Prior to the opening of our school’s new library, Mrs. Strege sat down with me mid-December to chat about Schroeder library’s metamorphosis from concept through construction.

For those new to the Schroeder community, Mrs. Strege is our Library Media Specialist, originally hired at Schroeder 17 years ago as an English teacher. When our former librarian Mary Rinaldo retired, Mrs. Strege saw a lot of potential for a transformation. The library wasn’t seeing as much engagement as they wanted, but Mrs. Strege felt she could help change that. She wanted to collaborate with teachers and help students become more acquainted with the library and its array of new additions including access to more digital resources and physical ones such as the makerspace.

Our previous library was not fit to meet our new technical needs, especially as the district embraced a 1:1 technology initiative several years ago. Our library is supposed to be a “Library Media Center,” but ours didn’t have the media. The previous space didn’t have many outlets for charging Chromebooks, only had one SMARTboard that was located in the College and Career Center, and an overall dearth of technology to support instruction and learning. In addition to actual access to technology aides, we needed a space where students could use their chromebooks and new technology comfortably, either in groups or individually.

A primary objective for the newly renovated space is to make the library more of a modern media center that encourages and fosters collaboration. The new library design incorporates breakout rooms that will have monitors to which students can cast their chromebooks. These collaborative spaces will undoubtedly be useful for students working on group projects as casting will allow everyone to see presentations in a larger format.

The new library will have some fun comfort features, such as 70s-inspired egg chairs. Mrs. Strege thinks these will be a fan favorite because “you can slouch down into them and it is just the perfect place to read.” Another addition to the library would be the aforementioned makerspaces where students can work on larger projects. The library will be stocked with a multitude of art supplies: chalk, paint, colored pencils, and more. The library will also house the new VariQuest die-cut machine which comes pre-loaded with letters, shapes, and common symbols and precisely cuts cardstock or craft paper in minutes.

One of Mrs. Strege’s personal goals for our new library is to foster an inclusive space where students can be comfortable and productive. She recognizes the library is a place in which this means “settling in to read a book, being able to work quietly, being able to collaborate with a group, or being able to take a break.” Another feat she and the library staff are undertaking this year is improving the reading culture of our high school and encouraging Schroeder students to borrow or drop-in to read more books.

While the original opening date was before Thanksgiving, there have been several setbacks. One such example is the stairs connecting the balcony entrance and the library need to have a railing for safety reasons. There has been a delay in receiving and installing these railings which has bumped the reopen date by several weeks. Additionally, another reason the library’s progress has slowed is that the same construction team that is working on Schroeder’s library is also working on another in-district library construction project at Willink Middle School. Mrs. Strege noted that “there would be days or weeks where no one [from construction] was here.”

During the last school year, Mrs. Strege and staff set up a temporary library room N101. This space was much smaller in comparison to the previous library’s traditional space, so the library could only keep its core collection of books. This ended up being around 3,000 books out of 14,000 books in the physical catalog. Mrs. Strege said that the library staff functioned pretty well out of N101, but the downside was they could have 20 students there at a time—a mere fraction of Schroeder’s student population of over 1,300. Because of the limited capacity, the library didn’t receive high engagement. However, overall the experience helped Mrs. Strege appreciate the library’s full capacity and being able to serve more people in previous years.

At the time of publication, the new Schroeder Library Media Center anticipates a soft opening at the end of this week. Please stop down to check out the new space and give thanks to Mrs. Strege and library staff for their labor of love.