Blowing My Own Trumpet
I had my Five Minutes of Glory today, presenting my vision for my library to the Junior and ELC staff. I know all too well that teachers are a hard audience, but also that they respond well to bribery, so I decided to use a technique I have heard of from various wondrous TLs, that of the Love Your Library showbag.
With the help of Big W and Chickenfeed (ie $2 shop) I assembled a document wallet for each staff member, a book of stickers, and highlighter and some stickynotes, then added
- Quick and Dirty Guide to the Premier’s Reading Challenge, + bookmark and poster
- Local bookstore 15% discount bookmark
- Andy Griffiths ‘Just Macbeth!’ tour flyer for yrs 5 & 6 teachers
- Referencing Refresher
- Bibliography examples and templates
- Information Literacy stages using ICT (from ASLA, 2004)
The last two items were targeted by year group, so each teacher only got the level relevant to their group, while their staff refresher doc had the full whammy. My aim was to give the staff an overview of the range of services provided by the library – most of which they know, but a reminder with prezzies doesn’t hurt – and to bring information literacy issues to the forefront a little more. We’ve been having a bit of a push in the Middle School to give staff and students this information and resources, so now I’m targeting the Junior School.
The other topic was that of the school library webpage. I do not like it – I find it text-heavy, disorganised, counter-intuitive (hey, this sounds a lot like me and my office…!) and I’m sure that staff and students find it very hard to know where to look to find anything useful. I want to redesign it, within the framework of the intranet software, to provide library and information services to everyone in an accessible way. I explained to staff my thoughts on this, and external issues such as forthcoming software changes to the catalogue search, and redesign of intranet appearance by contracted web developers later this year, and general lack of free time to do things instantly. I also asked staff would they like a more personalised library service – my library serves students from 4 to 14 yrs of age, an enormous range of skills, interests, literacy levels, subject areas. My thinking is to provide a page for each year group – or pair of years – based on a generic template, containing:
- annotated links to age-appropriate search engines
- research skills and tips (for students and parents working from home)
- hotlists of pre-selected websites
- links to in-house resources
- links to support leisure reading – Book Week, PRC, author blogs…
I asked staff what they felt, and there were some easy questions and some curlier ones – but generally it felt like staff are ready to participate in changes that would improve their access to services and resources.
Having offered all this, now I have to make good on it. ::gulp::
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