Dec 19 2007
Shine on!
The previous post “Missed opportunities or a chance to shine?” was about promoting ourselves – amongst other things. I just found this blog post today SL2.0 Suggestion Camp: Library Powered. It gives a really interesting and simple idea on how to market what you and your library can do for your school: why not make labels – the examples on the blog are for the US “Library Power” promotion – we could choose something else. These should then be stuck on everything that you send out to your school community, e.g. books, printed brochures, lists of weblinks etc. I have had compliments slips for years, but this label or sticky note idea is great.
I have been talking about this in school in the context of our VLE. When we are planning how we are going to develop pages for the LRC, I am trying to think about how I can put useful resources on for subject departments or pastoral teams, but “brand” them in some way so that staff and students know that we have done all of this work for them. Some teachers seemed to think that this was a bit strange, but then they usually have not had the kind of career that many of us have – i.e. very rarely does a Head of English, History, or whatever, have to justify their very existence in a school!
I have talked about and given presentations about this on numerous occasions. to put it simply:
If we don’t shout aloud about what we do, then no-one else will do it for us!
We are reaching, if we have not got there already, a critical point for school libraries and librarians. Some of us are feeling pessimistic about lack of development in the career of school librarian, others are maybe more hopeful.
For myself, I suppose that I am coming to the beginning of the end of my career – it depends how long I want to go on. But…I am still hugely excited and passionate about being a school librarian – really I should put School Librarian! The wonderful thing about this job is that it never stands still and it is, largely, what you make of it. When I started out, computers were a new novelty in schools. Now, I am interested in thinking about Web 2.0 can do for us and the teachers and students we work with. We must not let new opportunities slip through our fingers, but make time to learn about new technologies and ideas and think about how we can use them in the curriculum.
So, how can we make some of the Web 2.0 technologies work for us in terms of marketing. How are you developing pages on your VLE? Are you making a “library” section for it or are you putting resources into subject sections? it is difficult to share ideas as all of the systems seem to work differently, but perhaps we can pool some thoughts.
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I am never quite sure about library presence on a VLE. I am not sure how much the students will look at it. I think that somehow we need to push info and new and marketing to them and in the long term i can see more mileage in PLEs. These i think would build on their interest with facebook and personal spaces.
We have tried to put inf and stuff on our VLE, but i have never been happy with what we have done and find that the students are more interested in the home page for our lib system. Whatever I put on the VLE looks boring and static. What i like about the lib system is the new books listing, book of the week etc.
I think that studetns will only use sections of the VLE where they can see what is in it for them. How it will help their grades and improve their learning and make things easier for them.
I would love to see some VLE library sections that people think our being used and valued.
What I am thinking is that many schools will prevent us using Web 2.0 stuff because of the presence of VLEs. They are being sold as a way of controlling students, I think. What I mean is that someone up there thinks that by making VLEs sort of like social networking with discussion groups and so on, we will be able to make students channel their use of these sites into educational use of the VLE. I am not so sure as I think that when adults try to do this – e.g. make library sites on Facebook etc., all that we do is make these seem totally uncool and students move on the the next thing!
What I am going to try to do, seeing as we have got VLEs and we need to make the best of them, is to make the LRC visible in the Subject Department sections as well as having our own space. This is because I agree with Ingrid on the idea that students (and staff) will only use sections where they see a direct benefit for themselves.