This year, Rachel Trenary entered our community as the Salida High School librarian, and she has made many changes to the school library so far. When Trenary joined the school, she was determined to make changes to how our library interacted with students by making student outreach a focus. Some of the first things she did when she became the librarian was to try to open up the space to make it more open and welcoming, and refreshed books on the shelves more often. Not only has she made changes to the space itself, but the library’s hours have also increased. One of the biggest changes that Trenary has made has been the addition of monthly library competitions.
Over the course of the year, there have been a multitude of competitions that students can enter into. The first competition that the library put on was a clickbait title contest, where students could enter a clickbait title, as well as the truth behind the title. Another competition that Trenary has done was a reward for the student who checked out the most books in the 2023-2024 school year. February’s Show Love to Your Library contest had students logging minutes reading in the library as well as a competition to see who checked out the most books in that month. The contest with the most entries so far has been the food haiku contest, in which students could submit a haiku to “celebrate your love of food.”
Trenary has different competitions outlined for the remaining months of the school year, including the current contest, book spine poetry. This month, March of 2025, students are encouraged to stop by the library to participate. Trenary has a cart of books, and students can organize the books so their titles create a poem. The winners of these competitions are rewarded with ten dollar gift cards to Chill or the Steam Caboose, and runner-ups are given a book token for the book vending machine, or can choose a book from a cart in the library.
The goal of these competitions is to remind students of the opportunities that the library provides to our school. Trenary said, “I’m hoping that it puts the library in more of the forefront of peoples’ minds as a place to come to hang out, to utilize the things that we have here. It’s a pretty amazing thing that we have such a good selection of books for kids in house.”
Students don’t have to worry about running out of reading material either as Trenary is constantly cycling through different books in the library. Each month, the library receives four to six books from the Junior Library Guild, varying on genre and often featuring the newest and most mentioned books nationally. The regular cycling in and out of books in the library is hoped to push students to read in the library more often, and branch out in their reading material. “Maybe even look at some new genres that they haven’t partaken of before in order to just widen your taste in what you read,” Trenary encourages. Students can also submit requests for books to the library via a form at the front desk of the library or the google form Trenary shared with the students of SHS. And not only can students check out books, but they can also take from the array of free books on the shelf in front of the library door. If students need books or other resources, they are encouraged to stop by the library or check the Salida High School library’s website.
If you are a student, make sure to stop by the library to participate in the book-spine poetry contest by April 8th to write poetry using at least three book spines. Students can check for deadlines and contest terms on the Salida High School Library website or the SHS instagram, shs.students, or just stop by the library on the way from class to class.
Trenary hopes that the library contests and activity in the library will continue to bring students into the library to experience the wide selection of books and utilize the welcoming state of the space. “I hope for the library to be a place that is welcoming, warm, community-minded; so that it’s a place where connections can happen,” said Trenary.