Work Placement at Waverley Library

      I have been meaning to write a post about my amazing experience at Waverley Library.  All of the staff there were incredibly kind and looked after me very well. There were many highlights over the two weeks. I especially loved the Children's Library experience, working with pre-school children again was a great experience. The highlights and just some of what I learnt is as as follows:

•       Book Babies: great fun and a big drawcard to encourage children into the library.  
•        Self Checking Stations: just before coming to Australia I submitted my library budget. In that budget I requested money for a security system and Self Loan Stations in my library. Now, having worked in a library for the first time with security and Self Loan Stations I am more than ever determined to pursue the installation of this technology in my library. Library Officers in my Junior Library are overwhelmed with 32 classes arriving throughout each week with children returning on average 75 books each session and then borrowing a similar number at the end of the lesson. At Waverley  I saw these stations in operation in both the Children's and Adults' Library and it was rare that members of the public required assistance to borrow their books. The staff instead devote their time to providing services such as reservations or story sessions for the children. It is expensive to set up and at $1 a tag it is not cheap to maintain, but the benefits to the library in preventing books being stolen and also the huge savings to staff time, the benefits far outweigh the costs. I also learnt how to tag books and check that the security tags were working.
•       Shelf Reading:  Every staff member is required to do a minimum of 30 mins shelf reading per day to ensure the shelves were tidy and the books were correctly placed. This library has several co-existing systems for organising their books. The new system is ensuring fiction books have a spine label with 4 letters of the author’s surname, but many books still exist on the shelves that have no spine labels and sometimes it is not easy to find the author’s name to shelves the books. Picture Books have a single letter for the author’s surname on the top right of the book. Non-fiction are classified by Dewey. Reflection What Have I  I have learnt that not all libraries label their books in the same way. At Tanglin for non-fiction books the Dewey system is applied to two usually but sometimes three decimal places. At Waverley not only do they classify to four decimal places on occasions but they also add the first three letters of the author’s surname.  They were amazed that we didn’t do the same and said it really helps children to find the book faster. Also they are just starting to put spine labels on their fiction books.  They put the first 4 letters of the author’s surname  on the spine label.
•       Kings Cross Library Storytelling Workshop: I was invited by the Head of the Children’s Library (Jody) to attend a storytelling workshop with other members of the Children’s Library staff at a nearby library. Anna Conomos was an outstanding storyteller and although the workshop was too short, she taught us many good skills to use when telling stories such as starting with a strong statement to engage the audience, keep the audience close to you, rehearse the storytelling many times before actually performing and chose at least one part of the story which involves audience participation.
•         Book Repairs: I was shown how to make simple repairs to the bindings of books, using bulldog clips or rubber bands both vertically and horizontally to hold the book in place while the glue is drying. What I was absolutely astonished to realise though was that there are machines which repair DVD discs which are not too badly scratched. Waverley library has a machine called Disc Devil which I saw repairs DVD discs (with superficial scratches) so they are scratch free.
•    Crafternoon: I helped with the Crafternoon (craft) activity  for 8-12 year olds. (Modelling plasticine pictures).The kids loved it - they are so lucky to have Waverley Library staff organising so many great activities.
•       Pre-School Lesson:I was asked if I would like to taech a pre-school group and volunteered to ruin all three groups that were on that morning. The lesson included a mixture of action stories, songs, dance a a film related to the theme of 'eggs'to tie in with Easter. 
•      Home Library Service and hospital services for those who are housebound or in hospital. They have a couple of hundred members in this programme and they do not just consist of Seniors who are immobile as there are many young people who are disabled. A profile is created of each person’s preferences e.g.large print/DVD’s/ serials/genre. The library has a wonderful guy called Matt  who delivers the library resources to those members of the community in need. HLS: Fiction/Non fiction/Large Print. Can search onlineif able or have access to technology.  People email requests and the number is increasing. People write notes whenthe books are returned.  Aged Care Homes  request support from the library – e.g ESL Music
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    Overall Reflection: the work placement made me realise that librarians in the public libraries see themselves as custodians of the books – as well as having books which meet their users’ needs they will keep books on the shelves because they are looking at the book as having value for its place in literature. In schools we value books which meet our users’ needs regarding learning and recreation.  If no one uses that book, we will weed it. One patron came in and found the same book she had read as a child in Waverley Library – and as the book had been published before she was born, it was probably the same book!

