The Librain

There have been some great presentations so far, giving lots of food for thought – much of it very profound indeed. So, today was my turn! I presented on “Creating a 21st Century Library in an 1828 Building”. There are no complex ideas here, just a practical case-study of how we created this lovely new library in a tiny space. I enjoyed putting the presentation on VoiceThread – so here it is:

Well, folks, I have been neglecting this blog over the Summer – sorry! Anyone who knows me will understand that I have been really busy organising the refurbishment of my school library. Is that a valid excuse? Well, I think so!

Anyway, it is progressing very well and we hope to open it soon. From the time the work started, in July, I have been taking photos and posting them on the library site – Library Online. Also, I have been tweeting (probably too much) from The Librain’s account and also my school library account – Library Online – with almost daily updates. I think that because of this activity, I have been asked to do a presentation for the next Your School Library Course!

If you are interested in library design, then this course should be very interesting. There are some great presenters – I wish I could have had this course a year ago! Anyway, if you want to find out more, then check out the flyer below:

Before I return to considerations of Web2.0, I am going to divert here towards a really interesting afternoon spent visiting the library at a local university. Many thanks to the lovely staff there who made me so welcome. Please note that any photos on this post are not of the library I visited today.

Sesame Library by Jim Bob Blann on Flickr

My first ever library post was as Graduate Trainee at Lancaster University Library back in 1979-1980! In those days we were in the early stages of automation – each book had a piece of punched card inside – about 10cms long. To issue a book, we had to take the student’s card – which also had holes in it – and put it through a reader. Then we had to push the piece of card through after it (I think I am remembering this correctly – it was a long time ago!). As the card often got scruffy, we had to learn how to read the holes and work out the numbers that they represented. One of my favourite jobs was the afternoon I spent each week with the techies. They were developing the next stage of computerising the library – barcodes!

Anyway, that diversion, within a diversion, just goes to show quite how old I am!

What I am leading up to is how far things have changed. I last walked into a university library probably in 1981, when I was finishing my Masters at Sheffield. Today, I walked into the most wonderful library space – I was almost jealous of the students for having such an amazing place in which to study!

So then I am thinking about my tiny library space in my new school – well, in comparison to a university library, all of my school libraries have been tiny! You would think that I had nothing in common with the library staff – how could I?

Well, that would be wrong! First of all, we are fellow-professionals and we speak a lot of the same language. We could relate to some of the same issues as librarians in an institution concerned with teaching and learning.

I went there to make a link and to talk about how we, as school librarians, can better prepare students for their time at university. I also had some idea what I would hear as I often read about the concerns of colleagues in the wider profession. These seemed to be the main issues.

On arrival at university, many students:

• Do not have an understanding of how to appraise resources. They do not have a concept of authority or trusted high quality resources. They think that a blog (written by anyone), a peer-reviewed journal article and a book are all equal.
• Have not gone beyond Google in terms of search engines before. Many still use Wikipedia uncritically.
• Have never used a subscription database – and wouldn’t know what one is anyway. The university invests a huge amount in high quality online resources, e-journals and e-books!
• Have never used journals.
• Have never read around their subject and baulk at essential reading lists.
• Are shaky when it comes to writing an academic essay.
• Have issues with plagiarism – not unexpected!
• Also have issues around understanding what a library is – as a public shared space. So they see nothing wrong with imposing themselves on other’s space in terms of noise, use of mobile phones and MP3 players, use of laptops, eating and drinking etc. They also have no idea of security – leaving their belongings around.
• Issues around use of ICT – using each other’s passwords or library cards.

There were lots of interesting features of the library in terms of design that confirmed some of what I am planning for our refurb – although I am more than embarrassed to compare the two! The sockets set into the floor, flexible seating, laptops, for example. It has also made me think that my idea for the classroom space (which we will incorporate into the library in 3-5 years), might be a good one: that we don’t take down the wall, but keep it as a bookable small room with IWB, laptops and flexible seating. That way it can be used for small group work, meetings etc., and the main library can have contrasting uses. For example, when we have a class in the main library, the smaller room could be used for quiet study; when we want quiet in the main library, the smaller room could be used for a group booking. The university library had a wonderful array of different kinds of space: ICT suites, group meeting rooms, areas with traditional study tables, areas with coffee bar style tables and chairs, zones with settees, and so on. This caters for the wide-ranging learning styles of today’s students.

I wish my library were a Tardis!

TARDIS by Dave Pearson on Flickr

Anyway, to finish, there are so many opportunities here for school librarians! Not only can we collect this kind of evidence about modern HE students and use it to convince our schools that we have a major role to play. We can also take heart from the fact that we share so many issues with our larger “cousins”. And we can look at their good practice and use it to inform how we develop our own collaborative teaching but also how we design our library spaces for the future!

Both images from the Flickr site

I must be getting tired! Or real life is grabbing hold of me again? I feel I have become so immersed in a Web2.0 world and am so excited and inspired by all that I am reading and experiencing that I cannot immediately look up and engage with a real person!

