GIFSL* 65: from top stand-up comedians. Yes, really!

Photo used under a Creative Commons license

I am happy to get ideas and inspiration from wherever I can find them, and so clicked through on a Twitter link to read Michael Bierut's design column on Seven Things Designers Can Learn From Stand Up Comics.

What did I find?  Seven things teacher librarians re-imagining their libraries and looking for design ideas and inspiration and all sorts of things can learn from stand up comics.  Really truly.

This is the brief version, with my own comments. 

1. It's all about the basics.  Librarywise, stuff being shelved and findable.  A welcoming, helpful atmosphere and friendly staaff.  A library that encourages and inspires.  Resources and services that the kids want and need.  You know.  So do the kids
2. Once you've mastered the basics, make the work your own.  Every school library, like every classroom, bears the stamp of the personality of the teacher/teacher librarian in charge of it and responsible for it.  The art and science of teaching is a juggle of personality and knowledge and human relations and all sorts of other alchemies.  I know, in another library space, that I wouldn't do exactly what I have done at my present school.  I know that another teacher librarian, in my current library, wouldn't do things the same either.  It's not about better or worse, but different.  Playing to your strengths, with the goal of making it as effective as you can for the kids.
3. Respect your audience.  That's kids, and teachers, and parents.  Kids, because sometimes they're so easy to respect, and sometimes difficult to respect: although I have found that exquisite, courteous interest from a teacher librarian can completely discombobulate a noxious student, opening the way to achieving a positive outcome for both.  Teachers can be irritating (late and lost resources, forgotten bookings etc) but like anything, there's a story both sides (teacher librarians can be irritating too: let me count the ways...or not; you know).  I'm not keen on a them and us mentality.  It's us, all teachers (whether teacher librarians or other classroom teachers) working together.
4. Know your tools.  The standard stuff - cataloguing and other organisational tools.  The teaching tools - methods and strategies and ideas.  More resources in print and digital form and more than we have ever had before.  The tools of character and style - patience, interest in kids, enthusiasm... We have a huge toolkit, as big and Tardis-like as the mother's bag in the Swiss Family Robinson (I've never forgotten that - whatever they needed, she'd popped in that sailcloth bag before the shipwreck).
5. Honour your craft.  Work hard, create challenges for yourself, aim to never coast and always improve.  Use your personal learning network, your willingness to be a lifelong learner hunting out new ideas from blogs, Twitter, email lists, the media, anywhere you can. 
6. Don't be afraid of failure.  Not everything I try works out.  Last week I planned an exciting lesson and realistically, on reviewing how it went, would barely give myself a pass grade.  And a prac teacher watched it.  So, why didn't it work as well as I'd planned and hoped?  How can I do better?  If we don't model coping with failure, valuing failure, using it as a launch pad, how can we expect kids to learn how important it is, learn to be resilient, learn to be brave?
7. Finally, never forget you have a special gift.  How much fun is it to work in a school library?  Huge fun!  Barack Obama in a speech to librarians some years ago, talked about libraries as being a magic threshold.  We not only get to cross that magic threshold each day, we get to influence the experience of everyone who crosses it too.  Teaching is an amazing gift - that alchemy when it works, the pleasure of the company of so many different, engaging personalities and dreams and ideas.  Lucky lucky lucky (as I remind myself on the days when I end up tired and dispirited; because tomorrow is another day, and plenty of good things happen even on the tough days).

Click on to read the article in full here, with Michael Bierut's designer observations rather than my teacher librarianish ones:
http://observersroom.designobserver.com/oblog/post/seven-things-designers-can-learn-from-stand-up-comics/27038/

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL= good ideas for school libraries.  An ongoing series on this blog.  Find more of them by clicking here.

Final Report: School Libraries and Teacher Librarians in 21st Century Australia

The final report has been released today.

The full report pdf is here:
http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/ee/schoollibraries/report/fullreport.pdf

Here are its recommendations:
List of recommendations



2 Impact of recent Commonwealth Government policies and investments on school libraries


Recommendation 1


The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government partner with all education authorities to fund the provision of a core set of online database resources, which are made available to all Australian schools.


