My Library Is... Welcoming!

We set out to prove that “My Library Is …” a welcoming place for students who read in all languages. Thanks to a generous RAILS grant, the Library Media Center at Vernon Hills High School has been very successful in making this statement feel true to our multilingual students, as well as the whole school community. 

The first part of the grant project was to add books in Ukrainian. Our school community has welcomed a growing number of families from Ukraine; Ukrainian-speaking students helped choose a starting collection of 46 books in Ukrainian. We soon learned that many Ukrainian schools use Russian as an instructional language, and so we also updated our reading choices in Russian. 

Sourcing books in Ukrainian was the first hurdle as library book vendors often had limited choice or could not fulfill the orders we placed. We had a hard time matching books read in English classes with available Ukrainian (and other language) translations. Our grant application shared hopes of supporting classes with translations and offering families the chance to read along with their students. But, we persevered and now can offer 34 books in Ukrainian. Our World Languages collection has 519  books in total, with 61 in circulation in the first 4 months of the school year. 

Our LMC aide Kristi Herbrand added greatly to her cataloging skills to add and edit MARC records in Ukrainian and Russian. The grant funds also stretched to help us add books in the six other world languages we offer to our readers.  

The second part of the grant was to bring that same welcome to the front entrance of the LMC, which had been graced with a long, blank, white wall. A design meeting soon developed into an art class assignment, and VHHS artists visited Chicago public murals for design ideas, scale, and inspiration. Working in groups, two art classes under leadership of art teacher Allison Molloy proposed many elements for the mural's design. The mural's signpost shows how close you are to the LMC, and some of the genres on LMC shelves are echoed in the mural's pirate ship with book sails, a dragon, and ladders of books. The work of 10 student artists are stitched into one fabulous, welcoming mural for the outside wall of the LMC. 

This week’s blog post was written by Monica Caldicott, Library Media Specialist, Vernon Hills High School.  

This project was made possible by the My Library Is... Grant.