Visit to Ponteland High School Library: a day in the life of a school librarian

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.