mystery Light Purple- Sci-Fi Mint Green- Horror Pink Red- Non-Fiction Green-Distopian
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?
Age Group 12-18 Blue-28.4 Orange-26.1 Dark Purple-2.3 Black-6.8 Mint Green-2.3 Pink Red-18.2 Green-13.6 Red- 2.3
Age Group18-30 Blue- 20 Orange- 13.3 Dark Purple- 20 Black-13.3 Mint Green- 6.7 Light Purple-6.7 Green-20
Age Group 30+ Orange- 31.3 Dark Purple-12.5 Black-12.5 Mint Green-6.3 Light Purple -6.3 Green-6.3 Blue-6.3
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A Guide to Peaceful Reading We all love reading, but sometimes it can be a little bit difficult to focus on what you’re reading when there’s too much going on. This guide is here to help you. Just follow these steps and you’ll have a wonderful time reading.
1 Drinks
Prepparing a drink before you start reading is a good idea. Any warm drink of your choosing. It could be tea, any kind of tea, or coffee, any kind of coffee.
2 Music
Some people can relax better when these when there is music playing. If you can still focus on your book while there is music playing in the background, then play some music. Good music to play is slow, calming music so that you can still focus on what you’re reading.
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3 Lighting
Good lighting is always important when reading. You need to be able to see the words obviously. Sit somewhere where a lot of sun comes in, or have a lamp near you.
4 Place
Sit somewhere nice, somewhere you feel good and comfortable. Sit at a table in your room, or on your bed. You could sit on a couch in your living room. If sitting on the floor is comfortable to you. then do that.
5 Mood
Be in the mood to read, if you’re not then you’re not going to enjoy it. For example, you can light some candles, get a comfy blanket, and make sure you’re well rested so that you can process the words in your book. Play some music if that makes you feel better.
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What are YA books
Finding more about Young adult reading within our libraries By: Lola Buitron For a very long time, there was a whole group of people not being appealed to within literature. Then young adults or YA came into the mix. YA is a relatively new thing. But it isn’t really a genre. Young adult is often classified as a genre of reading but that isn’t quite accurate. It is a large category of reading with many sub-genres within itself and its own tropes. A trope is a plot device, theme, character arc, or other storytelling elements that have become formulaic through repeated use. It is also a relatively new category. It was not as prevalent now as it was in the 70s or 80s. It was a very small genre. Alanna Graves, a youth librarian at Carver Public Library helps young adults and people of all ages find
books that people will enjoy. “I think that YA is one of those categories as you are growing up and you’re in high school,” Graves said “I think that this is an opportunity to really encourage kids to read. And if kids don’t see themselves reflected in books, why are they gonna become readers? And that part of my job is to encourage and foster a love of reading. But it’s important to me to find titles who can learn about themselves and reflect in literature.” So much of the way we contextualize books and our feelings about them relates to ourselves. It’s much easier to like characters that remind us of ourselves or have motivations, value systems, struggles, and backgrounds similar to ours.
New books display at Bowie High school Photo taken by Tara Leon
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There is not a lot of diversity within books, so when picking out the books they put into the library that is a checkmark on the things to consider. There’s still a major gap with diversity within books. “What I don’t like about YA is diversity and this is a challenge with the publishing industry as a whole, we need more diverse voices, we need more diverse books in general,” Graves said. There are movements to help increase diversity in young adult books. The We Need Diverse Books movement is loud and growing. We need a diverse movement and the demand for more diverse books within our libraries is available and accessible to us in general. So everyone can see themselves represented within literature.