Recommendation 2


The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government work with the states and territories to develop a discrete national policy statement that defines the importance of digital and information literacy
for learning in the 21st century, which can be used as a guide by teachers and principals.


3 Potential of school libraries and librarians to contribute to improved educational and community outcomes


Recommendation 3


The Committee recommends that the Australian Curriculum, Assessment  and Reporting Authority include statistical information about the breakdown of all specialist teachers, including teacher librarians, on the My School website.

Recommendation 4


The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government support additional initiatives to promote reading, such as a National Year of Reading. The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace
Relations should collaborate with the Australian School Library Association, Australian Libraries and Information Association and other education stakeholders in developing these initiatives.


Recommendation 5


The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government initiate an Australian-based longitudinal study into the links between library programs, literacy (including digital literacy) and student achievement, including their impact on improving outcomes for socioeconomically disadvantaged students.


Recommendation 6


The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government support promotional activities undertaken by ASLA and ALIA that demonstrate to the school community the valuable work that teacher librarians are doing in respect of e-learning in their schools, including those that highlight their leadership capacity.


4 Recruitment and development of teacher librarians


Recommendation 7


The Committee recommends that the rollout of the new national curriculum, which is to be made available online, include a component of training for teacher librarians.


Recommendation 8


The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government commission a thorough workforce gap analysis of teacher librarians across Australian schools.


Recommendation 9


The Committee recommends that the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth, through the Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs, establish a national dialogue, including with tertiary providers, on the role of teacher librarians today in schools and into the future. The dialogue should include an examination of the adequacy of the pathways into the profession and ongoing training requirements.


xx


5 Partnering and supporting school libraries and teacher librarians


Recommendation 10


The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government, through the Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood and Youth Affairs, discuss ways to enhance partnerships with state and territory and local levels of government to support school libraries and teacher librarians.


Recommendation 11


The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government partner with ASLA and ALIA to produce a document that showcases some of the successful partnerships and programs between school
libraries and other libraries, and joint-use libraries. The document should be made available to government and non-government education authorities and school principals.

The whole report is 180 pages plus.  Haven't yet had time today to read/digest, but certainly will.

Cheers

Ruth

GIFSL* 58: Enchantment and your school library

@brainpicker on Twitter, and the associated blog Brain Pickings, provide a constant supply of inspiration and ideas on a huge range of topics.  Not narrowcast "teacher librarian-focused stuff", but all sorts of things from left field and out there and what about?, and hey, here's something to think about.  I love foraging among the wider world to bring back good things to inform my teaching (eg. this blog! - see the intro reference to a flypaper mind).

Take this infographic from a recently published business book, Enchantment: the art of changing hearts, minds and actions, by Guy Kawasaki.  Not something I've tripped over in education circles, but a great lens to use in thinking about our business as teacher librarians, promoting our libraries and their services.

Read the whole blog entry on Brain Pickings here, including links to an enchantment aptitude test, an interview with the author, and more. 

As school library staffing is being challenged, our work as teacher librarians evaluated, the ill-informed happy to spout that 'it's all on the internet now' and so forth, this infographic is, to me, valuable professional reflection for considering what I do and why and how, and how I can do it better.

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL: good ideas for school libraries

Library website design

Browsing around various library blogs (as you do), I noticed on the Librarian in Black this image of the updated website for the San Jose Public Library.

http://www.sjpl.org/

I'm mulling over ways to have a library website that's accessible to the kids (we don't yet have Student Sharepoint active, many online wiki sites are blocked and we don't yet have a DET wiki option, Moodle is a possibility...).

This provides an interesting idea of how to format/divide/categorise such a site.  It's easy to think, well, that would be useful to have, but the steps before that, the structure/organisation that will be durable and workable and effective - that takes more thinking out.

So, I'm thinking.  And this was handy.  Have you got any library sites you'd like to share in the comments, that you think are durable/workable/effective?

Cheers

Ruth

A Glog of school library links

Now and then I take a squizz at the blog stats, and look at the ways people find Skerricks - via Google, or Google Reader, or Twitter, or Bing, or Unknown...

