Week 8- Printing Labels is so much fun!

Last week I manually entered over 50 new titles into the Destiny catalog for the professional library. This week, Dr. Mac showed me how to print labels for each of the titles. I loved doing this! There was something SO relaxing about doing menial task like this. It was a welcome change from the hectic pace of a classroom teacher!

The first thing we did was print bar code labels. Dr. Mac uses address labels in her printer. It almost always aligns perfectly to the PDF automatically created by Destiny. Destiny offers a bar code report. Dr. Mac showed me how to run a bar code report in a variety of ways. You can search by title, date added, by fiction, nonfiction, etc. This is a great tool to have! I did this for each of the 50 + professional titles we added to the collection.

Then she showed me how to use the Dymo label maker. It comes with software that allows you type the label, change the font/size and so much more. Dr. Mac has several presets for the Dymo, including one for call number labels. You can print one at a time, or multiple copies for the same title. This is such a neat little machine!

Then I started taping the bar codes and call numbers to each book. Dr. Mac also uses clear strong book binding tape from Demco to ensure the labels stay. At first it was really tricky getting the labels to be straight and even. On really skinny spines, we had to turn the books sideways, like below. Even then, it is hard to see the author part of the call number. 

Again, while this may not seem like a week-long activity, it is very time-consuming to label all of these titles! I gained very valuable experience completing these inside hours. Processing new titles is a core responsibility of every LMS. And I actually had fun playing with the label maker!