In the interests of trying new things myself, and also making library orientation and searching the catalog / tracing items from the catalog to the physical copy more fun, I decided to create a library breakout. I'd watched the "Breakout" phenomenon ebb and flow about 3-4 years ago and had always put it in the … Continue reading Seek and Find – breakout
I was showing a fellow librarian around "my" new library today and we were chatting and discussing various aspects of middle school librarianship. We got to the nonfiction section and both sighed. I started that mine probably needed some significant weeding and that I'd made a start. I pointed out a few particularly nice books … Continue reading Are nonfiction books still relevant?
In the last blog on Libguides this year I just wanted to show a little bit of what is going on "under the hood" with "forcing" things to look in a certain way around the possibilities and constraints of Libguides. Our school got a great new brand update last year, and this meant that we … Continue reading Libguides – back-end/front-end (3)
Well, the response to my last post was quite surprising. So I'll continue with a few posts on very easy things to change the look and feel of your guide. First off though, please do consider joining the Springshare lounge - help is literally there for the asking, and no question is too basic. You … Continue reading Libguides: a couple of easy things (1)
aka I think I'd better think it out again ... Over the summer I completely rethought our school library libguides, and I've received quite a few positive comments and questions as to how I made the guides. Unfortunately there is not quick and easy answer, as the process resembles more closely this TED talk on … Continue reading How I built a libguide
It must be an age thing - but as I'm getting further into my 50's I'm becoming less tolerant of fancy sounding reasons and explanations that are actually just excuses for staving off change. This is the first of a series of posts on things that really annoy me as an international librarian, with a … Continue reading No excuses: Syndetics
I've been meaning to write this for the longest time - after the library renovation / redesign what is working and what isn't. For the history have a look under make-over or library design posts and categories. I was prompted to write this really due to three main questions that have been floating around the Facebook … Continue reading Storage, seating and signage
One of the advantages of being on a tight budget with constraints, as I've written about before, is that it forces one into being thrifty and eco-conscious. I just wanted to say a few words here about ways in which we managed to employ the 4R's in our library renovation. Library shelving is very very … Continue reading Reduce, reuse, recycle and repurpose
Well we're getting close to completion (all the yellow stickers are things the contractor needs to work on and the pink ones, things we need to do!) on our library project (more links to the history here, here and here) and I'm feeling a little more relaxed. And even in the mood to discuss what has … Continue reading 90% there …
When I tell people we're getting to renovate and extend our library their first reaction is "wow, that's amazing, you're so lucky!". And yes, prima facie it is so. But right now it's feeling rather overwhelming. And ironically most of that is not so much to do with the change as the amount of preparation … Continue reading Make-over update
Informative Flights - Musings of a Teacher Librarian 