And a little while ago I came across this source:




Which gives you a whole bunch of useful school library links. Thanks for including my name (and thus Skerricks!).  If the above doesn't work for some reason, here is the original link:
http://edu.glogster.com/glog.php?glog_id=14697435&scale=100

Cheers

Ruth

What is a Library? (1)

Libraries are about books, but they're also about much more than books. They're about ideas and invention and imagination and play and curiosity and wonder and hope. Yes, libraries are all about hope. They are houses of possibilities.



Phil Shapiro, Towards a National Transition Plan for Libraries, in PCWorld
So, each one of your working days you and I walk into a house of possibilities.  So what can you (and I) do today to make it so, and make it better?

Think I might find a way of displaying this quote in my library (could be handy for one of my library pieces in the regular school newsletter, too).  I notice, on reflection, that some of the words are in my word walls already - imagine, wonder, hope.  Good.

In this article, Phil Shapiro is canvassing ideas about public libraries in the future - what they're for, how they might look, design considerations.  Worth reading.

Cheers

Ruth

Are school libraries nearly obsolete?

Some food for thought in these two blog entries:

• http://www.teleread.com/library/2010-summary-libraries-are-still-screwed-by-eric-hellman/
• http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/blue-skunk-blog/2010/12/31/2010-the-year-of-the-cloud.html

Cheers (perhaps.  perhaps not) (I would note that there are some perspectives in these that reflect the US reality, rather than the worldwide one eg. in relation to digital rights).

Ruth

Top 10 customer service skills for library staff

From this terrific blog entry at The Learning Round Table, A Collaborative Learning Experiment: Top Ten Customer Service Skills for Library Staff:

1. Greet every customer
2. Be aware of non-verbal clues
3. Listen
4. Restate the problem or question
5. Be empathetic
6. Provide alternatives to “No”
7. Reserve judgment
8. Get (back) to them as soon as possible
9. Follow your gut instinct
10. Thank them for using the library

Trust me.  Go and read the entire article.  Then (as I did) pat yourself on the back for what you do; and work out what you can do better, or start doing.  One to share with all library staff.  From a customer's point of view, that list is the service you'd like to get, isn't it?

And is this customer service replaced by the internet?

I think not.

Cheers

Ruth

Life Matters on the national inquiry into school libraries

The Radio National program Life Matters had an eleven minute segment on the national inquiry into school libraries and teacher librarians, including an interview with Karen Bonnano.  Listen here.

Cheers

Ruth

Found via Twitter.

Designed for Learning: school libraries

As you may know, I've been doing some presenting at conferences and staff development days on "Re-imagining your school library".  (Will be at MANTLE in May).

This 27 minute video (can't embed it, so click here to watch it) is from CILIP in the UK, and is all about the design and functions of 21st century libraries - showing spaces and possibilities, how students and library users find these, what they want, how library staff and teachers find these, what they want.... full of ideas, and SO positive about the IMPORTANCE of school libraries now and into the future as learning spaces.

Watch it.  Definitely.

I'm going to have to watch it more than once, to unpack the ideas and think about how to use them.

Cheers

Ruth

Found via Twitter @sandynay

What do teacher librarians do?

I've been working on my submission to the Australian government's inquiry into teacher librarians and school libraries.  Sometimes it's interesting to see your thoughts in a more graphic form, so I did some playing with Wordle and the above image (click to see it larger) was one result.

I went through several versions, with the same text each time.  Interesting to see what conjunctions the Randomize button produced.  Tweaked colours, fonts - that Randomize button is evilly addictive!

Submissions to the inquiry close this week.

Cheers

Ruth

PS Blogger's playing sillies with images, so it's a tad smaller than I wanted to show you here.    But you can go bigger here.

PPS No, I'm not saying it's definitive.  But one view.  Not planning to include this graphic in my submission, but I thought it would be fun to share.

Read this. Very important.

If you are a teacher librarian in Australia, read this.

And send a submission before 16 April 2010.

Thanks to Audrey Nay for the heads-up on her blog here.

Cheers

Ruth

GIFSL* 51: take photos (with an added bonus: Skerricks: all singing, all dancing live version!)

(Actually, I lie.  No singing, no dancing.)  But it's lovely to have received some invitations to speak at teacher librarian meetings and conferences about re-imagining/enhancing/sprucing your school library.  So if you're going to the Sydney TL conference in Leichhardt in March, the Northern Sydney TL conference in Terrey Hills in March or MANTLE (website will show the 2010 program soon) in Newcastle in May, it will be lovely to meet you.

