Colleen Scott December 3, 2020

LIS 524 SLMC Field Experience Prof. Susan Allen

Reading Promotion Project

Link to Virtual Reading Promotion:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/14ItggTyTJy2La1dKrStXN7sF8pIRAKKnQM0JqwgkFR8/edit?usp=sharing
Note: The Google Slide must be in “Present” mode for the hyperlinks to work.

I created a reading promotion for the Franklin Academy High School library in Malone, New York.
The school serves 750 students in grades nine through twelve and has approximately 14,000 titles in its
library collection. It is located in rural Northern New York. To kick off the project, the school librarian and
I brainstormed a promotion that would be helpful to her in light of the uncertainty of school being in-
person, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. When we first started discussing the promotion, school was on a
hybrid schedule with students social distanced in desks throughout the library. Within a few weeks, school
was switched to all remote learning. Beginning next week, school will be back to the hybrid scenario.
Regardless of whether students are attending school physically or virtually, they are not allowed to touch
or browse the library books at this time. All book requests are made through the library’s online catalog.
With that said, the librarian and I decided on a virtual reading promotion created in a “Bitmoji”
environment on a Google Slide. Because of the necessity of online learning, many teachers have started
using this visual approach to provide students information in an interesting and entertaining way.
Creating the promotion virtually would also allow her to link it to her new library website and her Bitmoji
library environment in the future.
After the decision was made to develop a virtual reading promotion, I was given the freedom to
create the promotion theme, graphic design, and book selections. I ran a few concepts by the librarian
and ultimately decided on a high fantasy book theme with the title “Winter is Coming” as an homage to
the wildly popular Game of Thrones fantasy series and to correlate it with the “prewinter” December 1 st
promotion kick off date. With the theme in place, I amassed lists of popular high fantasy series books (i.e.
Throne of Glass), classic “pillar” fantasy titles (i.e. The Lord of the Rings), and “old school” fantasy books
that established the genre (i.e. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) and scoured the online catalog to find
out what books the Franklin Academy library owns.
The next step was to make the magic happen and create an engaging high fantasy Bitmoji
environment for the virtual promotion. Since I had never created an engaging high fantasy Bitmoji
environment or any virtual environment, I had to do some digging. After a bit of research, I found out

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about a Facebook group called Bitmoji Craze for Educators that has extensive backgrounds and elements
posted by other educators that can be mixed and matched to design a virtual room. Following some
experimenting, designing, and endless tweaking, the bones of the environment were completed. Book
cover images, text, signage, and the librarian’s Bitmoji likeness were next to be placed in the room. Once
everything was in its correct location, objects in the room were hyperlinked to the library’s online catalog
for students to browse and request books. A link was shared with the librarian for final approval. As
planned, she sent out an announcement with the promotion link on December 1st. Showtime!
At this point, the promotion is just kicking off. The librarian informed me that so far, she has had
one book request and five students have accessed the slide. However, there is no way of knowing more
analytical data about whether students have opened her e-mail or seen the promotion link on the library’s
Google Classroom page. Some factors that might affect the promotion are:
1. This is the first virtual promotion that the librarian has ever done
2. Students might not be familiar with using a Bitmoji environment
3. Students might not think of visiting the library’s virtual Google Classroom site like they would if
school was normally operating and the library was physically accessible
4. Students might not be acquainted with or want to put the effort into placing a book request online
versus in person
5. Students are just returning from Thanksgiving break
6. The chaotic state of school and life right now
Despite these potential influences on the reading promotion, the librarian was very pleased with the
development and design of the project. It was an enjoyable process for the both of us and strengthened
our professional connection. She has invited me to help her develop some virtual Makerspace activities
that her principal has asked her to facilitate. Personally, I liked creating the promotion, although it was
initially intimidating and took quite a bit of time; at least to get it to a level where I felt confident in
presenting it. This was a valuable, practical learning experience that I will most definitely draw from in
the future.