School Libraries: Improving the Literacy and Wellbeing Outcomes for Young People

I am currently undertaking the Flexible Blended Learning Course provided by the School Library Association of NSW (SLANSW) focusing on the book publishing by Margaret Merga - School Libraries Supporting Literacy and Wellbeing.

So far, I have worked through two modules, both of which have required me to reflect on my role but also my role as a literacy educator.

Sometimes, I feel that I may not be fulfilling all aspects of the role of the teacher librarian, but having to review tables published in the book, I found that I was fulfilling my role, even if I did not notice it. It gave me assurance that I am doing my job, but also the depth at which I am doing it. 

It has also given me an opportunity to reflect on my professional growth in recent times and should I wish to seek employment elsewhere in the future, I will have a guide to help me reflect on the skills, experience, qualities and attributes that I can use to explain to employers why I am the most suited person for the role. 

Influencing Tactics

On Tuesday, I attended an online webinar on Advocacy and was presented with nine influencing tactics. It was food for me, as I need to think about how I can better influence others in my day-to-day duties and life.

• Logic
• Inspiration
• Participation
• Uplift
• Deal
• Favour
• Collective
• Policy (seen as unfavourable)
• Force (seen as unfavourable)

I will need to reflect on this and identify how I can approach others to persuade them to support a proposal or idea. 

 

Newspapers in Education

I am curious if our major newspapers offered Newspapers in Education programs.

Recently, I emailed News Corporation and received no response, but Nine Entertainment (owners of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Financial Review replied to my email by indicating that the available resources are the newspaper itself, whether it was print or digital.

News Corporation runs Kids News, which contains news articles curated for children

https://www.kidsnews.com.au/ along with teaching resources.

It's disappointing, that there are no such programs on offer, given how newspapers do have a place in our schools, given that even with digital technologies, they still offer credible and reliable information on what is happening in our world.

I have prepared an article for the School Library Association of NSW blog, which explores the role of newspapers in our schools which will be published soon.

"At the heart of education" - ASLA feature article

I was reading through the current edition of ACCESS by the Australian School Library Association (ASLA) and read a feature prepared by Gold Coast school student Annie Rogers, who presented a student perspective on the role of school libraries.

It was well written and should be read by all library staff because it even has strategies that can improve our engagement with students. Many of us already incorporate them on a daily basis, including being approachable and welcoming, walking around the library to encourage students to approach you, providing clubs and activities, greeting students as they enter and mentioning that you are there to help. It also aids with building a rapport, and the students appreciate it when you either greet or farewell them.

Also, Rogers, mentions that the library has impacted on her as a learner but in her life as well. Such testimonies are great to share, and our challenge is to identify examples in our schools and day-to-day work where the library has made a good impact on our students. It can become an advocacy tool. 

Is BooksDirect a good alternative to Booktopia?

I have been doing book orders for school and was amazed by the real discounts that BooksDirect offered. Even if Booktopia offers an additional 5% discount to school libraries, BooksDirect still undercuts them. Many of their titles are offered at a standard 20% off retail prices with free shipping if the order exceeds $300.

Not every book on sale on BooksDirect will undercut Booktopia, but it could be as many as half the books being offered below the prices listed on Booktopia.

Like any online bookstore, some titles may not be available on either site, but it has made a difference, and allowed to stretch the pennies a little further.

Have you used BooksDirect? What do you think of them?

The decline of Newsagents - What it means for school libraries?

Last term, I provided some thoughts on the decline of newsagents focusing on their closures and how is a source of information is being taken away from us, especially access to newspapers and magazines.

But what does it mean for school libraries?

Firstly the closure of newsagents has taken away a source for where schools can acquire newspapers and periodicals. In Sydney, it was possible for schools to arrange for delivery of newspapers directly through the newsagent and could control when it could be delivered, e.g. weekdays. This is no longer possible as newspaper delivery is arranged through the publisher. For the newsagent, it has meant the loss of commissions and revenue through delivery fees (One paid extra on top of the cover price to have it delivered). If a newspaper is not delivered on a particular day, you miss out, and there is no option to have a copy delivered. You get an additional delivery tacked onto the existing subscription. With newsagents, one could call or attend in person if a newspaper was not delivered and it resolved on that day. 

Schools could arrange standing orders through newsagents, even if it came at the sacrifice of saving money on a subscription, but it gave the school library control of when they could purchase a magazine. Newsagents could once rely on the standing orders customers made. Not anymore.

