Thank you so much for your interest in volunteering in our library. I so appreciate all the people who showed their support of our program by offering to help to build and maintain our program. I am always learning new things about our program and collection each day, and I continue to develop ideas about how parents can make valuable contributions through volunteerism.

The purpose of this webpage is to let you know about some areas in which family volunteers could be involved. I have tried also to indicate a time frame for tasks, so that volunteers can help in ways that fit in with our busy lives.

1. Scholastic Book Fair - This year's book fair will take place from Dec. 11-17, 2008. I am looking for many volunteers for this event:

a. Someone to coordinate volunteers - schedule slots and confirm (begin Nov-end of fair).

b. Someone or someones to help set up on the afternoon of the 11th and take down on the morning of the 18th.

c. People to work two-hour slots selling and monitoring the floor, during the school day and from 6:30-7:30 on the evenings of the 11th and 17th.

d. Someone to maintain and update the scholastic fair website that will be linked to our school library page.

e. Someone to work with student volunteer team, training them in the art of wrapping packages and supervising the gift wrap station on the evenings of the 11th and 17th.

2. We have a flag collection in the library. I would like to know if anyone would like to take on creating a bulletin board display once a month to highlight a country for which we have the flag. I have some ideas about how it would look and some information resources. This would involve a couple of hours of work each month (think country report).

3. Usage statistics: This would involve about an hour of work at the beginning of each month, tallying the number of students who accessed the library during school and the purposes for their visit. These numbers would then be entered on a spreadsheet. This could be done at home.

4. Reading shelves: This is an anytime sort of task, involving examining areas of the library to make sure books are shelved in the correct order.

5. Covering the check-out desk from 9AM to 10AM any day of the week. This would require a short training on using the circulation system and would be great for someone who would like to volunteer on a regular basis.

6. Battle of the Books: This is a fun program at MMS that will begin in January. The battles themselves will take place in March. Parents can help keep score and time during battles and maintain a database of AR testing among team members.

Again, I appreciate your offer of help. Our school community is stronger for the work of families like yours.