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:

Again, it is some time since I posted here. I must admit that I have found the last few weeks very difficult professionally – not in my own job, but in the wider profession of school librarianship. Anyone passing by this blog, wondering about my reaction to recent announcements, will have to contact me privately as I am still thinking about how to deal with my feelings on this matter. Most UK school librarians will know what I am talking about here.

I will move on, because that issue depresses me totally and I don’t want to feel depressed right now! I love my job and am thrilled about our recently opened library. So, I have decided to write about the hows and the whys of becoming a Librarian following (a bit late) on a meme going around called Library Routes. If you are interested, have a look at The Library Routes wiki.

Well, I am probably more than a bit strange as I have always wanted to be a Librarian! No, I wasn’t born with a bun, glasses and a book in my hand – but I did learn to read at about 3-4 years old! My Mum’s family were avid users of the public library – particularly my Grandfather, who left school at 12 and educated himself by reading as many books as he could. As I grew up, I remember vividly my Mum taking us to the public library every week and before we went back again, I would have read all of my books, all of my sister’s and all of my Mum’s too! In many ways, the library was a forbidding building, but not to me. I just loved the books and the comics and especially admired the Librarian who helped me to choose what to read next – I wanted to be just like her!

Funnily enough, my school libraries were not up to much – I have vivid memories of hiding underneath the shelves in one of them with a book, trying to avoid a PE lesson. But the books were not the colourful and attractive creations that they are these days – old cloth bindings were the  norm. I probably borrowed far more from the public library than from those at school – these libraries were small and pretty unloved, with no staffing.

What I did enjoy, was going on the mobile library that visited my primary school. The Headteacher used to ask me to help return our class books to the mobile as I was good at alphabetical order! Oh, the stereotype was beginning already!

All through my school days, I cannot ever remember wavering from my goal of becoming a Librarian when I left. Without much career advice, I wrote to the Library Association, as it was then called, when I was in the Sixth Form and asked what I should do to further my career. I decided that I did not want to do a first degree in Librarianship, but went down the route of taking a degree in Ancient History and Archaeology, followed by a Master’s in Librarianship.

In those days (late 1970s), you had to do a Graduate Trainee year between the first degree and the Master’s. With my normal laziness, I didn’t try seriously enough to get this post and messed up interviews with Sheffield Public Library and Birmingham University Library! Instead, I took a Master’s in Ancient History and Archaeology, then was able to try again the next year and was lucky enough to get a post at Lancaster University Library, with a place at Sheffield to do Librarianship.

At this point, I was convinced that I was looking at a future career in academic libraries. The year at Lancaster totally changed that view! The staff there were brilliant, but I did not have a happy year at all, although I did learn a huge amount. During my time at Sheffield, I became convinced that I would go into public libraries – my first love after all. But, on leaving, the first post I was offered was in the Schools Library Service in Nottinghamshire – the Education Library Service.

I had a fantastic time working for ELS – it was great because a lot of my friends from Sheffield were also working for Nottinghamshire in a variety of library posts. After a year, some new posts came up in the city of Nottingham. These were to be the first professional librarians being placed into a number of schools. My boss, suggested that I try for one…. and a School Librarian was born!

So, looking back 27 years to that day when I first took up the date-stamp at The Manning School, do I regret the route and the choices that I made? After all, I have now worked in six schools and have never changed into another area of the profession – could I have done anything differently?

Well, I did try to change a couple of times, but somehow it wasn’t meant to be. My Mum said something to me a while ago – she said that I found my vocation when I “fell” into school librarianship! I think that she was right. From those first stumblings at Manning (I was pretty awful), to now, I wouldn’t change a thing. Along the way, I developed a passion for school librarianship – I honestly believe that it is the most important area of the profession. We play a part in shaping young minds and are privileged to see students grow and attain amazing things with our help. This is why I firmly believe that school librarianship must not be watered down – our students deserve the best-qualified and experienced people to run their libraries.

So, if you are reading this and are thinking of becoming a librarian – consider coming into schools. You can make such a huge difference! We need people who are highly educated, committed, passionate, caring, expert, knowledgeable, ICT literate, resourceful, assertive, well-read, brave, strong and bold!

School Librarianship – the greatest job in the world!