However, the shift toward equality isn’t happening fast enough, so it’ll be a long time before publishing reaches parity. It’s important to be mindful that not everyone is able to see themselves represented in literature. But that doesn’t mean things aren’t changing. When asking Elizabeth Switek, a librarian at Lasa high school. “ Inclusion has definitely been increasing over the last 10 years in which both people are more aware of it,” And I feel like it’s increasing at the same rate. There’s a lot of white people who are writing books with diverse characters, and they themselves as an author are not diverse. I definitely saw authors not increasing as much, but the characters and books themselves are becoming more diverse.” said Switek. YA books are often looked at like a vacation or maybe Lighter reads than maybe adult books. When asked if people who wanted to read YA books are looking for an “easy read”, Switek said. “Maybe that’s okay. It depends on what you are in the mood for. And also, what is your brain allowing you to, you just want to be treated, sometimes you want something kind to switch to high school because I really liked it reading YA books, I’m like reading middle grade, but I really was kind of wanting to spend more time being able to read YA books because I read tons of these books for my own personal reading and so it’s nice to be able to be more interested in the books that I’m reading and trying to recommend to kids so as opposed to a middle school book.”
of light and easy. Like you just want to snack? You don’t want something super heavy. Maybe something easy to digest.” Publishers started to notice what kind of books were getting huge amounts of traction like “The book “The Outsiders’’ was so popular that it started to kind of change the publishing industry where they started to come out with more YA titles, fast forward to the 1990s. I think the 90s and early 2000nds was the first time that public libraries specifically started having enough books to make their own young adult separate collection.” said Graves. Essentially, YA novels are marketed towards young adults aged between 14 and 18. But not just teenagers read YA.Young-adult literature typically centers on teenagers. But while the publishing industry markets these books primarily to young adults, that’s not always who reads them. Approximately 55 percent of today’s YA readers are adults. Switek said, “When choosing what type of librarian to be one of the things that pushed her to be a high school librarian is ultimately wanted
New books being showcased in Stacked books Photo from Adobe stock
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It is much more widely accepted for adults to openly enjoy YA books now, though at one point it was viewed as embarrassing. For example, Tara Leon, the librarian at Bowie High School, said, “ I follow these people on Goodreads. There’s a group called Crazy for YA and they’re adults. So there are definitely groups of adults that follow YA.” YA books are also great for evoking nostalgia; they can remind older readers of their childhoods and teenage years, making them a comforting presence for those who just refuse to grow up and embrace their boring, often excitement-free adult lives. When picking books, librarians are considerate and attempt to acquire books for everyone’s interest. So getting some adult books but also thinking of what the kids will want to read. “I do a lot of research. I read the School Library Journal. I take recommendations from kids. Because I want to get books the kids will want” said Leon. Because Y.A. isn’t as subdivided on bookshelves, authors don’t need to worry about blending elements of different genres. They can write something that doesn’t fit into one particular genre. Which isn’t something that is very common or as easy to do with books aimed at different age groups or with adult books. “mystery, thriller, romance, fantasy, and Afrofuturism. Those would be genres. There are all of those within YA, it’s not just one” said Leon.
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YA is less about the age of the reader and more about the age of the protagonist. The thing about grown-ups is, they were all kids and teens once; thus we would all be able to identify with books that have more youthful heroes, as long as there’s sufficient plot and subjects to hold our advantage. “I’m not a kid anymore but when reading YA I get to remember kind of what that was like.” Graves said. A dominant part of any book’s success is its escapist appeal, and YA excels at providing this. The fantastical universes and sheer imaginativeness and creative mind of YA are seldom matched by grown-up writing. This might be one reason why so many adults enjoy YA so much. A big part of any book’s success is its escapist appeal, and YA is really good at providing that, said Graves. People tend to want to read books that they relate to or can see themselves in. That is one of the reasons why Young Adult fiction has gotten so big because there hadn’t really been a category with characters that teens can really relate to or see themselves in. But some adults may lose interest in YA because the situations aren’t as relatable to them. “Maybe as you get more distance from your teenage years, you’re not as interested in seeing a teenage character,” Switek said.
Carver Branch, Austin Public Library Photo by Preetesh V. February 17, 2017 From Yelp
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