F

rom elementary school to high school, the accessibility of books have never been an issue to most students, thanks to the library. However, it is easy to forget the procedural details the library must face to get a new best-seller or to make sure students can access the stories they want.

Librarians Amity Bateman and Shannon Vakili are in charge of many of the happenings in the library, including checking in and out resources and adding books to the library’s collection. Vakili said there are 15,700 materials in the library available for checking out, such as Chromebooks

and books.

The books on the shelves are ultimately decided on by Bateman and Vakili, but students are free to recommend books through word of mouth or a form on the library web page.

“We are really driven first by: is there some support to the curriculum?” Bateman said. “…having a limited budget, [we] would look for things that we feel like are high enough quality or high enough interest to withstand the test of time.”

After choosing which books to add to the library, the librarians buy from several different sources, depending on price and other factors. This could include Amazon, book distributors and local bookstores, according to Bateman. Through these different channels, books could be bought at lower prices and, in the instance of local bookstores, small businesses can be supported.

Curriculum, pricing and quality of books are not the only factor to accessing new reads. Books may not be necessarily recommended by students at HHS, but have been recommended as books of interest to students, Vakili said.

“We look for things that appeal to a wide variety of experiences, so a lot of different viewpoints, backgrounds culture,” Bateman said. “So if it has a diverse story, that would fill a niche that maybe we don’t have a lot of.”