School Libraries Group Eastern Event - Cambridge

The CILIP SLG regional event took place in December at Cambourne Village College.
Topics discussed included censorship, supporting the curriculum and author visits.

Angela Sparks discussed freedom of access vs. safeguarding - how we as school librarians are gatekeepers of books for young people, and the difficult choices we make when deciding whether to:

• stock a book
• restrict access to a book (with age rating stickers, special collections or via the LMS)
• enable young people to make their own choice of reading material

These dilemmas vary depending on the kind of school, e.g. faith schools and the kind of parents involved with the school.  Some librarians reported letters of complaint from parents who had skim-read books and complained about language or content, but it was pointed out that most complaints come from reading out of context. It was agreed that sexual content and swearing was on the rise in Young Adult fiction, but that children could access this on the Internet or on television easily enough. The difference between film adaptations and the original novels (e.g. Hunger Games and Twilight) - visual content vs. descriptive/imaginative content gave us food for thought. Children are limited by their own imaginations when reading books, and a visual image from a film on the big screen stays in the mind longer than one created by one's own imagination.

Sue Hart presented how she supports EPQ at Kimbolton School, and explained ways in which librarians can get involved, either by supervising candidates, running skills sessions on academic writing, referencing and plagiarism, or by supporting preliminary research. It was a good overview of the qualification, but does involve a lot of work, both by students and staff.

Rosie Pike explained how organising author visits at Bishop's Stortford College became a week-long literary festival. The work involved in organising an event of this scale is a whole school effort, and not for the faint-hearted. However, it is clear that the response from the children makes it all worthwhile and perhaps evening author visits which appeal to both adults and children may help with the costs of these events for school with limited budgets.

After lunch, we indulged our creative sides with Michael Margerison, who described how he teaches different year groups about books, genre and narrative as part of their library lessons. We were all encouraged to write a fantasy adventure story following the conventions. Some took this more seriously than others. Chris, Sara, Concetta, Sue and I came up with the following:

The Voluptuous Witch Nigella was asked by the Wizard Oliver to seek out the Chocolate Fountain of Youth, so she sailed to the Island of Chocotopia in a marshmallow boat. But the Fiery Dragon Delia swooped down and roasted the marshmallow boat, which sank into the sea. Voluptuous Nigella floated to the island on her back, where she discovered the infamous Nut Mountain. Climbing Nut Mountain, Nigella dodged the rain of Ferrero Rocher boulders and giant Chocolate Oranges hurled down upon her by Delia's minion, Ramsey, and was rescued by the Hairy Bikers and their moustaches. All three headed to the Chocolate Fountain of Youth, where Voluptuous Nigella bathed in its cocoa glory.

After the silliness of our stories, Alison Tarrant explained to us how she uses Aurasma, an augmented reality app, to enhance the library experience for pupils. Book covers are linked to reviews of that book; displays are made interactive; explanatory videos (for, e.g. DDC) are accessed from wall signage. Of course, apps rely on a stable internet connection, on devices working effectively, and on some user knowledge. This is an app that may add a little extra fun to the library experience for some youngsters.

And the day ended with some general discussions about current reading, how we would deal with a limited library budget and supporting diversity at school.

A good day, with lots of interesting topics covered, and a good opportunity to meet up with other library professionals in the school sector.

Utilising iPads in Library lessons

For several years, the Library has been running information and library skills for all year groups, but especially for years 7 and 8, to introduce them to, for example, how the library is laid out, what Dewey Decimal Classification is, how to search the catalogue effectively.

One of these sessions has always been the Reading Game. We have been using the preprinted sheets from Carel Press to do this activity, which introduces pupils to different genres and books from our fiction library. Now that all pupils have iPads, we thought we would try and use the available technology to make the game more up to date for the app generation.

We are fortunate in having a lovely Learning Technologist who was able to come up with a few different apps which might achieve our purpose, and once we got over the idea that we had to do exactly the same thing in exactly the same format, looking exactly the same, but online, we decided to use Evernote, an app that I had come across many years ago, but never really had the need to use.

So essentially, when you pick apart the activity, each pupil is assigned a different genre. They have to look at the four provided books for that genre and decide which of these has:

• the best blurb
• the best start
• the best cover

Using Evernote, they need to record their decisions.

The advantage with Evernote is the ability to create a Notebook in which to store differently named Notes. So they created a Notebook called Reading Game, in which they created a Note for each genre they encountered. In each note, they type in which book title has the best blurb and which has the best start, then they take a photo of the best cover to embed in the note,

The advantage of using the iPads over the printed sheets is that pupils have their iPads with them all the time, for use in lessons, whereas the printed sheets were kept in the library and often never looked at again. So when it comes to revisiting the information, it is much more accessible and usable than before.

