Rewrite, Renew, Reimagine
It’s ALIA Library and Information Week 2022. Held annually, ALIA LIW has recently changed date. Now celebrated in July, I love the creative themes (and graphic design, which is always AMAZING) for this special week. In previous years, I’ve made a big deal of Library and Information Week in my school libraries. This is a week celebrated by libraries of all categories and sizes, from public libraries to specialist libraries, so it’s nice to join in with this. However, this year, my focus has been on other things, so we haven’t celebrated LIW in the school library.
But, I couldn’t let the opportunity pass to mark the week or to reflect on how apt the theme is for our library this year.
Rewrite, Renew, Reimagine
This year has been a year of change. A new role for me within the library team, planning for a new space, a new collection development approach and opportunities to plan for even more change.
Rewrite
I’ve had the opportunity to rewrite a number of things about our school library this year. We started with our library vision statement. As a team, we are working together to update our vision statement. We are not done yet, but it’s been a great process. We hope by rewriting this, we will also rewrite the future of our school library and how it fits within the school.
Renew
Renewing a love of reading and a love of the school library was a massive goal for this year. It’s why I’ve been focusing on building a reading culture (which you can read about here). We’ve also been trying to renew the love for the library by introducing new programs, including our Create activities, new groups and a student-driven collection development policy. This last one has had the most impact, with students and staff loving the new books we are adding to the shelves – and why wouldn’t they, because they requested them!!
Reimagine
As we plan to move into a new space at the end of the year, we’ve been thinking about what the library would look like in that space. It was the perfect time to reimagine the role of the library and my own role. It’s been a really fun experience, but I do wonder, have I gone far enough? Have we truly reimagined the library or is it more about challenging people to reimagine what they think a library is? What we do doesn’t change all that much, we still support reading, authentic reading responses, information and digital literacy, wellbeing, creativity and innovation and so much more, we just have to get our community to understand that. A fun challenge.
I can’t wait for the next six months as we continue to rewrite, renew and reimagine our library. And next year is going to be even more amazing.
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