Objective+5

=Objective 5: =  =__Organizing Book Fair Night__ =





//I will be responsible for setting up several activities to help kick off the schools annual book fair. FEAP 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11//

One of the biggest dilemas facing a media specialist is how to pay for new books, technology, and supplies for everyday use. With so many budget cuts, one of the hardest hit is that media center supplies. A library may look as though it has a lot of books for check out but many administrators often forget about the wear and tear books take, especially the popular ones. So how does a media specialist make a little cash? By selling other books in holding a school book fair. [|Scholastic Books] is going to become one of my best friends as for they not only help to set up the fair but offer all types of promotions such as gift certificates, customer service, and on-line assistance.

Throughout the beginning days of my internship, I worked with not only Teresa but also some of her more frequent volunteers in learning how to get ready to set up volunteers in order to work the sale. I got the chance to explore through the [|Scholastic Book Fair site] that provides numerous downloads for organizing and promoting the sale.

The bookfair took place during my last few days of my internship and it was truly a learning process as for Teresa truly believes in keeping the media center open for regular check out as well as having the book fair going on. I got a hands on chance to really multi task and it was not as hard as for the staff and faculty at Neptune Elementary is so supportive of the media program. Whole classes came through the fair in order to first create their wish lists and to get them excited about what was available for purchase. I had a blast going through with all ages of students and picking out some of the books that would draw them in and were most appropriate for their reading levels. Students were also allowed to come in and to go shopping, so actually making sure that their purchases were appropriate took me to the world of persusasion and being a good sales person. I took on the tase of organizing the miscellaneous rack near the cashier, where students with very little money could purchase items such as pencils, erasers, and bookmarks for as little as $0.50. I created sales signs so that students could see the prices WITH tax easily. By doing this students would be able to figure out what items they could purchase with their change (a true salesperson move...trying to make as much money as possible).

I chose to even go back to the bookfair after my internship was over in order to help out with the evening sale. In order to allow parents to be able to come with their children to buy items, Teresa extends the time one night until 7:00 pm. During this time, the school's PTO sets up a booth to encourage membership and to even make a few dollars by selling juice and snacks just outside of the Media Center (no food allowed inside of course!). To entice parents to come, we broadcasted every morning on the announcements a commercial, provided by Scholastic, and pumped up the sale with personal appearances. To help draw in the crowd even more, during the night event, every 30 minutes a raffle was drawn, giving the lucky winner a $20.00 gift certificate for the bookfair.

Teresa highly encouraged me to make the Scholastic representative a very good friend and I can easily see why. Even with a slow economy, the bookfair is going to be a success, generating money to continue to keep the media center up to date and full of good and current books!.