We recently introduced year 7 to Passport to Reading, which is our school reading challenge. They have to read 6 books in different genres and record what they have read, with a short review, in a booklet. Once the booklet is completed, they receive a certificate and can move up to the next level. Each level gets progressively harder, with pupils needing to read 6, then 9, then 12, books from 6 different genres in levels 1-3, then in level 4 to read 6 books in a chosen genre and, at level 5, to read 6 books from specified genres. In total, pupils who complete the challenge have read 39 books - in 2 years.

Now that the Reading Game diaries are stored on the pupils' iPads, pupils can check the genre Notes to give them an idea what to read in each category - they can choose to read a book they liked during the activity, and it helps to reinforce what is different about the genres.

Of course, we could use the iPads for the Passport to Reading as well, but each book recorded must be signed off by a teacher, librarian, parent or guardian, so I think we'll stick with paper for now.

Back to School

After a very nice (and very long) summer break, including a trip to Amsterdam to visit a friend, see the canals and eat cheese (yum), it's back to school time.

So what's new this term?

Well, an upgrade to our library management system has been providing us with variable amounts of joy and despair since July, when we moved from Eclipse.net to Eclipse (hosted) with the Reading Cloud.  Teething problems with the Management module aside, this is a vast improvement on our old and very creaky version of MLS's software, with its old-school public catalogue.  All the staff and pupils I have seen in library inductions love the Reading Cloud, with its social features, the ability to personalise and its modern look.  Having said that, some of the pupils were so excited at the prospect of creating their avatars, they forgot they were in a reading lesson! Most of them have enthusiastically borrowed books so we're off to a good start.

My holiday reading involved catching up with that's cool in teen fiction. Unfortunately, quite a lot of this is dystopian worlds or about kids dying, so I didn't read as much as I had hoped. However, in the past six months I have at least read the Carnegie medal shortlist for 2015.

Here are my thoughts in "this is my favourite book" order:

Buffalo Soldier (worthy winner)
The Middle of Nowhere (atmospheric)
The Fastest Boy in the World (beautiful)
Apple and Rain (realistic)
When Mr Dog Bites (challenging)
Tinder (gripping)
Cuckoo Song (freaky)
More Than This (derivative)

Recent reads in teen fiction include:
Belzhar (insightful, but with a twist)
All the Truth That's In Me (disappointing - guessed the ending too early)
If I Stay (pleasantly surprised - really enjoyed this life or death novel)
The Fault in our Stars (not as miserable as I had expected - can understand why the girls like it)
Smart (clever grounded-in-real-life detective story)
Liar and Spy (in two minds about whether I liked this one)
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (I was shocked by the content - drug refences and everyone smoking - published early 90s though)

Still on the bookshelf:
My Heart and Other Black Holes / Maggot Moon / The Miniaturist / The Monogram Murders / Apache / Cassandra's Sister / Peter Pan in Scarlet / The Bunker Diary / Looking For Alaska / The Hunger Games trilogy / Web of Darkness

So I'm getting there with the fiction, although I keep supplementing what I think of as my "work reads" with various non-fiction titles, my Agatha Christie Miss Marple collection and titles from the public library. There just aren't enough hours in the week to read as much as I would like to. Perhaps I should devote my time to scheduled "reading lessons" like we have for years 7-9 at school!

Library Skills in Schools

One of the things I really liked about working in higher education was teaching our library and research skills programme. You might think that school librarianship doesn't utilise these skills, but you'd be wrong. Our school enables pupils in the Lower Sixth (Year 12) to undertake an Independent Research Project (IRP) - as such, the Library teaches them how to research a subject effectively, how to avoid plagiarism and how to reference their source material. So far, so familiar.  This is all a preparation exercise for the skills they will need at university, and based on my experience in Higher Education, they desperately need to know these skills before they arrive on campus - it makes things so much easier.

So tomorrow I will be teaching a class of 11 Sixth Formers how to be honest in their academic work, by citing their sources and avoiding literary theft.

This is in contrast to the library skills sessions I taught last week with Year 7, where we covered research skills. They are starting to study Shakespeare and they had to answer eight questions on Shakespeare, Elizabethan history and the plays. The catch was that in their pairs one had to use a book, the other the internet to find the answer: a cunning ruse that shows them that the internet is not always quicker than a book in finding answers to very specific questions.

These lessons have all been taught before so the question sheets and resources were available ready for use... until we were informed that while one group was going to do Twelfth Night, as in previous years, the other would be studying A Midsummer Night's Dream... for which we had no questions.
So, quick look through the questions, two specifically Twelfth Night questions needed replacing. Now, I haven't read A Midsummer Night's Dream since I was a fairy in an outdoor production at the University of Leicester's Botanical Gardens (it rained - I had to miss the last performance and was ill for a week afterwards) and have only seen an amateur performance since (also outdoors; also wet) so my knowledge of the play was sketchy, at best.

Putting on my researcher's hat, I duly read the Connell Guide to A Midsummer Night's Dream and wrote two questions, found appropriate sources which Year 7 could use to find the answer, created new question sheets and a teaching sheet with all the answers for me, and duly waited for my victims class to arrive,

The thing I love about Year 7 is that they are enthusiastic, but also competitive. They soak up knowledge like sponges and always want to contribute vocally to lessons - there is never a shortage of raised hands from eager pupils desperate to give the answer.

Feedback from the English teachers was very positive:
"Thank you so much for this morning - a really useful and enjoyable exercise!" - Head of English

I led a fun, interesting skills session and I got to show off my Shakespeare knowledge.
Who says school librarianship is dull?

New Challenges

Having bitten the bullet and decided that I should join CILIP and do Chartership, what I've actually done is pay my membership fee and look at the PKSB. Which is rather daunting, to be patently honest. Jo Harcus has found a way of cutting through the bureaucratic language here, which I am minded to try when I get round to registering for Chartership (another £50 to CILIP - ka-ching!) but that's all going to have to wait until the summer holidays as I now have to get to grips with teen fiction, weeding/updating American history, working 32 hours a week and having a kind of social life.

As we Brits say, "mustn't grumble", and to be perfectly honest, I do love my job, and the fact that there is so much to do and learn here.

I was at a Youth Libraries Group conference  last week (more on that here) where we discussed emerging readers and how to get children to read, and I felt immensely lucky to work in a school where we don't have budget restrictions, and our pupils have scheduled reading lessons, and our teaching and support staff all love to read, and you can have a proper conversation about books without people thinking you're a nerd.

So although at the moment I know that Chartership must be done, I'm enjoying things as they are, and when I get home, I'm going to settle down with a nice book and just enjoy a good read.

Youth Libraries Group Eastern Region Unconference 2015: Emerging Readers

Opening the Book on Emerging Readers: An Unconference #ylgemerging
Youth Libraries Group Eastern Region  @YlgEastern

Saturday 18 April 2015, Rock Road Library, Cambridge

So, for the first time as a school librarian, I went to a conference! Well, an unconference, which is a free conference in a small venue where everyone brings cake.

Speakers on the day were Dave Cousins (author of '15 Days Without a Head', 'Waiting for Gonzo' and 'Misfits') and Professor Clare Wood from the Centre for Research In Psychology, Behaviour and Achievement, Coventry University (@CovPsychFRC), who spoke on 'Developing Emerging Readers'. Fiona Evans from The Reading Agency discussed the interventions and activities run by the Reading Agency, such as Chatterbooks (encouraging reading among reluctant readers at primary level) and the Summer Reading Challenge.

Afternoon discussions included reading schemes (including Accelerated Reader, reading groups and reading challenges) and how to get years 10 and 11 reading for pleasure.  More questions than answers were raised during these discussions, but most participants went away feeling that they were not alone in their thoughts about these topics.

I live-tweeted the conference using the hashtag #ylgemerging and the Storify is here:

New job, new sector, new blog!

As my move into school libraries has now become permanent, I felt it was the right time to start blogging again.

I worked in academic libraries for a decade, so moving into schools was, and still is, a learning curve, albeit a gentle ramble uphill and down dale rather than a steep climb akin to scaling Mount Everest. I have brought with me knowledge of cataloguing, classification and information skills, but I lack the in-depth knowledge of children's, teens and young adult fiction which seems to be the preserve of school librarians everywhere.

As well as the various rules, regulations and policies relating to Safeguarding (preventing child abuse and keeping children and young people safe from harm), a school librarian needs to understand the demands of the curriculum (which is always subject to change), the many and varied administrative procedures involved in running a school, and how the library service is competing with everything else for the pupils' time.

Add to that the requirement for lone working, the ability to instantly respond to a question with a valid answer and last, but not least, the expectation that you know everyone's name, and you find that's it's not that different to working in Higher Education!