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It has been a busy time for all involved in school libraries, with many of us now have our CBCA Book Week hats on, however, we must not forget all the great things that have happened during Term 2! Share your wins to our collective Padlet and see what others are doing.
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Professional development is a key element of what we do at ALIA Schools. The success of our May webinar Fostering a passion for reading was a testament to the wonderful skillset and passion that school library staff in our midst have, with over 100 registered participants! It was an opportunity to hear from staff in varying roles from very different libraries about the things that work for them to promote a love of reading.
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Focusing on different program initiatives like 'read with a mate', the uses of social media and collection development tools, this is the right professional development for you if you want easy, practical, bite size ideas to implement in your library. The feedback from participants speaks for its self:
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"As someone studying in the field, this has inspired me to pursue a role in school libraries."
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"All the speakers had such valuable insights and I now have things I can apply to my library."
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You can purchase a recording of the session and all past webinars here.
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So you work in a library, tell us about your role and how you got there.
I'm the Teacher Librarian at North Sydney Girls High School, an academically selective secondary school. Every school uses its teacher librarian differently, but the role most often involves co-designing and delivering teaching and assessment, fostering a culture of lifelong reading, providing targeted lessons on research and information literacy skills, and creating and maintaining a library space that is welcoming and aligns with the school's values.
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My teaching background is in social science subjects like Geography, Commerce, Sociology and Anthropology, all of which lend themselves to interaction with other faculties, ongoing research, and keeping an eye on the news of the day, so moving to a role that required collaboration and connection right across the school was a natural fit!
Our school's library is in an elevated position in the middle of the school campus with lots of natural light. Along with the 'main area' of the Library where the collections are housed (along with plenty of seating and table space) we also have two full-sized classrooms, several smaller spaces, and the offices for the school's Careers Adviser and Student Support Officer. A high school library is a multi-functional space that needs to accommodate anything from busy lunchtimes with students coming in and out, to senior students studying in their free periods, to a timetabled class, to a year group meeting of 150 students. This means all of our furniture has to be flexible and moveable - I've really come to appreciate tables on wheels and chairs that easily stack. I'm also lucky enough to have a full-time Library Assistant to support the operational aspects of running the space and maintaining the collections. We are always busy and we like it that way.
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What is your most successful program or event in the Library?
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Weeding school library collections can be particularly tricky as the titles often have strong emotional connections for students or staff, but even with a very generous policy we weed hundreds of titles every year. Rather than have these book vanish we decided that radical transparency was in order, so we placed all of the books that had been weeded on display at front of the library and ran a 'Borrow to Save Me!' promotion. If someone thought a book simply had to remain in the collection then it was up to them to borrow it for a read and then explain why the book either deserved to remain...or why it should indeed go. I was not prepared for how much interest this generated! The promotion increased interaction with the collection as a whole, created conversations about specific authors and books, and in several cases got teachers thinking about what they considered 'important' works that students weren't connecting with. None of the books that were saved have mutated into wildly popular choices, but they're 'paying the rent' in loans and the discussions they've generated are invaluable.
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In addition to being the Teacher Librarian I teach a one-year elective class called The Art of Game Design, which covers multiple types of 'analogue' game design ranging from board games to escape rooms. We finish the year with a look at narrative games, specifically ones that give the players a toolbox for rapidly creating characters, settings and situations with minimal prompts. This has led to some lovely crossovers between the classroom and my role as teacher librarian as I've had younger students playtesting board games and the school's Dungeons and Dragons club expressing interest in using the settings the students have created in their narrative games.
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What are you reading at the moment?
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My personal tastes run towards what I call 'big swing' genre mashups - Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence ('what if I set legal and political thrillers in a fantasy universe?') are a great example. However, the role of a secondary teacher librarian means that reading both YA-marketed and YA-suitable works across all genres is non-negotiable - good thing this covers a broad selection of excellent titles. Having just finished Malka Older's excellent Centennal Cycle trilogy, I'm currently reading Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, and after that will finally be getting around to Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus.
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My interest in gaming and game design also means I always have at least one game book on the go as well - right now it's a tabletop role-playing game called The Triangle Agency ('what if The X-Files was an office comedy?'). I've seen sourcebooks for role-playing games referred to as 'potential fiction' as they give readers a world to set stories in and rules to govern how those stories can play out. They're wildly underestimated as collection items, especially the solo journaling games that use a blend of randomised and structured prompts to help the reader create anything from the diary of a vampire to the playlists and call-ins for an overnight radio DJ.
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I love libraries because...
There is no institution so antithetical to the culture of user-pays consumption as the library. An indoor, air-conditioned space you can stay in for as long as you like? A place that will lend you anything from a book to a gardening implement at no cost? Employees whose entire job is to make your life easier, safer or more interesting? If someone were to propose the concept of the library in modern society it would fall at the first hurdle. Libraries are impossible, and yet they remain essential.
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Be part of the research
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Associate Professor Margaret Merga and Dr Saiyidi Mat Roni are seeking your input in the International School Library Workforce Survey. Grab a coffee and spend ten minutes answering questions to help identify current and future challenges to the school library workforce and school libraries worldwide.
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Advocating together
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Advocating for libraries and school library staff something we are always striving for.
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ACSL provides a united and professional voice to advocate for Australian school libraries and school library staff.
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