The Legend of the Thousand Cranes and Other Media Matters

"Would you like these?" a sophomore asks, showing me 3 origami paper cranes he has made at the end of SMART lunch.

"Why, thank you! I'll display them here at the circulation desk. Have you ever heard of the Legend of the Thousand Cranes?" A discussion of Japanese folklore ensues.

.....24 hours later.....

"I made you more. I'm going to make a thousand cranes. Where should I put this set of 100?"

And so began the collection of 1000 beautiful origami cranes in the media center. At first they sat on one window ledge behind the circulation desk (moved there after several students attempted to take a few on their way out the door), visible to all. Then they took up a second window ledge. And a third. And the fourth. And the area of the circulation desk by the printer.

I brought in clear glass vases, but each only held 50-60! They did make for beautiful displays. Finally I hot glued the cranes to a piece of 32' x 42' black foam board in a random pattern. It made for a beautiful piece of artwork, allows me to dust the windowsills, and the cranes are more visible to all in the media center! (Now the student is making another set of 1000 in order to create a new display board for an art contest!!!!) The small vase next to the picture is filled with metallic origami cranes.

The next "project" in the media center involved the shifting of the shelves. Many of our shelves (a few nonfiction, but mainly fiction) had reached their carrying capacity. This made it difficult to fit new titles in some areas which is NEVER a good thing in my media center so...with the aid of my ready and somewhat-willing media assistants we utilized some shorter shelves at the end of the nonfiction stacks, moved around part of the nonfiction, one shelf at a time while leaving a few strategically placed shelves empty for growth, and then were able to open up quite a few of the fiction shelves. This task was finished today to the joy of the assistants (and the media coordinator!).

My final project this week has involved the "installation" of my faux bulletin board. The design of this room does not lend itself easily to a bulletin board on the wall, which makes it more challenging for some of the displays I would love to do. Therefore I used one short shelf that is not in use (it used to hold graphic novels, but the collection grew too large and now is in a new area) to display student art and my "bulletin board". The tree was created by a student in an art class is made using magazine pages. Although there is one part not finished utilizing QR codes and book trailers, this is it so far: