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!
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!