    We support our students, but Waverley Library supports a wider range of students from Primary through to Life Long Learners. (Book Baby sessions to study rooms to Home Library Service)

    Must say the work placement was AMAZING! I can't believe I really didn't want to do it. (Partly because  I was so anxious I would not be of much use to them as a TL). The people were wonderful - very generous in sharing their knowledge and expertise.

     

     A BIG  Thank You to everyone at Waverley Library! 

In Fear and Trepidation... Tomorrow I start my work placement at Waverley Library in Sydney and I am really, really nervous! I have had emails from two people from Waverley Library welcoming me and they have been very reassuring and very supportive. Nevertheless it is nerve wracking. I have flown from Singapore to Sydney, I am jet lagged working in my little bedroom at a B and B just across from the library. (I can see it from the front of the house.) I was so worried that I might be late arriving at work each day due to bad weather or traffic that I thought it prudent to stay as close as possible to the library. I wonder if the CSU staff understand how nerve wracking this experience is? You have to step out of your comfort zone, from a position where you are the boss delegating work to staff to suddenly being the newcomer on the lowest rung of the ladder! I am anxious that my skills as a teacher will not be as valuable in a public library as they are in a school library.I am extremely worried that I have little to offer a public library in meeting their users' needs. I rarely use a public library in Singapore as our three school libraries meet my needs. I do however, borrow books from NLB in Singapore, but even then I don't need to go to NLB a member of the Senior Library staff, as part of her role, sources resources teaching staff need from NLB and deliver them to the teachers at school. Although I am very nervous when I was a child in Australia I always LOVED public libraries and I am very interested to learn who uses their libraries and how they meet their users' needs. In terms of users I am assuming they are the rate payers (or those who rent properties) in the Waverley Municipality. I wonder how broad their user group is and how many people use the library regularly. I wonder what they do to promote borrowing and I wonder if the library is used for anything else? Perhaps it is used for community groups- as a meeting place. I want to know who determines what the library needs to purchase and how. Do they have to prepare a needs based budget as I have just done for my school. I also wonder what their budget is for the year and how it is spent - what percentage on fiction, non fiction, databases and technology for example. I am keen to learn about how their collections are similar or different to mine in my school library and I wonder if they have a collection of resources relating to the history of Waverley. Having written all this I have realised that although I am terribly anxious, I am also really keen to learn more - must finish it is getting late and I only had about 4 hours sleep on the plane last night. I really hope it all goes well tomorrow!

Singapore Study Tour

Judy O'Connell is running the CSU study tour in Singapore this year and it starts tomorrow. (Drum roll!!!) Our school is the first stop on the tour, so we will begin with an introduction from Judy and then it will be up to us at Tanglin to welcome everyone to Tanglin , talk about our 4 libraries and take the students on a tour of the libraries. Jacqui, my line leader - head of The Teaching and Learning Centre as our library department is called, has been very ill for the last two weeks. She had organised everything for Judy, but there were still things to be followed up on to ensure the tour was organised. I don't always find it easy to assume a leadership role, but have needed to do so in this instance,so I am opening the presentation from Tanglin,Uma will talk about our library system and Suzanne will do the rest of the presentation. Suzanne and I have needed to collaborate a lot over the last two weeks in Jacqui's absence and it has been nice to get to know her better. She is a gentle person - now I have learnt she has a great sense of humour and is very flexible and amiable. However, Jacqui will probably be back at work tomorrow, and as she has organised most of the tour for Judy, she might well want to deliver the presentation herself. (Which would be fair enough given how much time she spent organising the tour for Judy.) Anyway - it will be a great tour I am sure and I expect to learn a lot about Singaporean libraries. Even though I live in Singapore I rarely go to the local libraries. Through collaboration with a colleague in the Senior Library - I can organise inter-library loans from school, so don't need to physically go to the local libraries for resources, they will be delivered to our school by our operations staff. So,I am really looking forward to visiting and learning more about different kinds of libraries here in Singapore.