The podcasting presentation was excellent and I feel that I could try this out, when the opportunity presents itself. I have saved the presentation and also all of the links so that I can return to it later on.

I also dropped in on the “chat” session just to see that it works OK before our session at 8.00 pm tonight. If I have the energy, I may add to this post after that.

This afternoon, I tried the session on The Seamless School Library – well, that had me bowled over but totally drained at the same time. This is not a quick Word document or a .pdf, but a whole website to explore. It was too much for an afternoon – trying to fit this between the normal library stuff. I am also getting quite tired as I have been staying up too late reading stuff and then I cannot sleep as so much is whirring around my head!

Anyway, I will again come back to that section at a later date as I cannot cope with it today.

So, I spent some time working on the Library Online website. Having watched the social bookmarking presentation, I was reminded that I could use the “link rolls” script from Delicious to show visitors to the Subject pages the latest links for each subject that I have added to Delicious. I have only made a few of these pages as yet, because I have not reached the point where I am working closely with teachers. I just made these as examples – although the English one is starting to develop because the Sixth Form students are starting to ask me for help – wonderful!

Update: What great fun it was chatting to other school librarians on Meebo last night. Now I can see why teenagers get so addicted to MSN! Then I spent some time setting up Skype and got through to a friend in Australia. I still feel so starry-eyed by the power of technology! Maybe that is why I chose the picture below as my main avatar!

A more difficult day for me this one. I dipped in and out of the course all day and switched between various things that I needed to do in the library. I read Judy O’Connell’s blog regularly, so I already had an idea about her presentation. I continue to be in awe of the things that she does. But it is obvious that she is enabled to work on a different level to most of us in the UK as she has a huge library (we can see it developing on her blog), she has staff and as a teacher-librarian she is able to have her own classes.

Anyway, I will carry on following her as I pick up so many ideas from influential librarians like her!

David’s presentation, and the live session, was really amazing. I now know that I love something that has the human voice as well as a visual presentation! Although this kind of media center would not be possible or very appropriate in my present school, it was wonderful to see the things that are possible elsewhere.

Also, I must admit that I find I am still able to be awed by the power of technology! Whereas students have grown up with this, and so very rarely get that wow factor, I say “Wow” all of the time. From someone who used a dip-pen then later a sliderule at school to this…

…truly awesome!

So, the course has now started and I am beginning to understand more about Sosius! I watched an interesting presentation about setting up a new library and it was such a contrast with what I am doing in my new job – a new school, lots of students and a huge space. Whereas here we are a small school in an historic building and I have a tiny space to develop.

I learned how to make comments on the Voicethread presentation – probably stupid ones(!) – and commented on the discussion. It will be nice to see if more UK librarians join in this evening as it has been pretty quiet today.

I may post more here later on if more discussions develop this evening. Otherwise, the issue is finding the time and the space over the weekend to take part. If I leave it until Monday, then we are back at school after Half Term and I don’t suppose I would be able to catch up.

Update at 23.46 – a bit late for this! I spent some more time looking at a presentation for tomorrow and seeing which friends were online – sad, eh! I can see some of the discussions starting to develop and will look at some of them again tomorrow, if I can make the time.

An interesting training opportunity is taking place from the 20th February to the 1st March. A group of us from SLN (School Librarians’ Network) are joining an international group on an online course – “21st Century Learning : Professional development to transform school libraries with Web 2.0“.

I remember many years ago a lot of school librarians doing online ICT training (can someone remind me what it was called?). This, however, is a huge step further as we are taking part alongside school librarians, teachers, ICT specialists and many others from across the globe. Exciting times!

First of all, we need to get to grips with Sosius – an online collaboration tool. I am feeling my way around this and have made contact with most of the participants in the course. Also, I have now posted a few comments to discussions.

I will be blogging here, hopefully on a daily basis, throughout the course to show the progress that I am making!

Well, I am at home as the school is closed because of the snow. So, I thought that it was about time that I wrote a post about the developments I am making with Web2.0. After, that is why I set up the blog in the first place! Sorry that this is a long post – but today I have the time to write it!

I am having a lot of fun with the school library website. It has been started as a way of tracking the development of the Library as it is refurbished and also offering a service to the school when the current library stock is not of a standard to really meet the needs of the staff and students. It has been gratifying that so many school librarians have seen the site and have used it as an exemplar of what can be done. I also think that I can use the site to create a bit of a “wow factor” by utilising lots of Web2.0 gadgets and widgets to catch the eye.

These are being used in an educational way (honest) but also as a bit of fun. I chose a theme for the site that has a sidebar at each side of the main page. That way there is enough room to add in a range of widgets. I have moved them around a bit and tried a range of services.

