Anne Johnston’s Library Blog

The view from the Library to the garden. Just wanted to share it before the blossom fell.

Two firsts last week. I had the chance to make tartan and try speed-dating for the first time - not at the same time. The 3-18 Learning and Teaching Group took an in depth look at how to put policy into practice leading to Don creating the East Lothian Tartan Approach. The speed-dating happened during our PTs Away Day at the National Museum in Edinburgh - a great venue for working on our school development plan. At lunchtime I enjoyed sitting outside to eat. It was a bit chily on the roof of the building but Edinburgh looked glorious, with trees either in blossom or with new leaves and St Giles glistening in the sun. The speed-dating? an unusual way of introducing us to the detail of How Good Is Our School - The Journey to Excellence  What these meetings had in common was some much-appreciated time to reflect on what we are trying to achieve in schools. It is too easy to get caught up in the need to get “paperwork” completed and lose sight of the importance of keeping our focus on our students.

At the end of last week in ICT Librarian mode I showed edublogs to a colleague from East Lothian Library HQ. He is keen to have a blog and may well have contacted David Gilmour by now. I also encouraged him to look at one or two other blogs, including Euan’s. Same colleague was interested to see the structure of the GLOW portal. I’m sure there will be places to link public libraries in East Lothian to GLOW. Our students and staff already have access to several online services/portals via East Lothian Library Service.

Also last week I experienced one of these “it’s a small world moments”. I had a phone call from Fiona MacIntyre in the Unison office. She has been contacted via Friends Reunited by one of her best friends at uni who also turns out to be one of my former flatmates. You can run but you can’t hide!

My last unexpected bit of info from last week was when I discovered that one of the founders of Wikipedia has set up Citizendium - a competitor for Wikipedia. Cataloguer Librarian was particulary attracted to The Big Clean Up whilst Research Librarian liked the idea of quality assurance. More details here: Wikipedia ‘broken beyond repair’ says co-founder and Citizendium goes live in beta

Tomorrow is our CRAW lunchtime when our Creative Reading and Writing group meet and Storyteller Librarian gets a rare opportunity to appear.