Last month I spent the day at Ponteland High School Library,
shadowing the school’s librarian Ann-Marie Laws. When I visited the library in
June (see my previous post), Ann-Marie had kindly offered to show me a day in the life of a school
librarian. As I have been in my current job
for more than 11 years I thought this would be an ideal opportunity to see how
a library in another sector works. The library supports approximately 1200
students and 100 staff. Ann-Marie is the only librarian and has to provide the
resources necessary to support the learning needs of the students with a
limited budget and resources. Yet she manages to make the library an inviting
and welcoming space. This makes a difference to whether students use the
library or not, and is important, particularly as there seems to be a
connection between good library provision and pupils’ reading and information
skills. (Lucy, 2012)
I thought I’d look a little at the similarities and
differences I found between the school library and academic library. The most obvious one to me was that there was
no smartcard system in the library.
Having worked for most of my career in a university library and also
briefly in a public library, I am used to some sort of card system to allow
users to enter and borrow books. I think as the library at Ponteland is much
smaller, perhaps there is less need for this. Instead the Year 12 and 13
students simply sign in whenever they need to use the library. Younger students
can come and sign for a pass which allows them to use the library at lunchtime;
they are given a pass which they return when they come to use the library. The
sign in system is also used for students who want to use the library at break time.
This is an efficient way to control the number of students using the resources.
Obviously because of budget restraints a
computerised card system would not be possible, so Ann-Marie has been very
creative and I think it works very well. While I sat with Ann-Marie at the
librarian’s desk I helped to give out passes and I thought it a useful way to
get to know the students and see who is using the library. In my experience in
the Robinson Library there are so many students and staff it’s only really
possible to get to know a handful of library users.
Another big difference was that the use of social media is
not allowed and sites such as Twitter and Facebook are blocked. As a bit of a
social media addict I don’t know how I’d survive the day as it’s an important
source of library and university news. However, as Matt Britland (2012) says, there is a debate for
and against the use of social media in schools. On one hand it can be a good
promotional and broadcast tool, but it can also be open to abuse. It seems to me that in a school it’s not
always easy to police student’s use. Although Ann-Marie can monitor students’
website use to ensure they are working and not accessing in appropriate material,
it wouldn’t be feasible to do this all day.
Social media can also be time-consuming to use, so it may not be appropriate
for a solo school librarian to use it as a communication tool, especially as
other tasks take priority. In the
Robinson Library we have several people who tweet and use other social media
channels so the responsibility is not left to one person.
During my day I sat in on a Year 12 induction session led by
my colleague Jackie Dunn. I have
assisted with Information Literacy sessions in the Robinson Library so I
thought it would be interesting to see what differences there were. Obviously
the message is the same, but the audience is difference. Despite the lack of
electronic resources, it’s still important to stress how to find, evaluate and
analyse information and how to use information ethically. So Jackie stresses
the importance of using reliable, academic resources like Intute and
Sweetsearch instead of Google, even though the latter can be a good starting
point. Ann-Marie uses lots of imaginative techniques such as quizzes and games
to engage students and get them thinking about how they find and use
information. As well as this Ann-Marie
has introduced Drop Everything and Read http://www.pchs.northumberland.sch.uk/dropandread.php
which encourages students to read every day for 20 minutes. I think it’s important
that this becomes a habit and vital that schools have a qualified librarian who
can ensure that pupils have the skills to read and handle information
effectively. The work that Jackie and Ann-Marie do in teaching information
literacy in the school is important as it gives the students a head start for
university and beyond.
Ultimately the school librarian needs a wider variety of
skills, or at least different skills than an academic librarian. So in the
Robinson Library there are several staff members to deal with tasks such as
cataloguing, book ordering and IT, whereas Ann-Marie does it all. I think there
are advantages and disadvantages to this: she has complete control of
everything, but she has no other qualified librarian to discuss problems and
ideas with, although she does network online. However being a solo librarians is
probably a good way of keeping skills up to date; I know there are things I
studied for my MA which I have not had the opportunity to use.
Thanks again to Ann-Marie for arranging the visit. I
thoroughly enjoyed the day and it was interesting to see the contrasts between
sectors. I realise I am lucky to work in an academic library where we have a
plethora of resources at our fingertips, but I wonder if that makes us lazy. However it made me see that in both academic and
school libraries we have to be creative and flexible in the way we manage teach
and promote library resources to benefit our users.
References
Britland, M. (2012) 'Social media for schools: a guide to Twitter,
Facebook and Pinterest', The Guardian, [Online]. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/2012/jul/26/social-media-teacher-guide?CMP=twt_gu (Accessed: 27 September 2012).
Lucy, G. (2012) 'Do school libraries make a
difference?: Some considerations on investigating school library impact in the
United Kingdom', Library Management,
33(6), pp. 403-413.
