Site of the Month: Zue S. Bales Intermediate School Library

A pleasing picture of students reading in the Bales Intermediate School library in Friendswood, TX, is the first thing you see when you visit this site, managed by Bonnie Keith (bkeith@fisdk12.net), the school's media specialist. For more photos of students participating in library-related activities, the site features a "Picture This" page, as well as a "Bales Internet Resources" page with links to sites requested by teachers.

Friends in Friendswood: There's also a prominently featured link to the local public library. Friendswood is a small town, says Keith, and the school and public library have a good relationship. For its part, the Friendswood Public Library's kids' page links to the Bales library's Accelerated Reader list, and Bales's students access it from the public library's Net terminals.

Prompted by Accelerated Reader: The site features lots of resources today, but Keith admits that she started it in 2000 "at the request of a parent who wanted a list of our Accelerated Reader titles online." Other parents and teachers asked her to add more resources, such as a summer reading list and links to remote-access versions of the school's databases. Next, Keith wants to add a page of student-written book reviews, and a parents' page.