I have now been at Endeavour School for two terms. In that time there has been no librarian and it has been my job to get the library running. There were approx 1000 books catalogued. Shelving consisted of big white bookcases and the school librarians were chosen at the beginning of 2015 but were yet to be trained.
At the beginning of September 2015 I attended an Accessit course. I then trained 9 Year 5-6 librarians. For the last three weeks of term 3 the library was running with open lunchtimes.
In term four I did some more training with the school librarians and many of them have proven to be invaluable.
At the end of October the new shelving arrived and with the support of Vicki Stephens from the National Library we organised the books appropriately. Throughout November and December the lunchtimes ran smoothly with me popping in. I usually would spend at least two full lunchtimes assisting and guiding as needed. Over this time it became apparent the many inconsistencies within the collection. Some books were catalogued under the Authors name, or classified as a picture book when in fact they were a non-fiction book. Some books would have letters and numbers on their spines, or Dewey numbers to 4 or 5 decimal places. We had no sophisticated picture books nor graphic novels and the quick picks were not identified.
So through the Christmas holidays with some support from Vicki I have now labelled Quick Picks with a frog (leaping into chapter books).
I have labelled any NZ authors throughout the Fiction collection and the Picture Book collection. I have covered over any non-fiction stickers that were on the picture books and also the Dewey numbers found on many of their spines.
Vicki suggested we redo the spine labels for any Non-Fiction books that had more than two decimal points.
I had organised Julie from Hillcrest Normal School for up to 100 hours and she reprinted the labels for me and I put the new stickers on.
I consulted Maria and Pam, teachers at Endeavour School, to finalise the stickers that I would use to label Graphic Novels and Sophisticated Picture Books. We now have two wonderful starter collections.
There was a pile of approximately 200 books left from the previous librarian waiting to be processed. I initiated the idea of employing Julie for 100 hours to process these books. Marcus agreed and then the budget for 2016 was finalised so I purchased approximately $5000 worth of books. I was strategic in my purchasing, graphic novels, sophisticated picture books which the school librarians chose via the link to our Librarian Google Classroom which I had set up early November. Vicki said we had a lack of 398's although we discovered some had been wrongly labelled in the Fiction collection. I amended these. The South Pacific sales person arrived and I encouraged staff to choose books from their collection.
Julie has processed 600+ books and I have Calibro covered them.
We now have 1700 books ready for an open day which I have initiated for tomorrow 11-2pm to encourage some holiday reading. This is being advertised via our Facebook pages and an email to parents.
I never asked for the responsibility of the library. I personally am not a great reader of books because I have a reading disorder. But that's not to say I don't love books, it's just that I am a slow reader. However I am methodical, great at setting up systems, and have the ability to see how things could be and implement the steps to achieve the vision. I currently have information with our web page co-ordinator waiting to be uploaded. The different collections now have signs clearly labelling the area and how you know that a book belongs in that area.
Our Endeavour School Library looks great, thanks to Vicki's guidance and Julie's high standard of skill and speed to process new books. I have learnt so much, it's been a challenge and daunting at times but YES I'm excited to be opening the doors tomorrow to our school community.