One of those looked like it might have to be done using the Connected Classrooms videoconferencing and Bridgit, so I would have been at my own school but beamed on a telly with my presentation on a whiteboard at the meeting venue.  Circumstances altered and I'll be able to attend in person, but I'm thinking I'd like to add being able to do that to my skillset.  Always good to learn something new!

I spoke at two conferences last year,  ASLA (NSW) and Western Sydney TL - they were fairly close together in time, so I didn't tweak my presentation enormously between the two (although I did tweak it - there's always something to make better/more effective). It was great to get the positive feedback and know my contribution had been useful.  This week, looking over the presentation (I don't have notes, the PowerPoint is my prompt as I find that more interesting, less 'rote' and besides, like lots of teachers, you switch me on, I talk... and I enjoy public speaking), I can see plenty of room for more tweaking/changing, even though it's only a few months down the track.  New things we've tried.  Improvements to the library.  More goodness to share!

I cannot encourage you enough to take photos of your library.  At least once a term, or more often if you change something (as we do with our foyer/entrance area).  Not only to record what you've done, but also to remind you of the evolution of your library, to see what's better than it was before.  I just wish I'd photographed my current school library when I walked into it first ten years ago, so I could have those photos to compare with how it looks now. 

One of the ways in which this blog has been really useful to me is the way in which providing illustrations for it has made me fish out my camera more often than I might otherwise have done, to catch 'before' shots as well as 'after'.  The camera's lens, and the reality of a photograph, can help see more clearly what one likes and what one would like to change/improve/develop. I've only got to look at the renovation of the library entrance (several entries from May 2009 on the blog illustrate this - use the archives over on the right) for just one example.

Other ways to use photographs (hurrah for the digital camera) include our framed row of student readers and (which used some of those photos again, as well as others taken at lunchtimes etc) our Christmas tree.

Cheers

Ruth


*GIFSL: good ideas for school libraries

E-books and print books: lifespan thoughts

Following on from yesterday's entry about Book 1, I came back to something that had been occupying a far corner of my brain for a while, a print book/e book question.

When I buy a physical/print book for the school library, theoretically I am buying an infinite number of reads/loans.  I can lend it out as many times as I like.  Realistically, I am not.  The most popular books get read to death, fall apart from the love, the wear and tear, the realities of library shelves and school bags and the handling of different readers and so forth. (While those I have misjudged, or which just don't find readers, remain sadly pristine...and end up being culled).

And so, in the case of popular books, one buys another copy to replace the one that is beyond repair, and so the author gets another royalty, as is more than reasonable, since they've written something that has found friends.

Pixels and digital files, however, while they have their own potential wear-and-tear (file corruption? hardware failure?) are not subject to the same physical limitations as print and paper.  But in the case of e-books and audiobooks (digital audiobook files, rather than physical housings such as CDs or audiocassettes), we kinda sorta expect to buy once and have it forever.  So whether it's thumpingly popular or resoundingly ignored, the author's return is the same.  Not entirely fair.

Perhaps this has all been canvassed elsewhere (do leave any useful links in the comments), but my mind has ticked over to wondering what is a reasonable equivalent.  How many loans do I reasonably expect from a copy of, say, Tomorrow When the War Began, or Twilight, or [insert your own popular title here]?  Thirty?  Fifty?  I'm not counting accidents (the rainstorm, the leaking drink bottle, the younger sibling with a felt pen) that can shorten a school  library book's life rather quickly.  But a paperback (and most fiction is paperback, and the most popular books in the library are often fiction) does not have an endless life, as a library book.  If we buy an e-book in a form that permits lending, how many 'loans' should that one purchase permit before we should/need to buy another licence for that title, so the author gets recompense for their popularity?

Hardback books, of course, generally have a longer life since they have a more durable construction; and nonfiction, in our library, has a lot more hardbacks than paperbacks.

