As announced at the end of February, the PAC’s Hastings Anti-Racism Committee (HARC) is working with our Teacher Librarian, Erin Rickbeil and Iron Dog Books store (2671 E Hastings St) to launch a new project – a book drive to help make the school library more inclusive! We’d like to ask for everyone’s help in making our school library more representative of our school community.
We want to hear from everyone – what books would you like to see added to the library? Help us diversify the library by making suggestions! We’ll also be raising funds to help with the purchase of some of these new books. There are many ways that everyone – students, teachers and families – can contribute!
1. Fill in our online form to tell us what topics or characters you’d like to see more of. And let us know if there is a particular book you’d like to see in the library
2. Students and teachers can visit the library to write down their book suggestions and put it in the box that Erin has set up. Or if they can’t make it to the library, they can also fill in the Book Drive form in Teams. For students, it will be posted in the All Students @ Hastings Elementary channel. For teachers, it will be in both the general staff and library channel.
3. Starting Thursday, Iron Dog Books will have a bin full of books that Erin has already selected as ones that she’d like to add to the library. Visit the store to look through the books and recommend ones you think should be prioritized or choose others from the store to recommend.
4. If possible, support the purchasing of some of these new books. Any amount helps! Also starting Thursday, you can donate to the dedicated Hastings Book Drive account at Iron Dog Books or purchase one of the books Erin has selected (Iron Dog will set them aside for the school). You can also donate at any time through the School Cash Online donation form by selecting ‘E-Hastings PAC’ and specifying ‘Book Drive’ in the message section.
Before making your suggestions, we would appreciate if you could please check if Hastings Library already has the title, author or subject you are interested in. Follow these steps to check the library catalogue:
1. Visit: https://library.vsb.bc.ca/
2. Choose “Hastings Community Elementary”
3. Search by keyword, author, title
4. “No matches found” message means the library does not have the title.
Suggestions will be taken throughout the month of March, so everyone can make as many submissions as they like. Please keep in mind that all suggestions should be to actively diversify the library catalogue. Keep an eye out for posters around the school about the book drive and talk about it with your friends. We want to hear from everyone at Hastings!
And speaking of books, who’s getting excited for the CBC’s annual battle of the books – Canada Reads. It’s happening all this week! Whoot, whoot!
Thanks to everyone in advance for your support of this all important initiative!