Reflection - why do it?

I am amazed by how valuable the reflection process is. In fact this subject - Resourcing The Curriculum - has taught me the value of reflection as a way of taking stock of how things are and then using this information to move forward and drive change. This realisation is why I have posted work from my assignment onto this blog. I am not someone who enjoys social media. Unlike my husband and children, I find blogging and using Facebook alien to my personality. I am a private person, and like my private space. Face Book to me is the stuff nightmares are made of. I have to literally steel myself to blog as it is like baring one's soul. I have no problem baring my soul to people I can see face-to-face, where I can judge their reactions and defend my stance if needs be. It worries me that for my Professional Portfolio blogging is essential. I can only hope that it is only a small component of the marks or I am doomed!! I have a weekly Reflection Journal at work and I have instigated this practice with my staff as well. It is a private journal for each of us and immensely valuable. In it we record weekly: What went well this week... It could have been even better if... How have I been kind this week or gone the extra mile? The last point was included as part of a strategy to resolve an ongoing staff issue and has been quite successful in changing an atmosphere of conflict between two of my team members. My staff (4 Library Officers and 1 resource officer) work very closely together -3 of them at the Circulation Desk at a time. Personalities do clash from time to time but I am extremely lucky in that I have the most wonderful person in the world, my Senior Library Officer, Sheue Mui, who has more EQ than probably 99% if not 100% of the entire population, managing that front desk. She successfully smooths most disputes over before they really ever get going. Without her my job would be ten times more difficult. Anyway - my husband has just left for Cannes (Advertising Awards) and I am going to go out and enjoy the rest of the day.

Reflection on what I learnt through the development of a revised collection policy.

In revising my school’s existing library collection policy the most valuable change I had to make was the inclusion of a statement of the library’s policy on copyright issues. It seems fundamental now and given my school’s strong policy on academic honesty it was surprising that it had not been originally included in the policy. The next most beneficial aspect of revising the policy was the need to insert collection goals for the next three years. This compelled me to analyze that, despite having achieved much to establish a welcoming attractive library environment and meet inspection criteria, I needed now to focus on developing the technology resources in the library and move into selecting e-books to meet the needs of those students’ preferring to read through technology. Through revision of the library collection development policy I looked more closely at the recent inclusions in the policy to reflect our schools new focus on the IBO Primary Years Learner Profile (LP) (2013). While reference had been made to the Learner Profile in the policy, it was at a superficial level and inadequate considering our school’s commitment to those attributes as being fundamental to the ethos of our school. This analysis was, I feel, of immense benefit in highlighting a crucial flaw in the policy which needed to be addressed.

Reflection as I evaluated my library's existing collection policy/practices.