So in terms of e-books and libraries, I wonder if what we can arrive at is a two-tier system, kinda equivalent to hardback and paperback.  Title X can be bought in 'hardback', which allows more loans before the file expires/needs renewal; or 'paperback', which allows fewer loans before licence renewal.  This would also mean that if you weren't certain of a title's likely popularity, or knew it was a niche purchase for a relatively small group of students (eg. a specific senior course) you could invest at the lower rate and be able to spread your budget across more titles.  Rather important, given the limited funds available to most school libraries.

I know I'm ignoring the whole question of e-book readers, e-publication formats, e-book lending logistics for school libraries and so forth.  Plenty of discussion around on that.

But why don't you go find a couple of your most popular library books and see how often they've been read (and estimate how many more loans they will survive)?  What do you think, then, is the average reasonable lifespan, in terms of number of loans, of a school library book, a paperback and a hardback?  Do leave a comment - it will be interesting to compare people's thoughts. 

Cheers

Ruth

PS in relation to e-book textbooks, right now the rental/annual subscription rates publishers are offering do not seem to comprehend the reality of faculty budgets.  I know they have costs to cover, but from discussion I've heard, head teachers find the prices out of reach.  Which can't help the publishers, since they presumably want customers.  For print textbooks, a $X investment in print books means a number of years of use; when a publisher wants even half of $X per year for an e-book textbook subscription, faculties just don't have it.  I watch, with interest, to see how this develops.

Think like a designer

In re-imagining our library over the last while, we've changed a bunch of things, and tried new things, and looked at what's been working, and tweaked, and....  I guess we've been designing - experiences, spaces, signage, all sorts of aspects of our school library.
.
Helene Blowers has a brilliant entry on her blog, LibraryBytes about 'thinking like a designer'.  And I quote:
.
In reading these tips, I think it’s important to recognize that these tips aren’t really related to the craft of “designing” stuff. Instead they’re related to the craft of “thinking about design” and as Garr* also notes most can be applied to any profession.

.
1) Embrace constraints. Constraints and limitations are wonderful allies and lead to enhanced creativity and ingenious solutions that without constraints never would have been discovered or created.
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2) Practice restraint. Any fool can be complicated and add more, it takes discipline of mind and strength of will to make the hard choices about what to include and what to exclude.
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3) Adopt the beginner's mind. As the old saying goes, in the expert's mind there are few possibilities, but for one with the beginner's mind, the world is wide open.
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4) Check your ego at the door. This is not about you, it's about them (your audience, customer, patient, student, etc.). Look at the problem from their point of view -- put yourself in their shoes.
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5) Focus on the experience of the design. It's not the thing, it's the experience of the thing.
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6) Become a master storyteller. Often it's not only the design — i.e., the solution to a problem — that is important, but the story of it.
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7) Think communication not decoration. Design — even graphic design — is not about beautification. Design is not just about aesthetics, though aesthetics are important. More than anything, design is about solving problems or making the current situation a little better than before.
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8) Obsess about ideas not tools. Tools are important and necessary, but they come and go as better tools come along. Obsess instead about ideas. Good advice is to go analog in the beginning with the simplest tools possible.
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9) Clarify your intention. Design is about choices and intentions, it is not accidental.
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10) Sharpen your vision & curiosity and learn from the lessons around you. Good designers are skilled at noticing and observing. They are able to see both the big picture and the details of the world around them.
.
Bonus:
.

(11) Learn all the "rules" and know when and why to break them.
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Read the full post to get more of Garr’s insights to each of the tips above. There’s some great thoughts that I think can be applied to many areas of library services. You don’t have to be a designer to think like one. You just have to be willing to embrace some new approaches.
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*This is based on work by Garr Reynolds: 10 tips on how to think like a designer, from his blog Presentation Zen.  He expands on each of these points - it is worth reading his thoughts.
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Now what else can we design and change and improve....?
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Cheers
.
Ruth
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Skerricks in the world: word walls and other inspiration

As you can see from the blog header, and elsewhere in this blog, our word walls are an important part of the library, our billboards and statements of purpose. (And beautiful, and fun, and more - we love them and the kids like them too).  I was originally inspired by seeing work done by the Robin Hood library initiative in New York.

It was lovely to see, cruising around blogs in the bloglist over there on the right, that MissLibrarian (at ButYou'reTooLoudToBeALibrarian) has taken this idea and worked out how to use it in her different library space in the UK (hey, that's three continents - US, Australia, Europe!).  Take a look at progress on her word banners here.  Applause!

