Helpful Hints For Rounding Up Library Felons!

It's that time of the year in the library. Time to really start hassling my students to return long overdue library books. In previous years I've run overdue reports, passed them out to my reading teachers, and held a contest to see which teacher could be the first to get all her classes to return library books. I would wait until I had about 50 students left on the list and then I would start making phone calls home. That entire process was long and tedious. I've started doing things a little bit differently.

Last year I started utilizing the library Instagram account to get the attention of my students that the time has come to start looking to for long overdue books. I generally create some image to post online. Here are some I have used:
My daughter created this one.

I created the one below:

My most recent message created with mematic app

This year I posted a similar "overdue library book" message on the school Twitter account as well as the PTA Facebook page.  Our PTA also has an extensive email list and the message will be sent that way as well.

Of all the techniques I've tried, the one that seems most effective is a phone alarm reminder. I ask students to set an alarm on their phone to remind them to look for their library book. I generally ask students to set the alarm to go off around 8:30pm and I also request they use the "old car horn" (the majority of my students have an apple device) alarm sound since it's one they rarely use and it seems to catch their attention.  For any students that don't have a phone or iPod, I use something called a wrist reminder. 

paper bracelets come in packs of 30.

I saw these at Office Depot and they work great. I write or attach a mailing label on it that reads, "return library book" and attach it to the students' wrists.


Hope some of these can be useful for you during this busy time of year!