Students must have the Knight's Nook Hall Pass and access the library through the Knight's Nook door. Students who want to make a purchase from the Knight's Shoppe should use the Knight's Shoppe pass and enter at the coffee shoppe doors. Coffee Shoppe Workers will check passes at both doors. No pass means no entry. Only one student per class is allowed to visit the library or shoppe at a time unless the teacher calls or emails.
The Knight's Nook Library is the learning hub of our school. It is used for Dual Enrollment, Online Niswonger Classes, Credit Recovery, Research and Projects, Educational Games / Teacher Rewards, Book Checkout, and so much more! Our Press Room for our Black Knights Print Media Team and our College Access Counselor are also located inside the Knight's Nook Library.
Circulation procedures were explained to all students during the second week of school. English teachers brought each of their classes to the library, and we taught library and coffee shop expectations and procedures to all students.
Most of our community resources are not allowed to be checked out. Many of them are available in the reference section for students to read in the library. We also retain many of our artifacts like the Accolade Yearbooks in our archive cabinets, accessible by request only.
Students are allowed to have food and drink inside the library as long as they throw their trash away and clean up their mess. If the librarians have to ask students to keep their area clean more than once, then students can lose food and drink privileges. We encourage students to buy their food and drink from the Knight's Shoppe.
Students and faculty are invited to make book suggestions via email to Ms. P or Mrs. Teresa, or you may come to the library and talk to us in person.
Along with reorganizing all the resources, our library has new designated areas for specific activities to maximize the learning experience: the resource collection, online learning, dual enrollment, circulation desk, credit recovery, and the coffee shop (Knight’s Shoppe) area. The most important thing we did was to open up the rotunda area, which has now become our classroom space for literacy lessons and other special events.
In addition to local Greene County protocols, we use the Tennessee School Board Association Policy for challenged materials: https://tsba.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/2023-Explanation-of-Challenged-Materials-1.pdf .
At the beginning of the semester, we had all students with a class in the library sign a behavior contract after we outlined our expectations. Parents also signed the contract. It also establishes how we handle discipline issues in the library:
The Knight’s Nook Library staff considers input from staff and students to determine student needs and to provide resources that relate to curriculum demands and instructional goals and objectives. We plan library resources by using the master schedule and studying the standards from the courses to determine whether we had appropriate resources for each class we teach. We also solicited teacher input via email, and we allow students to request materials by completing a form. Some resources are bought because they help support our library monthly themes and further add to our curriculum-based resources.
We prioritize the needs of our resources based on how many resources we already have in that field of study, how many students will benefit from additional fields of study in that field of study, and stakeholder input.
For 2024-2025, we have primarily used the U.S. Library of Congress Surplus program to fund our printed / book resources for this school year thus far. Our magazines were supplied by Title I funds. We will be able to purchase additional resources with library budget and coffee shop fundraiser funds.
Our protocols for maintenance and repair flow through our IT department with our Assistant Librarian Teresa Shipley completing the school-level procedures with collecting troubled devices and completing the work orders to have them repaired. Print resources are returned to the library staff if damaged, and we will repair or replace the resource when possible.
During our summer audit, we checked resources to assure they were aligned with at least one instructional field of study. Our fiction collection aligns with the Tennessee Literacy Standards. We used the audit from August to determine which resources we needed for the various fields of study proportional to the amount of students in that particular field of study.
For questions regarding any library policy, please email Librarian D'Lee Pollock: D'Lee.Pollock@gcstn.org