Jill at CLC Eltham painted a word wall in her library, inspired by ideas she found here - hers looks FANTASTIC!  See it here.

Fiona over at Reader's Random Ramblings has mentioned Skerricks a few times, too - thank you.  I was interested to read her thoughts on learning to be a teacher librarian here and 'what is a library?' here,  and she had some thoughts about whether audiobooks are 'reading' here.

Mrs Mac's extensive and varied ideas for Book Week 2009 (theme: Book Safari) also draw on ideas she's found here - thank you for the mention!

What I love most about this is the stew and soup and brew of ideas we are all sharing, passing around, working out in our own ways, the aha! moment of mine that becomes a fresh aha! moment in your hands, and then travels on its way to others.  I learn so much from others - and appreciate what I do learn, what inspires and encourages me - that it's just grand to be able to return the favour and be a part of the sharing culture of teacher librarianship.

Cheers

Ruth

School Library Annual Report

Given that there are inevitable differences between a private school in another country and a government school in Oz, nevertheless there is food for thought in Dianne McKenzie's annual report for her school in Hong Kong.  Blog entry is here, including a ten point rationale; link to the annual report is here.  Whether or not you launch full-fledged into this, just going through the thinking/writing process for yourself would be a useful exercise and a way to begin.

Right now, we're in the middle of our school year: not, perhaps, a bad time at all to take stock of progress so far and make plans for the second half of the school year.  I know we've achieved some things we planned, AND some things we didn't plan but ran with anyway (flexible is good); and still have things to do.  It's good to reflect on achievements, consider the things that didn't work so well, and move on forward.

