Anne Johnston’s Library Blog

Our Chinese Language Assistant goes home at the weekend to Xiamen. She has been with us for a year and has introduced us to many aspects of chinese culture, both traditional and modern. She has given me a postcard of the library of Zhangzhou Campus of Xiamen University. It is a huge, bright building. Follow the link to see it and more pictures of the beautiful campus. It is an interesting comparison with the Saltire Centre I visited recently. Follow this link to find out more about Xiamen University.

*Glaswegian for pal or friend.

13th June was the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, Scotland (CILIPS) Branch and Group Day. This day is part of our annual conference and it is attended by people from all different kinds of libraries and other organisations. The day consists of workshops and seminars arranged by the various special interest groups of CILIPS. The day began with the Presidential Address - no, not George Bush but Christopher Phillips, President of CILIPS. My first session after that was on Developing Catalogues for Customers not Cataloguers. It did what it said in the tin, wasn’t overly technical and explained how new international cataloguing standards will improve access to resources for everyone, that is readers, borrowers and customers and not just librarians.

My next seminar was Running Successful Book Groups. We have had a book group for a number of years at DGS but I was hoping for some fresh ideas, which I got. Thanks to CArol Moug from St Saviour’s High School, Dundee for an entertaining and informative presentation.

Last session of the day was Falkirk’s RED Book Award. Again I got lots of ideas form this even though it was dealing with running an award as a whole authority.

On Monday this week I hosted a meeting at DGS to consider how school librarians in East Lothian can encourage our students to become more independent learners than they are at present. John Crawford and Christine Irvine from Glasgow Caledonian Uniiversity came to meet me and my colleagues from Knox, Preston Lodge and Ross to follow up discussions we had at the open meeting on The Scottish National Information Literacy Framework in Glasgow recently. We now have a clear plan of action to follow which fits the points of focus listed by Don Ledingham in his recent letter “A Curriculum for Excellence - it’s not about doing different things, it’s about doing things differently”.

Towards the end of last month I and my colleagues from Knox Academy and Ross High attended an open meeting at Glasgow Caledonian University. I arranged for us to see round the Saltire Centre - the library at Glasgow Caledonian - beforehand. We were able to have lunch in the cafe (yes cafe) in the library and spend time working together on a discussion paper making use of the seating with laptop points provided to do so (Large couches actually). I intend to visit other universities and colleges in the next few months to get up to speed with the resources students are expected to use, including online journals and e-books. 

Sitting amongst the students in the Saltire Centre for an hour and a half, I became aware of how most students now mutlitask. They may be sitting at a desktop PC and/or using books, whilst plugged in to an iPod or MP3 and occasionally talking to their next door neigbour. Or they could be working as a group in one of the designated areas which have a white board and seats for several people. They may or may not have a tutor with them.

Our senior students show clear evidence in school that they want to work this way. My challenge, how to encourage them to do so without study deteriorating into a social meeting with no work at the end of the period. Should I be concerned about making sure no one is eating or drinking in the library or allow them to do so and instead make sure they clear up after themselves, as I witnessed in Glasgow? Can I rearrange the furniture to make it possible for students to work in a more relaxed but more productive manner?