Library Volunteer Chair Responsibilities

Assist with setup of new students at the beginning of the year. This includes deleting the fifth graders out of the circulation system and setting up the new kindergartners. This requires a couple of volunteers but it needs to happen during the first week of school before you have received a volunteer list.

Mrs. Benthall assigns the teachers a weekly time to come to the library. You then take the list and make a class schedule and schedule two volunteers per one-hour slot, sometimes three in the afternoons depending upon the class schedule. I open it up to the previous volunteers first and then I look at the new volunteers and fill in the gaps. People usually want to help during their child's time. I usually attend the volunteer meeting at the beginning of the year with the schedule filled in with volunteers and ask for people to come by and sign up in the blank spots.

Then I make a printed schedule for the library, a list of all the people and their phone numbers and e-mail addresses to be kept in the library and then I generate an e-mail mailing list for me at home for communicating with the volunteers. I set up a policy for finding subs and notifying the library when someone can't come.

Another big piece is the preparation for the book fair. I generate the schedule for classes to come and view and buy for the book fair, including the letters to the teachers for when their times are and a letter that goes home in the Tuesday folder. These files have been created in Word and Excel. The letters merge with an Excel file to bring in the view & buy times and the teacher's name. Mrs. Benthall has all of this saved on a diskette. Of course there is all the decorating to do as well.