PASSIONATE ABOUT SCHOOL LIBRARIES
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Marketing and branding can be such a powerful thing for our libraries. If you want to follow along with this post series as I explore creating a library marketing plan, check out all the posts here.
When I started to investigate creating a library marketing plan for our school library, I drew upon my marketing and branding knowledge from the business sector and started researching the topic. You’ll find some links to great articles, podcasts and further reading in my second post in this series.
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.
As I sat down to write this I had a look back at the last time I wrote about my Year in the Life of a Teacher Librarian. I was shocked to discover that the last time I posted about this was at the start of Term 2 and now here we are at the end of Term 3. Whoops. But I guess that just shows how busy the past few months have been. So, instead of trying to write a few posts to fill in the gap, this one will cover everything from the middle of Term 2 to the end of Term 3. Are you ready?
I love library marketing and branding and think it can be such a powerful thing for our libraries. If you want to follow along with this post series as I explore creating a library marketing plan, check out all the posts here.
When I started to investigate creating a library marketing plan for our school library, I drew upon my marketing and branding knowledge from the business sector and started researching the topic.
I love library marketing. There are so many facets of this. It’s not just promotions or publicity, though they play a part. But it’s also the bigger picture. It’s about how your users view your library. It’s about how the library team work as a team to market the library in a certain way in everything they do, from creating a flyer to promoting an event to each interaction at the circulation desk. And yes, maybe it makes me weird, but the idea of creating a library marketing plan EXCITES me. Continue reading
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