(Most of the time)

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:

This is a message that I sent to SLN on Friday – it actually arrived on the list on Saturday evening as it had to go through moderation. This is because I left the list and re-joined a few days later.

Dear Colleagues,

This is most probably the very last time that I will write to you via SLN. You probably thought that I had left anyway, but I have been reading the posts on the Yahoo site for some time. I make no apologies for what I am about to say – I think that someone needs to say it. As I am well known for sticking my neck out, I will do so as I feel so strongly about SLN and all the support that it has given me over the ten years that I have been a member.

A large group of committed, professional and passionate school librarians is a wonderful thing. We support each other in a way that I think very few other professions do. We care about each other and try to help. We welcome new members to our profession and do everything we can to assist their development in what I believe is one of the most important roles in education.

Over the years I have been a member of SLN, members have given me so much – I don’t think that I could have achieved what I have without you. I have tried to repay that by sharing my own experience and expertise as much as I can. I hope people agree that I have been generous with my own ideas and knowledge gained through many years of experience, professional development and education. I have also joined in some of the fun stuff on SLN and feel that many of you are more than professional colleagues – we have a comradeship and friendship that has lasted for many years.

So, it is with great sadness that I have to write this. Today I am embarrassed to be a member of SLN. For the last few weeks a large group of members have been discussing off-list just how SLN has descended to a completely trivial and unprofessional level. There is a very large and wide membership including professional librarians from many sectors, commercial interests, international colleagues. It is totally shocking that they see UK school librarians discussing insect bites, Dewey numbers, and other low-level trivia!

Many of us are also shocked at how easily colleagues “give away” their hard earned knowledge and expertise. Before Easter, I was attacked on the list for suggesting that school librarians should have proper training to do their job. Professional qualifications were rubbished by one member. Yet, the list relies on a large group of expert librarians who readily share their professionalism with others. Let me state my belief firmly and unequivocally – school librarians need training! Yes, there are some brilliant people who do not have formal librarianship qualifications – but all of the best school librarians have had training of some kind – courses from SLA, SLG, local SLSs. Anne-Marie, Ingrid, Nikki – have all had some training!

This is from the description of SLN from the Yahoo site: “We aim to promote the professional standing of the school librarian, and encourage all unqualified school librarians to develop their skills and knowledge through relevant courses and qualifications. SLN is not itself a substitute for proper training.”

So why do so many of you continue to support SLN members who have no intention of doing any training? Why are you allowing their schools to get away with employing people with no knowledge of librarianship and then training them on SLN for free?

At the very least – have colleagues no fear that their headteachers will see this as the way forward? Are you all that secure in your jobs?

Good, committed and able school librarians are leaving this list in some numbers, others are now posting very infrequently. Is this what members want? If the main topics on the list are so trivial, the expertise will be driven away to other places where we can raise the level.

Those are my thoughts.

Farewell
Anne

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

As this is my blog, I can say what I want! So, I will explain to anyone who is interested why I am having a break from SLN (School Librarians’ Network). Sorry – it is a long post!

First of all, I must say that I think SLN is a wonderful source of support for school librarians and Elizabeth Bentley, the list owner, deserves a medal for starting it and maintaining it so well for more than ten years. However, from time to time things get out of hand on the list. Sometimes I have been part of that myself – I am not perfect! Today was the final straw for me and I decided that the only way to stop myself from sending a message I might later regret, would be to unsubscribe for a while.

What sent me over the top was this comment:

“With the help of SLN, a subscription to SLA and the purchase of its very good Guidelines publications plus bags of enthusiasm anyone can become a school librarian.”

This was part of a message defending the position of unqualified people running school libraries. It was in reply to something I had posted about the need for training. My messages were a bit sharp, I know, but I am astonished that anyone would think that training is unnecessary! We all need CPD – I am not so arrogant that I think that I no longer need any training myself! I was not even talking about the professional education that I, and others on the list, have undertaken.

I was also angry that anyone should think that the knowledge and experience of professional librarians count for nothing. After all much of the “help from SLN” consists of exactly that! So, the writer of that comment, and others like her, agrees that she picks our collective brains, but on the other hand denies that we need qualifications to do the job!

