“We both really love history,” declared Sheryl Stoeck about herself and co-presenter Lucy Podmore, librarians at high schools in Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas. However, they discovered that their schools’ history classes were less likely to use the library to support classwork than English classes were. Direct outreach to history teachers and careful matching of programs to curricula helped them to overcome that discrepancy and make their school libraries a home for history.
“I propose it as: Let me do some of your work for you,” explained Podmore, librarian at Clark High School.
They shared history programs that have worked for them in “Hyping History: Highlighting History in a High School Library,” a June 29 session at the American Library Association’s 2025 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Philadelphia.
Some of the programs they highlighted include:
- Breakfast with a Professor: Stoeck invited professors from local universities to speak at Larry Martin Library at O’Connor High School. Sometimes Stoeck will request a specific topic, while sometimes she lets the professor choose. The school’s history club or the library provides breakfast. “But usually it’s not the breakfast that attracts students to come to school an hour early,” Stoeck said. “It’s the teachers offering extra credit.”
- Holocaust Remembrance Week: Texas requires schools to include teaching on the Holocaust, but Podmore said the library offers an opportunity to add depth to what classes teach. “Their study of this time period is about a week, if that, so they don’t get to dive into the details,” she said. She displays an exhibit for about two weeks. Classes visit the library and spend half their time at the exhibit and half watching a documentary clip.
- School History: O’Connor High School celebrated its 25th anniversary a few years ago. Stoeck used the occasion as an opportunity to bring together yearbooks, newspapers, scrapbooks, and other documents to create the school archives. “I would take sample articles and put them out on a display and have students try to guess what year it was published for a prize,” Stoeck said. She also collected oral histories, initially conducting interviews herself but then having students interview the principal and other students. A University of Texas–San Antonio archivist led a zine-making workshop and talked about collecting and preserving items. Paper documents are most likely to last, especially compared to outdated technology like floppy disks: “Even if you have the machine, if you don’t have the software, you won’t be able to read those things,” Stoeck observed.
- Freedom to Read Week: In the face of public and legislative hostility towards Banned Books Week, Podmore renamed and reframed the observance as a celebration of freedom that focuses on civic engagement. The event featured five tables of activities, focused on 1st Amendment terms and cases, books that have been banned, how books are selected for acquisition, books as windows and mirrors, and the students’ representatives in government. The book selection table was surprisingly popular. “I thought no one would want to hear about collection development, especially 16 year-olds, but they had so many questions,” Podmore said.
See more examples at bit.ly/hypehistory.