So what are the main Web2.0 services that I am using? The left sidebar is mainly about the Library Online website itself:

• The top two widgets are just text that I use to explain the site and put on the latest news about the site.
• Then comes a widget with my Twitter feeds. I have to make sure that I use direct messages for personal conversations as the Twitter feeds need to look professional for the site. They are a great way of adding instant news updates to the site. I am Dixie_library on Twitter, by the way!
• The next six widgets are those generated for a WordPress blog that enable visitors to see the page structure, recent posts, recent comments, categories and tags. These help a visitor to navigate the site.
• Under this is more fun stuff. I have found that our students are fascinated to see where the visitors to our site are coming from – this is especially important as we are have International School Award. So I have put in widgets from Feedjit and Clustrmaps to show all of this.
• Below this are a range of widgets. The Educator’s Calendar from Widgetbox is used as I wanted to show events from around the world. I am not entirely satisfied that this is the best source as yet. Then a weather widget (also from Widgetbox) for our nearest town – Hinckley – shows how cold it is today! A badge for the TeacherLibrarian network and administrative tasks finishes this sidebar.

The right sidebar is more about the Library itself and also the public library etc.:

• First of all a text widget which will show current activities such as the recent National Year of Reading and currently the Times Books for Schools.
• Secondly, a widget that shows the photographs of our Library that I have uploaded to Flickr. I have done this so that I can show the development of the Library from this baseline year going forward into the future.
• Below this is another text widget with quick facts about the Library.
• Then I have put in a box with a link to a Meebo account. This may be a bit risky, but I have been reading about libraries who are using Instant Messaging with their customers and I am trying it out. I may find that another service will give me more control as I am a little concerned about misuse. What do you think?
• In the absence of an online catalogue, I am using LibraryThing to show the books that we have at present – the only issue I have is updating this as I think that I need to delete all records on it and re-import them regularly as we are buying a lot of new stock and withdrawing a huge amount at present. Anyway, this is shown in the sidebar.
• There are then some other reading-based widgets with favourite authors, a link to reading development websites tagged on Diigo, and a book review finder – which is a Google custom search engine.
• I have also highlighted our local public libraries in Leicestershire and Warwickshire (where most of our students and staff live) with links to their online catalogues and to the online subsciption services that they offer. Our local branch is also advertised here to encourage use by our school.
• Following this are three more widgets – firstly showing our Delicious tags: I have built these up over a long time and am in the process of adding new ones to support our staff and students. I use Delicious now for our curriculum and Diigo for professional links. Next is a link to SlideShare, where I upload any presentations that I think would be of interest. Last of all a link to Wordle, which I find fascinating – I keep trying to get teachers to use this – but no luck at the moment!

So, this has been a very long post, but I wanted to explain what I am trying to achieve at the front end of the site. Ideas for development are very welcome – please let me know if you have found better alternatives!

Well, it has been quite a while since I last posted. First of all, I had a month’s holiday in the “Summer” – I have not had such a long time off for ten years at least! Then, I have been settling into my new job – this is a continuing process, of course.

So, interesting times for me. I feel that I am back to doing a lot of “traditional” library work again. My present library will be re-furbished next summer, so in the meantime I am sorting out a really dated book-tock. These are the things that I have been doing:

• stock-taking
• weeding
• re-cataloguing
• cleaning
• re-labelling
• making new guiding and signage

When that is finished – which will take months – then I will be able to start buying some new stuff. At the same time as all this, I am trying to get to know the staff and pupils – making those all-important relationships that will stand me in good stead as I develop the library.

So, where does that leave all of the new Web2.0 stuff that I was beginning to develop in my last job? Well, as the resources of the library cannot adequately support the curriculum of the school, I have been working on the Library website – see previous post. The new Library Online is developing nicely and the school are really pleased with it. I am planning to spend more time on it over half term, when I can really get on with thinking about how I want to use it.

Soon, I will do a presentation to the entire school in Assembly and show everyone the site.

Do have a look and let me know what you think:

Library Online

Well, I have not posted here for a long time because so much has been happening professionally and personally. Totally out of the blue really, the perfect (I hope) job opportunity came up that I could not ignore. I had thought that I would stay at my present post until the Grim Reaper came for me!

I set up this blog to enable me to track the developments of the LRC as we moved into the Web 2.0 and School Library 2.0 era. So, I now need to think how I am going to use the blog in my new role.

So – what am I going to be doing? From September, I will be The Librarian (love the title!) in a school where the Library (love the name!) needs refurbishment. Because I will be working on my own, I will be going back to basics again. The refurb will take place in the summer of 2009, so I have a whole year to help the school plan. In the meantime, I will have to do the following (not necessarily in this order):

• Assess the current state of the Library to get the base-line.
• Learn an unfamiliar LMS.
• Stock-take and weed the current stock.
• Clean, cover, label and re-catalogue the stock that is staying.
• Put in place basic library management procedures.
• Get out and meet the staff and pupils.
• Get the staff and pupils excited about the prospect of a new Library.
• Put in monitoring and evaluation systems.

… and so on.

So, will my current interests in the development of technologies go on hold for the time being?

I don’t think so. Because the stock appears to be unable to meet the needs of staff and pupils, I can see that I will be using ICT in, hopefully, innovative ways to give the school a library service that they have not had before.

I need to make an impact, to show the school community just what a Librarian can offer.

Warch this space…