I realised from this assignment that I really had to face up to my library's inadequacies in terms of 20th Century technology. It wasn't that I hadn't been trying to address those issues - I had. However it is my second year in library and I still had some learning to do regarding how to get funding for what was needed when there were conflicting priorities. From evaluation of the existing collection policy/practices I learnt many of the finer points of collection policy previously unknown to this (new) TL. One example of this was the discovery in the policy that there was a need to stocktake/weed technology. In fact this subject, CSU ETL503 - Resourcing the Curriculum, was a catalyst for me, it drew many areas of my previous learning at CSU together and made me confront the elephant in my library – that while the school is technology-resource rich, the library was seriously deficient. For almost two years I had requested 21st Century resources, but nothing had been forthcoming. Spurred on by my collection evaluation and analysis of the existing library policy advocating ‘mobile technology’ (TTS LCDP, 2013, p.4) I used my information as ammunition, channelled all my energy into renewed requests and within a 24 hour period secured a semi-permanent ‘loan’ of 20 new iTouches, 6 new iPads (to add to our small collection of 5) as well as a Visualiser and an interactive whiteboard for teaching/learning activities. Resourcing the Curriculum (CSU ETL 503, 2013) was a valuable module to my library! Evaluating the existing collection policy, in conjunction with the evaluation of the library collection, taught me to question why some collections were little used, despite the policy stating this collection was a clear requirement for our school library. (E.g. The Mandarin Picture Book Collection.)Survey Monkey It taught me to use borrowing statistics as an indicator that there was a problem, to analyze why these borrowing statistics were low and then to collaborate with library colleagues to seek solutions I had previously never considered traffic flow as an underlying factor to low borrowing statistics, as it was in the case of the Audio Books for example, so much has been learnt.

Reflection on the Evaluation of My Library Collection

Recently I had to evaluate my (library) collection for a CSU assignment and reflect on what I had learnt. I found this assignment to be so useful that I decided to post up my reflections. My reflections on my evaluation of the collection follow: After much reflection, my learning at Charles Sturt University (CSU) and subsequent evaluation of the Junior Library Collection led to many insights, resulting in beneficial changes to some library practices. For example, while inter-library loans are commonplace in our library, until my reading on selecting resources I hadn’t realised the benefits of using inter-library loans to ‘review a title’ (Chapman, 2004, p.93) before selection which ensures resources better . New to this library role, my selection process was previously ‘ad hoc’ (Crotty, 2013, CSU Podcast Assignment 2 Part A). I selected resources when I saw those which matched curriculum topics. I have learnt the valuable role the systematic evaluation of a collection plays in informing the TL of the collection’s ‘strengths and weaknesses’ (Crotty, 2013, CSU Podcast Assignment 2 Part A) before selection takes place. This ensures selected resources will better meet learners’ needs. Previously, reading levels were considered, but I purchased whatever I thought was appropriate whenever I saw it. Through my readings, as I evaluated the library collection, I realised that my collaboration with staff for selection had been somewhat tokenistic. Now I understand the true value of collaboration, not just with staff but the whole community. According to Mitchell (2011, p.12) ‘the top priority …is ensuring that your school community is well served by a locally relevant collection of resources’ and for this collaboration is essential. This insight has resulted in a mailbox being prominently displayed for physical requests from the community and an interactive component for community resource requests being currently designed for the library homepage on Firefly in addition to the TL attending curriculum planning meetings. Through my learning of the collection evaluation process I gained insights into aspects of my collection that needed to be prioritized for development (e.g. Junior Fiction). I realised that my Learner Profile Picture Book Collection was not ‘balanced’ (Mitchell, 2013,CSU ETL503 Module 2, p.2) and, as that it is essential, according to Wall & Ryan (2010, p.10), ‘that priority be given to areas where innovation is occurring’ as the LP is in our school. Through the evaluation it was realised too that last years’ stocktake had overlooked the Audio/Visual Collection. This has prompted the staff to re-evaluate the stocktake procedure where future stocktaking will be done on a staggered basis, rather than trying to stocktake the whole collection at once which can lead to mistakes. The evaluation made me confront other previously unrealised issues – e.g. that the Audio Visual Collection was in part under utilised because it was in a low-traffic area. After reflection, inter-shelving successfully addressed that issue and traffic patterns analysed to ensure maximum expose of resources. I hadn’t realised too until reading in the policy (TTS LCDP, 2013, p.8) that resources must be ‘current’ this also meant technology resources. After evaluating the itouches in our library it was established they were first generation resources, without even a camera to read QR Codes. Recent collaboration with the ICT Department has rectified this issue with new resources to better meet learning/teaching needs.