Jan 23 2007
Another Broken Resolution and A Hard DayAt The Office
So much for good intentions. The third week of term and my first post of 2007.
Term started well. Everyone seems to have slipped straight back into harness. Seniors are now aware that there is a lot of work to complete this term in addition to prelims. After school on the 8th January I attended a meeting called by Don Ledingham to set up a strategic group to oversee development of the Exc-el site. Only staff attended this meeting but students will be included in future.
Over the past fortnight I have issued various sets of textbooks to students. Staff appreciate the ease of keeping track of their books using the library issue system. I have students from several departments booked into the Library to use the resources (books as well as computers!) already. An English class is about to study the Mafia, three Physics classes will study space (the final frontier) and it is S2 course choice time. From now until the beginning of March all S2 classes have three periods booked so that they can use careers materials. One of these periods for each class will be a session with Marjory Armstrong the Careers Adviser.
I am also really pleased that the School Board has agreed to support our expansion of the Accelerated Reader programme. Students involved so far are already showing an improvement in their reading. I will be working closely over the next few weeks with English and Learning Support staff as well as the students to make the necessary range of books and quizzes available.
On the admin front, I have almost finished collating this year’s statistics on school libraries in East Lothian and will be sending them on to the Principal Libraries Officer, the Head of Education and the Scottish Libraries and Information Council which collates figures nationally. Individual school data is not sent to SLIC, only the global East Lothian figures. We use nationally agreed quantitative indicators to collect this data each year.
Tonight as I was leaving school I discovered that my Job Outline for single status job evaluation has arrived at last so one of my first tasks tomorrow is to set up meetings with my Head Teacher and the Principal Libraries Officer to get it signed off.
Finally I have attached a link to the diary of the Director of the National Library in Iraq. I thought long and hard before including this as I don’t want anyone to consider it a political statement about the war in Iraq. I simply can’t conceive of what it must be like to carry out your work in the conditions that the library staff do each day. Our professional journals kept us up to date with their efforts made to protect and save the library stock for future generations during the conflict. They are still struggling to to do so.