Again, I know that there are exceptions in any milieu – there are some dull, disinterested professional librarians around who should never take up a post in schools; there are also some colleagues, without professional librarianship qualifications, who do a fantastic job in their schools. I have met truly awful, disastrous teachers too, and some brilliant teaching assistants, but that doesn’t mean that I support teaching becoming a non-graduate profession. At the very least school librarians should work to take the necessary training and acknowledge the expertise that has come with professional education and experience.

So, I do not apologise to anyone for my fundamental belief in professional qualifications for school librarians. Enthusiasm is great – we can all go a long way with that – but we also need a grounding that education gives us. Many years ago, I strongly believed that school librarians in the UK did not need a teaching qualification in addition to one in librarianship. Recently, after interacting with our international colleagues I am changing my mind. A teaching qualification can also bring so many facets to the job, that many of us struggle to develop on our own. Realistically, it would be very difficult for us to undertake teacher training in addition – there are no financial incentives or rewards for us to do this. But I think that it would possibly help us, not only to do an even better job, but also with our status in schools. It would also help us to focus on what a school library is about – teaching and learning, extending the curriculum, reading development, using technologies, and so on – rather than book marks, nice competitions, pretty displays – necessary, but not the “meat” of our raison d’être.

A friend has just sent me this – I was about to write exactly the same thing, but she has put it better:

Imagine this scenario. A message is posted to the TES Forums:

“Dear fellow-teachers,

I have recently been appointed to teach at a primary school nearby. I have no experience or qualifications but I am determined to do a good job. The school realistically cannot afford a qualified teacher so they have appointed me. Please give me all the benefit of your expertise and training so that everyone will think I am doing a good job”

Signed, TeacherMiss

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!

I have watched the presentation about Social Bookmarking – nice to have another one with a voice narrating. I think that I learn a lot from this kind. I really like VoiceThread in particular as the commenting is nice!

Anyway, back to the presentation. Again, I don’t think that I found out a lot of new stuff as I have been using both Delicious and Diigo for some time. But it did remind me of some things and introduced me to some new terms. I have favourited it on SlideShare and will return to it at a later date to think about it some more. I was interested in the RISAL project and will certainly explore that more when I have the time.

The second presentation : “The Os of Web 2.0: Openness, Originality and Others” is in PDf format and I have downloaded it and printed it out to read. I find it difficult to read long articles like this these days as they take a lot of concentration and I don’t really get the space and time for that – at school, everything is very busy; at home – well, mayhem would be a good word! Also, I am not used to it – I think that I am out of practise these days.

Anyway, I have begun a bubbl.us to show my learning network (I have used this before to create a sitemap for my Library Online site – although this needs updating).

Well, I am actually writing this on day 4, but that is because for some reason I couldn’t get to my blog last night. So I will have to write something for day 4 this evening, if I have the time!

I started the day thinking about participation on the course. A lot of SLN members from the UK have joined and yet I could see only a handful online and posting comments. Also it was apparent that many people were struggling with Sosius before they could actually get to work on the course. So I decided to  write a quick guide to getting started and then I uploaded it to a couple of areas and notified everyone – I hope that it helps.

Also, thinking about all of the wonderful resources mentioned in the posts, I had begun to tag them on Diigo for myself and so I thought that it would be helpful to others if I offered to do this for everyone. Now, I know that it is a huge task and may be a bit impossible to achieve successfully. But I will try to do it as best I can.

So, to the actual course. What did I learn yesterday? I have only just begun my new job and the focus for my first year must be on designing and developing the new library. It is such a small school and so it is easy to talk to staff face to face. However, I have also been given the remit that I will help the school develop ICT in the future. I hope that I have opportunities to show some of these Web2.0 tools to staff – maybe at a training day. So, I will take the chance to learn as much as I can and try to suggest things to teachers where appropriate. I will also use the Library Online website to demonstrate some of them also and maybe develop a wiki for the Reading Group. Then I will have some practical examples to show.

We are in a difficult situation when a lot of the staff do not read their official emails! But I will have to try to find my way around this. So these are my thoughts about the presentation on professional development for staff with Web2.0.

As to the other presentation on mashups! This was a really steep learning curve for me. At least I think that I understand a little more about what they are, but I couldn’t get to grips with Yahoo Pipes. Maybe that was because I was trying to do this in too much of a hurry. It is difficult to make the mental space and time at home on an evening, when my boys are fighting me for the computer!

I will have to come back to this at a later date, when I can find a quiet time to really concentrate!