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PASSIONATE ABOUT SCHOOL LIBRARIES

Tag: For Librarians (Page 2 of 5)

Ramblings: Reinvigorating Non-Fiction – part 3

April 24, 2023 / / 5 Comments

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.

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Ramblings: Reinvigorating Non-Fiction – part 2

April 15, 2023 / / 4 Comments

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.

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Ramblings: Reinvigorating Non-Fiction – part 1

April 8, 2023 / / 4 Comments

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.

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Ramblings: Everyone’s talking about AI, chatbots and ChatGPT

January 9, 2023 / / 2 Comments

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.

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Ramblings: School Library Annual Reports

December 17, 2022 / / 2 Comments

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. 

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Ramblings: Magazines in the School Library

December 12, 2022 / / 0 Comments

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

Ramblings: Dungeon and Dragons

December 7, 2022 / / 0 Comments

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. 

      

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Ramblings: A Year in the Life of a TL – Term 4

November 28, 2022 / / 0 Comments

    A Year in the Life of a Teacher Librarian – Term 4

It has been my goal for some time now to share what my role as a teacher librarian is comprised of in the day in, day out. I hope that it sheds some light into what can sometimes be a mysterious and unknown role to those outside libraries. I hope it might inspire someone to enter the world of school libraries as I was once enticed. And I hope it encourages others in the school library world to share their experiences. Of course, my role and experiences are unique and would differ if I was in a different country, state, school, library setting or role, and the joy of library work is that no one day, library, role or experience is ever the same. I may post once a month about this, but far more likely I will put fingers to keyboard once a term. If you would like to read all of the posts in the series, you’ll find them here. 

Wow – Term 4 is almost done. I think I need to sit down. What an absolutely amazing and exhausting term. Term 3 ended with us packing up our school library and moving it into storage and a temporary location. So, it follows that Term 4 began with us settling into our new, temporary home.

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Review and Giveaway: LockPaperScissors Escape Rooms

October 20, 2022 / / 12 Comments

Review and Giveaway – LockPaperScissors Escape Rooms

If you’ve always wanted to run an escape room in your school library, now is your chance. I’ve teamed up with the fantastic team at LockPaperScissors to review their escape room kits and give you a chance to win one of their Big Box or Kids Big Box.

Running escape rooms had been on my to-do wish list for a while but it always seemed a little daunting. Then I found the escape room kits from LockPaperScissors. 

LockPaperScissors sells downloadable and printable escape room kits. They include everything you need, plus tips on how to expand or customise your escape room to make it epic.

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Share your story

Ramblings: Share your story

October 13, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Share Your Story – Sharing Your Knowledge and Experiences of Working in a School Library

 

I love writing and talking about my work in a school library. You might have already guessed that… When I was presenting at the National Education Summit in Brisbane earlier this year, I had a number of conversations with the other attendees. They shared with me their incredible stories of what they had done to fight for their school library, turn it into a beautiful and welcoming space, or make changes to update and renew it. They also shared with me that they didn’t see themselves or their story reflected in the people on stage. The presenters were predominately teacher librarians from independent schools with well-supported school libraries. Not the case for many of the attendees.

I put the invitation out to the attendees of that conference to have their voice heard, to be the ones on stage next year sharing that story and I am putting that same invitation to you – yes, you – right now. We need to hear your story, your knowledge, your experiences. Trust me, the people who get up on stage or regularly overshare in a blog (guilty), are not the ones who know more or have it all together. We are just sharing our experiences in the hopes that it helps someone else. Sharing your story is just as – if not more – important and valuable.

If you have never shared your story of working in a school library, I invite you to consider if now is the right time. And I am offering to help you.

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