Anne Johnston’s Library Blog

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Since November I have been on secondment two days a week job-sharing with the Senior Librarian Young People’s Services of East Lothian Library Service. I was pleased to discover just how much similarity there is between both posts. It has been mind-boggling at times job-sharing two posts with three people but I have picked up a lot of ideas to try in my own school. I have also discovered how much the aims of the public library side of the service fit with the intention of A Curriculum For Excellence.

The scene: a busy issue desk this lunchtime. Enter student with question : “Miss were you in Orkney this summer?”  Turns out I was spotted on Stromness main street in July. The student didn’t come and say hello at the time because she wasn’t sure if it was me. Fooled by my waterproof ensemble no doubt. And I thought I had got away from it all! Still an opportunity to show some holiday snaps.

This was taken by Anne  Zarinnia at a lunch in Gracemount High School for the student librarians from Wisconsin who visited the Lothians in June this year. They were placed in various schools in the area, including Dunbar Grammar, to gain experience of school libraries in Scotland. I am with Chris Morrison, Librarian at Linlithgow Academy, a friend and former fellow Field Officer with Lothian Region. I thought it was time to show the face behind the name

I mentioned in my previous post that there was a School of Ambition event at the end of term. It was called “Around the World in 80 minutes”. The audience journeyed round the school to various performance areas which represented each of the continents, culminating in the Polar Lands. For the Library I wanted to have something to represent the whole world,not just one area, and had an idea about a big floor jigsaw of the world. I talked to Phil Robertson and Danny Gillan - our PTs of CDT and Art - and the result was a GIGANTIC jigsaw. During our Activities week this year, Phil and Callum, the CDT Technician, cut out the countries and students and staff (me included) painted them up. The end result is very impressive.

At this time of year I am getting the Library organised and ready for the coming school year. Part of this process involves me reviewing what has taken place in the previous year. Last session seemed very hectic towards the end of the year with the School of Ambition event and a visiting student from the United States as well as the usual rush to issue textbooks and start courses when the timetable changed. So it is good to be able to reflect later on the successes and areas for improvement after a gap of a few weeks (and a very enjoyable if damp holiday in the Northern Isles).

I spent yesterday on a course which did what it said on the tin - “considered the pedagogy of collaborative learning, the on-line tools available and the practical techniques needed to engage learners.” The course delivery method was in the style of e-learning we would like to encourage in our students - an initial explanatory section, a session working on my own evaluating examples of hotlists, subject samplers, treasure hunts and webquests and then the rest of the day working in a group to produce a webquest. The day was organised by CILIPS and run by Netskills and had a mixed bunch of participants from school, public and university libraries. Interesting to see, yet again, that we are all dealing with the same issues when it comes to encouraging our library members to carry out research effectively.

I came away from the day with access to a half completed team webquest and an understanding of processes which must be carried out before starting to introduce students to the webquest. It is an effective way of providing a genuine collaborative learning experience which encourages student to locate, synthesise and evaluate information.

A couple of weeks ago I attended two days training for Glow mentors. It was good to actually start to build things on Glow. By the end of the two days my head was buzzing (pardon the pun!) with ideas we could try in schools. I am now trying to set up some glow group ideas to show other people the possibilities.

I recently visited the new Queen Margaret University Learning Resource Centre, together with several of the East Lothian school librarians and two of the librarians from Loretto. I enjoyed the look around the new campus and was particularly impressed by the use of thin clients instead of desktop PCs to provide IT access for students. Jo Rowley, Head of Library Services at QMU, is keen to offer opportunities to our senior students to make use of their resources. She recently joined us at a school librarians link meeting with senior librarians from East Lothian Library Service. We are already looking at possibilities for joint working to improve our students’ information literacy (or research methodologies - thanks Linda) and ease their transition from secondary to tertiary education. Next steps - school librarians will be talking to their HTs, guidance teachers and staff from relevant subject departments. Jo will contact East Lothian HTs and guidance staff .

I have been spurred into action again by two events recently. Firstly we have begun to work on putting together a team of students, staff and parents to run our school website. If I can show those who think they need to be able to write in “techie stuff” how easy the software is to use, we should be in business.

Secondly I spent a day at the Scottish Learning Festival. My colleague, school librarian at Preston Lodge High School, and I caught the ELC bus from Haddington at 7.00 am on Wednesday 19th September - definitley the most relaxing way to get to the SECC. Thanks to whoever decided to organise transport. I was signed up for two sessions on information literacy, which were as informative and relevant as I had hoped. I also manged to get into another session which I hadn’t signed up for. It was called Books 4 All and was an update on research by the CALL Centre of the University of Edinburgh on ways of assisting students with additional support needs. I came away armed with information about free or inexpensive solutions to make life easier for people. I intend to post my notes from the day on the blog soon.