Aug 27 2006
First entry
Monday saw the return of the students to DGS and the usual round of getting courses started. Only a few students came into the library at lunchtime some of last years regulars and a few S1s.
On Tuesday the SMT and Guidance staff held a session in the Library for S6 students and cleared almost all course changes in one fell swoop. Whilst this was happening Andy Holmes, a Senior Librarian with East Lothian Library Service, visited me to demonstrate the upgraded backup system for the automated library system. We disconnected the issue desk PC to simulate loss of the connection and I learned all about Talis Assure. So far so good. Then we reconnected the PC so that I could see how the backup fed the information into the live system to discover that the live system had gone down during the time of the demo and stayed down for the rest of the afternoon. PCs 1, Librarian 0. Luckily no-one wanted to issue textbooks to their classes on Tuesday afternoon the only time in the week this has happened. Biology, Chemistry, Physics, CDT, History and English all issue textbooks via the library system to keep track of their books. As you can imagine, the first week of a new school year is a particularly busy time for handing out books.
Wednesday morning and IT had worked their magic. The library system was back working and the backup system happily loaded up the loans details from the previous day. The Careers Adviser held her interviews and clinic in the library today. Normally she does this on a Tuesday but it worked out well as students were able to follow up on their meetings with SMT and Guidance the day before. I had a working lunch with Susan Aitken and Ciaran Earle from the English department to discuss how we are going to launch CRAW, the Creative Reading and Writing Group. In June we discussed the possibility of merging the Reading Club and the Creative Writing Club with the students who attended them. They liked the idea and came up with the new name. Next week the existing members, Susan, Ciaran and I will meet to decide on our plans for the group and how to invite new S1 students to join. Our group already has a visit by Keith Gray, the author, in the pipeline and will be taking part in the judging of the Childrens Scottish Book Awards. I met a whole S1 class for the first time today. I enjoyed chatting with them about their favourite authors or types of books (All S1 and S2 classes have a period a week in English timetabled for choosing books to read.)
Thursday was a particularly busy textbook day for Maths students. It was also the day I finally managed to make a start on preparing materials for a research project I am involved in with Andrew Thomson from the English department and Jim Herring who is now based in an Australian university but previously worked in Queen Margaret University College and Robert Gordon University. The aim of the research is to encourage students to develop effective information handling skills using a planning diary. DGS is one of many schools involved. I will be demonstrating online sources of information which our students can use. These include subscription services we have purchased and some that are provided by East Lothian Library Service. I also finalised arrangements for the S1 library induction course which will start the week of the 4th September and run until the start of October. The trickle of S1s visiting the library at lunchtime has now grown to a steady stream.
Friday I enjoyed a coffee in the sunshine at morning break on the staffroom balcony. Last period of the week an S4 English class researched topics for a discursive essay using printed sources as well as Internet based ones. New PCs were installed over the summer to replace aging Windows 95 machines. Students are very appreciative of the improvement. After they had gone I was able to complete the materials for the S2 class involved in the research project a pack for each PC with log in details for the various online information sources and a leaflet of the same details for each student to take home. The students can access all of these sources from home, if they have the Internet available.
Finally my favourite questions of the week. From an S2 student waiting in a queue for a textbook: Do you ever get bored stamping out and taking back books all day? (Ill save the rant about stereotyping for later) and from an anxious S1 student: Do you have to pay to take a book out?
