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.