Embedded Files
I originally created these after hearing a school librarian in Texas discussing them. They went on my "to do" list, but kept getting pushed off - until a student specifically asked me not to give her borrowed books to her where other students could see them.
Some students want to borrow books, but are afraid they will be shamed by their peers for getting certain titles. Sometimes the titles that bring fear of shaming seem obvious, as when the content might suggest something about one's identity. But other times it may not be clear why a student might worry about being shamed for a particular title.
Whether or not WE understand why a student might worry about being literacy shamed, we can remove this friction point from our students' concerns by offering book privacy covers. These can be as simple as a piece of paper wrapped around a book and held in place with an elastic.
I've made these covers ubiquitous in my school. I have a large number of online holds placed by students, and every hold receives a privacy cover. I also leave some covers around the library so students can choose to grab one for any book they're reading at any time. They are also great for coloring and doodling, so I leave some out at the Coloring Station.
There are 40 different covers. I print them 2-sided; this adds extra obscuring to thinner paper, gives students 2 sets of images to color or doodle on, and makes the covers re-usable if they are returned with the books or taken off when students pick up their holds. I print a straight run, then do a run of "Odd pages only" and a run of "Even pages only" to get 40 covers with different fronts and backs to them.
This version has a wide spine label area to make spine-out holds easy to label with student names for student pick-up at their convenience. I've also incorporated light patterning across large blank spaces to minimize the possibility of see-through spots that might reveal covers or spines, and many of the images were changed to better fit the newly divided space.
Template link: https://www.canva.com/design/DAG1Z2a_LfQ/DDBWBU4i2QMBMNvFtDaf9g/view?utm_content=DAG1Z2a_LfQ&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=publishsharelink&mode=preview
For Version 2, I added more designs and the label "Privacy cover" to make it clear why books were arriving with paper wrapped around them.
Version 2.1 included a spot for writing the student name on the front cover. But when I ended up with so many holds I had to switch from face-out on the holds pick-up shelf to spine-out, I revised to add a space for spine labelling student names (2.2).
Since I enjoy symmetry, I put the spine labeling area dead-center on the paper. But the 8.5x11 papers don't always wrap around books perfectly. So version 2.3 included a wider spine label space.
The problem with making a big space for writing student names on the spine became apparent when some of the book spines were visible through the empty white space of the privacy cover. So version 2.4 included light patterning across the blank space for student names.
Now that I was thinking about blank space, I realized there were a good number of images I'd used that had a decent about of empty space, which allowed book cover bleed-through. So I started adding patterning to any covers that had a decent amount of blank space. (2.5)
All this fiddling really got in the way of lots of the images I'd used, so it was time to re-do a lot of the images. (3.0)
The various Version 2s are all included in this one file, which became my working file as I tested out and copy-pasted different options.
Template link: https://www.canva.com/design/DAG1Zu1eOco/YES_ddw9HTWtiRPxsprNRg/view?utm_content=DAG1Zu1eOco&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=publishsharelink&mode=preview
Worked great when I was individually delivering held books to students. Issue 1 was that no one understood why the heck there was paper wrapped around their book. So I added a space to write student names. I needed more cover options, because I was running through them so quickly, students were getting confused by having the same privacy cover image as someone else. That added more designs.
Template link: https://www.canva.com/design/DAFhCA3oa_0/hWV4DXAjcivaYRRLmtfeKA/view?utm_content=DAFhCA3oa_0&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=publishsharelink&mode=preview
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