Cheers

Ruth

The happy life of teacher librarians: lunchtime today

WHEN IT'S WINDY AND COLD OUTSIDE AND THE LIBRARY HAS WHAT FEELS LIKE 150 MAYBE 200 STUDENTS IN IT WITH A TL AND A CLERICAL AND YOU ARE HOLIDAY BORROWING AND FINDING BOOKS AND ISSUING DOUBLE BORROWING PASSES AND YOU'RE SAYING, "George, don't do that*" EVERY COUPLE OF MINUTES AND DID I MENTION THE WIND THAT SETS THE KIDS OFF INTO LALA LAND BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT WIND DOES TO CHILDREN AND YOU HOPE THEY'RE NOT DOING THE WRONG THING ON THE COMPUTERS BUT WHEN YOU HAVE A CHOICE TO HELP THE KID WHO WANTS A BOOK TO READ OR NEEDS INFORMATION FOR AN ASSIGNMENT OR GO DEAL WITH THE 'NAUGHTIES BUT NOT UTTERLY APPALLING AND MAYBE THEY'RE NOT DOING THE WRONG THING' ONES...AND SO YOU CHOOSE VIRTUE OVER POSSIBLE EVIL BUT THERE ARE KIDS EVERYWHERE AND ONE WHO NEEDS NURTURING NEEDS A CUP OF HOT CHOCOLATE BECAUSE RIGHT NOW THAT'S ALL YOU CAN PRESCRIBE AND THEN THAT ONE + THEIR SYMPATHETIC FRIENDS SIT ON THE FLOOR ON AND JUST OUTSIDE YOUR OFFICE BECAUSE MAYBE IT REPRESENTS SOME KIND OF SAFETY OR COMFORT BUT HEY, MAYBE IT'S CONVENIENCE AND ANYWAY THE HOT CHOCOLATE SEEMS TO BE WORKING WHEN YOU HAVE A MOMENT TO GLANCE OVER THERE AND MISS, I'VE READ TWILIGHT AND LIKE ADVENTURY THINGS, WHAT CAN YOU SUGGEST, I'LL BE ON A LONG LONG PLANE FLIGHT TO ITALY NEXT WEEK AND WANT TO READ AND SO YOU TRY NOT TO BE JEALOUS AND TO FIND GOOD THINGS THAT YOU HAVE IN STOCK AS OPPOSED TO THE MANY GOOD THINGS YOU'VE ALREADY SOLD/LENT TO OTHER STUDENTS AND ONE OF HER PALS COMES ALONG AND ADDS RECOMMENDATIONS TOO SOME OF WHICH ARE OUT BUT THANKS BE YOU FIND SOME PROSPECTS AND SHE HAPPILY GETS A DOUBLE BORROWING CARD AND BORROWS SEVEN BOOKS AND YOU HOPE THEY COME BACK FROM ITALY AND IS THAT TRIUMVIRATE OF (A) INTERMITTENTLY OBNOXIOUS AND (B)INTERMITTENTLY CHARMING YEAR 10 BOYS BEING (A) OR (B) TODAY AND IF THEY'RE BEING (A), WELL THEN ARE YOU GOING TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT OR IS IT NOT QUITE APPALLING ENOUGH GIVEN WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON, AND MORE KIDS COME TO BORROW SO BOTH OF YOU ARE RUNNING HOT WITH THAT AND HANDING OUT HOLIDAY BORROWING BOOKMARKS AND MISS CAN YOU FIND THE FIRST BOOK IN THIS VAMPIRE SERIES AND WHERE IS THIS OTHER BOOK AND DO YOU HAVE THAT AND CAN I BORROW SOME SCRAP PAPER AND MAY I BORROW A TISSUE PLEASE (NO NO, YOU MAY HAVE EVERY TISSUE YOU NEED)  AND I NEED TO BORROW SOME SCISSORS AND MISS WHY IS MY COMPUTER BEEPING AND BEEPING AND MISS DID I SHOW YOU THE MANGA PICTURE MY BOY DREW OF ME AND HIM BUT IT'S ON MY MOBILE PHONE AND THEY'RE NOT ALLOWED BUT CAN I SHOW YOU LOOK HE'S GOTH TOO AND THAT'S A GUINEA PIG ON HIS SHOULDER BECAUSE HE HAS THREE AND THAT'S HOW HE DRAWS ME I THINK IT'S  A HEART THERE TOO MISS AND A HEAD TEACHER COMES IN TO BORROW A DVD AND REMARKS THAT IT SEEMS QUITE BUSY IN HERE AND OFF SHE GOES AND YOU CHECK TO SEE THAT THE HOT CHOCOLATE STILL SEEMS TO BE WORKING BUT YOU'D RATHER NOT HAVE TO STEP QUITE SO CAREFULLY OVER THOSE KIDS TO ANSWER YOUR PHONE WHICH IS RINGING AGAIN AND DID I MENTION THE DOZENS OR HUNDREDS OF KIDS IN THE LIBRARY AND THE WIND?

Some days, you know for sure that you've earned your salary.  Don't you?  My clerical assistant earned hers too, for sure and certain.

My first lunchtime at this school, two timid kids came to the library during the entire forty minute lunch break.  The next day, not many more.  Nah.  I don't want the old days back.  Just enough of me to survive lunchtimes like today's!

The happy life of teacher librarians!

Cheers, Ruth

PS. It is now the weekend.

*see this blog entry for the Joyce Grenfell monologue...

The Darien Statements on the Library and Librarians

Have you come across the Darien Statements yet?  They were written earlier this year by three librarians.  Worth reading and thinking about.  I particularly like the one about hope, and the one about choosing wisely what to stop doing.  But read them for yourself, think, agree, disagree, work out what you would say and how you see libraries now and into the future.

The Darien Statements on the Library and Librarians

Written and endorsed by John Blyberg, Kathryn Greenhill, and Cindi Trainor

The Purpose of the Library

The purpose of the Library is to preserve the integrity of civilization.

The Library has a moral obligation to adhere to its purpose despite social, economic, environmental, or political influences. The purpose of the Library will never change.

The Library is infinite in its capacity to contain, connect and disseminate knowledge; librarians are human and ephemeral, therefore we must work together to ensure the Library’s permanence.

Individual libraries serve the mission of their parent institution or governing body, but the purpose of the Library overrides that mission when the two come into conflict.

Why we do things will not change, but how we do them will.

A clear understanding of the Library’s purpose, its role, and the role of librarians is essential to the preservation of the Library.

The Role of the Library

The Library:

• Provides the opportunity for personal enlightenment.
  
• Encourages the love of learning.
  
• Empowers people to fulfill their civic duty.
  
