Fairfax County Public School Libraries/South County High School Library Websites

https://youtu.be/bjc3Tt5zWNI

Research for this particular library was rather tricky. Working on other projects afforded me very little time to visit a school library. I searched for school libraries in Virginia, and happened upon the official website for Fairfax County Public Schools, which I list below. Most of the information I was able to discover came from that specific site; I feel like I was able to glean plenty regarding the missions, visions, and accomplishments of South County’s library, as with most of the school libraries under the FCPS umbrella. However, I was unable to find much to show the library’s appearance.

The Websites

South County High School’s library follows the standards set by the Fairfax County Public Schools; the library page on the school’s website features little information about itself, instead opting to link to the FCPS’s site in addition to its catalog. The FCPS library site displays high contrast, medium-sized body text, for the most part, allowing for fairly easy reading for both children and adults. Visitors can browse the list of public schools affiliated with the organization, which link to the libraries’ respective online catalogs. In South County High’s case, students can access eBooks, as well as view available print books and audiobooks, the latter of which can also be easily accessed online.

What is interesting to me about these pages is that most of them can be translated into other languages through Google. This shows a level of consideration for non-English speakers that none of the other libraries I have looked into have displayed. I’m sure implementing such a program can’t be easy to do, but I think that it would be worth the effort, and it would make non-American individuals feel seen.

The FCPS libraries’ site doesn’t show a calendar of library-led programs and events, like other library pages have. Instead, it details ways in which schools can design programming to ensure students’ academic and social success. The library programs page outlines ideals for student engagement: that programming should inspire students to “inquire” and “curate” information; to “include,” “collaborate” and “engage” with their peers; and to “explore” the information they find (Fairfax County Public Schools, n.d.). It can be assumed that instructors and librarians work alongside each other and organization members to create programs that meet the needs of their students and that achieve their intended goals.

Fairfax County students are able to access a number of digital databases, from the FCPS’s website. There are a total of 91 databases to browse, which can be filtered by subject, grade, publisher, type, and school level (Fairfax County Public Schools, n.d.). The South County High School library’s online catalog shows the selection of print and digital media available to students. In addition to the standard genres that students can sift through (e.g. dystopian fiction, fantasy, horror, etc.), there is a wide selection of collections to browse; the featured collections include mental health and disabilities awareness, LGBTQ+ literature, retellings of classics such as Romeo & Juliet, and others. Students can check out ebooks and digital audiobooks, as they please, which is something that I think is pretty cool. We couldn’t check out books online when I was in high school, and while some might prefer to hold a book in their hands, ebooks and audiobooks can be manipulated for better ease of access.

FCPS highlights what the South County High library was able to achieve in terms of outreach, during the covid pandemic. Students come together at the library to create knitwear for the homeless and to craft blankets for animal shelters, and the school’s Elder Outreach Club features the co-librarian as its main sponsor (Office of Communication and Community Relations, 2022). The Elder Outreach Club in particular features 90 members, as of April 2022, who first came together at the beginning of the pandemic to help the local older population feel less isolated (Office of Communication and Community Relations, 2022). Students write letters and visit their local retirement communities, all in an effort to strengthen their community and bond with those who might otherwise feel ignored.

Conclusion

An article I read at the beginning of this course discussed the very real damage that the phenomenon known as “vocational awe” can cause, both in librarians and library patrons (Ettarh, 2018). Ettarh highlights an example of library staff handing out anti-narcotics to patrons, to combat an issue of drug overdosing, in their community, and how such an example could instill unrealistic standards in the average library staff. While it’s especially important to temper expectations in regards to teenagers and public school employees, I still can’t help but feel some of that awe when I read about the exploits of the South County High School library’s Elder Outreach Group, and the efforts of the FCPS to maintain an environment where students and members of the community can feel seen and heard. Like I mentioned before, the fact that many pages on the FCPS’s library website can be automatically translated into many different languages is especially cool, and it’s an feature that I think all library websites should include. It feels that inclusion is a big cornerstone in the FCPS's mission to provide quality, equitable library access to public school students in their area, as well as for the students at least for the students of South County High. It feels that the faculty of the Fairfax County Public Schools try to uphold the library's reputation, and while I remember that the faculty and students are still human, I still applaud their efforts.

Resources:

Fairfax County Public Schools. (2022, March 24). Fairfax County Public School Libraries Make a Difference [Video]. https://youtu.be/bjc3Tt5zWNI.

Ettarh, F. (2018, January 10). Vocational Awe and Librarianship: The Lies We Tell Ourselves – In the Library with the Lead Pipe. https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/.