Genrefying non fiction – a few quick tips
Just start
I get it, a non fiction collection, especially one that hasn’t been touched for a while can be extremely overwhelming. But all it takes is that first step.
Tag: For Librarians (Page 1 of 5)
The Importance of Non Fiction
I’ve been writing about how I have been reinvigorating the non fiction collection in my secondary school library. But why? Aren’t school libraries culling their non fiction and students turning to online sources? I believe that non fiction still plays a vital part in the school library for all ages. Here’s my thoughts around the importance of non fiction, why it deserves pride of place in any school library and how to get it right in your school library.
Is My School Library Good Enough?
I wrote this post a year ago and was never brave enough to post it. Thanks to Lee Crockett’s keynote at the ASLA 2023 Conference, I am finally hitting the go button. His talk about practice never being perfect but always a work in progress and change being neither painful or personal inspired me to share my thoughts on this topic.
As I have been digging into reading culture and assessing reading cultures recently, I have come across many checklists and guides for good school libraries. It had me questioning, how does my school library stack up? Is my school library good enough?
Reinvigorating Non Fiction – part 3 of a 2 year journey
Non fiction has been a bit of a hot topic in school library discussions in recent months and for good reason. On one hand we are embracing genrefication and challenging the status quo of using problematic library layout systems and on the other hand school librarians are investigating the importance of non fiction and its place in the school library.
I started my process of reinvigorating the non fiction at the start of 2022 when I took over my current library. I was only unofficially acting head of library, but I didn’t let that stop me from making some big decisions and prepping for change. In post 1 of this series, I shared about how I started and what my plans were, in post 2 I shared how all those plans had to change and the benefits that had. Now in this third post, surprise surprise, plans changed again (or were just delayed). This section of our journey to reinvigorate the non fiction collection is from term 1, 2023.
Reinvigorating Non Fiction – part 2 of a 2 year journey
I am in the middle of reinvigorating the non fiction in my secondary school library. Non fiction has been a bit of a hot topic in school library discussions in recent months and for good reason. On one hand we are embracing genrefication and challenging the status quo of using problematic library layout systems and on the other hand school librarians are investigating the importance of non fiction and its place in the school library.
Note: I wrote the my first post in this series back in June of 2022, after just six months of taking over as acting head of library services at my current school library. I was delayed in posting it, and then I was given the news that we needed to pack up the secondary school library and put the majority of the collection and shelving into storage and move into a temporary location. This meant my plans to weed the secondary library non fiction collection before we moved into our brand new space had to be halted. I didn’t have enough time until we had to vacate our space and the non fiction collection would all be in storage offsite for at least a few months, so I wouldn’t have access to it to weed or genrefy it. All plans were halted and I had to go about things very differently, or at least a lot more slowly. This post covers what I did in Term 4, 2022 to continue to reinvigorate the non fiction collection.
Reinvigorating Non Fiction – part 1 of a 2 year journey
Non fiction has been a bit of a hot topic in school library discussions in recent months and for good reason. On one hand we are embracing genrefication and challenging the status quo of using problematic library layout systems and on the other hand school librarians are investigating the importance of non fiction and its place in the school library.
Note: I wrote the below post back in June of 2022. I didn’t post it, as I was waiting to get a few photos to add to the post. Then, we received news that we’d have to pack up the secondary school library and put the majority of the collection and shelving into storage. Including the non fiction collection. All plans were halted and I had to go about things very differently, or at least a lot more slowly. Here’s how I started the process.
Everyone’s Talking about AI, chatbots and ChatGPT. What does it mean for school libraries?
It’s everywhere on my socials and in my inbox at the moment – Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPD. We’ve been told for years that technology is changing and will have big impacts on the world, jobs and education. We’ve gone from fearing AI to encountering it on a daily basis (and possibly still fearing it). These past few weeks seemed to have reignited a focus on what AI and chatbots can do and how they are set to impact our lives. As a teacher librarian, I know I need to up-skill and learn about this area, as it is set to impact how student search, research, write, edit and submit their work. It will change how teachers prepare lessons, mark, how we check for plagiarism and how we teach students about AI.
If you, like me, need to read up in this area, I’ve collated a few of my favourite articles and courses that I’ve found in the past few days. Most come from a teacher or library perspective.
School Library Annual Report
It’s the end of the school year and that means it’s annual report time. Or does it?
When I mentioned to a colleague this year that I needed to put together the library’s annual report, I was a little shocked by their reply – “Why bother. No one is going to read it.”
It made me reflect on why I create an annual report each year and why I firmly believe it is worth the time and effort to create an annual report.
Magazines in the School Library
Do magazines belong in the school library? It’s not really a question I ever asked myself until recently when it came time to audit our magazine subscriptions. But in our changing world, do magazines still belong in school libraries? If student interest drops, is it time to unsubscribe?
The first school library I volunteered and later worked in had a lovely magazine collection. It also had a most magnificent non fiction collection, but that’s another post entirely. The magazines were well used, as indicated by loan statistics and student use for browsing and reading during reading lessons.
This year, when I took over the library at my current library, I undertook a bit of an audit of the magazine collection. The magazines in the secondary library were hardly touched, let alone borrowed. Some of this could attributed to our new location while we awaited renovations. The magazines had to be tucked into a back corner. But stats from the previous years demonstrated loans half of that from my first school and only 12 loans total for magazines from the secondary library. It wasn’t for lack of promotion or choices. We had over 25 magazines in the secondary library and just a few in the junior library. Yet the interest and use of magazines in the junior library was huge. Massive loan stats, sneaky visits from junior students to the secondary library to borrow some of our titles, interest and love for magazines from the junior students was high. Continue reading
Starting a Dungeons and Dragons Group in the School Library
I want to start this post by saying, I’m not the expert when it comes to starting a Dungeon and Dragon club, far from it, actually. The expert would be Lucas Maxwell. He blogs about Dungeons and Dragons, has a podcast and is even writing a book about it. So why then, you might ask, would someone who is not Lucas Maxwell want to share her tips about how to start a D&D club? Because maybe you, like me, want to start just such a group but, like me, are not a D&D expert or maybe, also like me, have never even played D&D. This post is for all the complete and utter beginners (we need a word for someone is less experienced than a beginner, perhaps a prebeginner?), who have maybe heard of D&D but have no idea what a DM is or how to even actually play but want to start a D&D group in their school library anyway.