• Facilitates human connections.
  
• Preserves and provides materials.
  
• Expands capacity for creative expression.
  
• Inspires and perpetuates hope.
  

The Role of Librarians

Librarians:

• Are stewards of the Library.
  
• Connect people with accurate information.
  
• Assist people in the creation of their human and information networks.
  
• Select, organize and facilitate creation of content.
  
• Protect access to content and preserve freedom of information and expression.
  
• Anticipate, identify and meet the needs of the Library’s community.
  

The Preservation of the Library

Our methods need to rapidly change to address the profound impact of information technology on the nature of human connection and the transmission and consumption of knowledge.

If the Library is to fulfill its purpose in the future, librarians must commit to a culture of continuous operational change, accept risk and uncertainty as key properties of the profession, and uphold service to the user as our most valuable directive.

As librarians, we must:

• Promote openness, kindness, and transparency among libraries and users.
  
• Eliminate barriers to cooperation between the Library and any person, institution, or entity within or outside the Library.
  
• Choose wisely what to stop doing.
  
• Preserve and foster the connections between users and the Library.
  
• Harness distributed expertise to serve the needs of the local and global community.
  
• Help individuals to learn and to use new tools to create a more robust path to knowledge.
  
• Engage in activism on behalf of the Library if its integrity is externally threatened.
  
• Endorse procedures only if they guide librarians or users to excellence.
  
• Identify and implement the most humane and efficient methods, tools, standards and practices.
  
• Adopt technology that keeps data open and free, abandon technology that does not.
  
• Be willing and have the expertise to make frequent radical changes.
  
• Hire the best people and let them do their job; remove staff who cannot or will not.
  
• Trust each other and trust the users.
  

We have faith that the citizens of our communities will continue to fulfill their civic responsibility by preserving the Library.

Source: http://www.blyberg.net/2009/04/03/the-darien-statements-on-the-library-and-librarians/

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Cheers, Ruth

PS It's bad form for a ballerina to tell you that pointe shoes hurt like the dickens, isn't it?  Bad form for for the work to be talked of too much, or the labour involved to be dissected?  All I'm gonna say is that for assorted software reasons, I've formatted and reformatted this entry about seven times.  Because I wanted to share this text here.  Despite crashing browsers, and uncooperative blog software, and all sorts of other things.  Dang, those pointe shoes hurt like the dickens!

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Holiday Borrowing

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For the last two weeks of term, I've been wearing this 'egg' necklace as a nonverbal reminder of holiday borrowing.  It's actually an Easter decoration I bought from Bed Bath 'N' Table, $9.95 (I restrung it on hat elastic).  Pretty/amusing.  Or maybe I'm just easily amused.

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It didn't take too much time to do the various things we've done to promote holiday borrowing.  The costs were small - cardboard, prizes etc - plus of course time.  But many of the templates are reusable next year, with the odd tweak (eg. date due).

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What have been the effects?  In comparison to other years, when we haven't promoted holiday borrowing, the loan stats are up over 80% on the figures for the last two weeks of term for those years.

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The kids are anticipating holiday borrowing now; it has a place in their sense of the school's yearly pattern.

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There have, this time, been more conversations than ever about reading, and reading as a fun, chosen activity, all around the school: through the quizzes, through students talking with teachers about what's on their badges; and through teachers discussing what's on their badges with their colleagues.  Each one is good, another positive.

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We've been constantly refilling the displays near the library entrance, the bookshelf and the table - lots of books finding friends, gaps appearing throughout the day as books are borrowed.

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There's plenty more we can try next time: more classes coming in to borrow for the holidays, maybe some 'direct marketing' by email to junior students, some roll teachers have asked if the quizzes can have a prize at the end: lots of possibilities.

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So it's been a busy end to a busy term (our loan stats this year are up for the whole term too, in comparison to other years) and we are looking forward to our Easter holiday break.

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Thanks for reading this blog this term, and especially thanks to those who've left kind or informative or appreciative comments - I appreciate your feedback.  It's good to know this blog is proving to be a useful resource to teacher librarians.

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Normal blogging will resume in late April/early May.  We plan to do some more painting in the holidays - remember those paint chips from a week or two ago??!!

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Cheers, Ruth