Magazine publishers largely control subscriptions and can also be purchased through online distributors such as isubscribe.com.au or Booktopia. While this may bring the cost of purchasing the magazines lower (good for schools), one has to question the reliability at times, especially if it is lost in the post or overseas in transit. The downside is that control of subscriptions for the customer drops. What if a credit card is lost or log in details for the account are lost? Does it mean subscribing forever? Note that subscriptions cover a time period, and you may not be entitled to a pro-rata refund. You have to let the subscription time period end. Some subscriptions auto-renew. If you don't terminate before the end of the current subscription, you may be stuck forever.

Even in this age of technology and access to apps like PressReader and RBDigital, which open us up to countless magazines from around the world, I still will become aware of titles by simply browsing at a newsagency and seeing what they offer. The ones in the Sydney CBD have introduced me to international titles, along with larger or reputable newsagencies in the suburbs. Without newsagents, how will I become aware of good magazines that students can read?

In recent times, I have purchased a copy of titles merely to see their relevance to the students, and this was through a newsagent. If they close, I lose that option. Reading magazines online is not the same.

The decline of newsagents

Newspapers and magazines can be used to enhance literacy skills but also provide students with information that they can apply in any subject. Reading newspapers while I was at school helped me to relate what I was learning in the classroom to current events and vice versa, and I believe that this helped me do well academically in the classroom. 

Sadly a major source of newspapers and magazines - the newsagent has fallen to store closures. The pace of closures has accelerated further in recent years. 

Newsagents now compete with supermarkets, convenience stores and petrol stations for the sale of newspapers and magazines and big-box retailers such as Officeworks, BigW, Target and Kmart for stationery.

Even lottery sales cannot escape competition. In NSW, it is possible to purchase lottery tickets online or in person at a convenience store or petrol station, despite the "rivers of gold" that lottery sales bring to the agent. 

Newspaper publishers have taken over the home delivery of newspapers, which in decades past provided income for newsagents. You could either have home delivery organised through the publisher (paid the newsagent commission per newspaper delivered) or you could arrange directly with the newsagent for home delivery with the delivery fee added to the cover price of the newspaper.

Closures mean that a source of information is being taken away from us and along with a source of reading material, but also the control how of how we acquire and maintain a newspaper and magazine collection within a school.

The decline of newsagencies, along with my interest in reading newspapers and magazines, has motivated me to explore this. 

After the holidays, I am going to reflect on their decline and what it means for us in terms of promoting reading.

Genre Allocations - Update

As I continue to organise fiction books into genres, I also managed, in recent weeks, to create on Microsoft Word simple genre labels which can be printed onto label sheets, which will cater for genres or collections where RAECO may not offer a label e.g. HSC.

I used the template 12602 from RAECO as their labels are the same size as the genre labels that they sell to maintain consistency.

Once I start printing them and placing them on the spines of books, I will share them, and hopefully, this will save some time for those in desperate need of labels.

There are two collections that I made labels for - HSC and Stack Collections as there is no effective system in place to distinguish them from items in other collections. 

Book Week Parades - For and Against

I am doing a blog entry for the School Library Association of NSW (SLANSW) on Book Week Parades following an article published by Antoniette Latouff in The Sydney Morning Herald on 25 August 2022 in which she was critical of decisions by schools to hold them because of the frustrations raised by parents, and questions how it relates to improving literacy.

Click here to read that article.

I would also recommend an article written the following day by Caitlin Fitzsimmons in the same publication putting in a case for book week parades. She highlights that it has become an annual tradition in our schools but also promotes literature. In addition, she rebuts arguments about some of the "hassles" in organising costumes and highlights that not much effort is needed for a good costume

I will update you when the article appears on their blog, but note that it will not be available publically as it will be for SLANSW members only. 

Genre Allocations (for labels)

Fortunately, I have done this in two previous schools, but I am working through the fiction collection in my current school to determine genres for each fiction item.

In 2018, I did an entry on this topic.

I have decided to do it because the fiction books don't have genre labels at all, and have felt that it has stopped students from selecting books that they wish to read. I was told it had been based on the need for students to be able to locate and select books independently. Having labels was seen as an "impediment".

Unlike in 2018 at the school in question at the time, I have seen here that there is an even greater need for it. Students have indicated that they don't know if a book belongs to a particular genre. I observed it recently with Year 8 English classes visiting the library to borrow fantasy books - Several students asked me to find out if it was a Fantasy book or not, searching for it on OLIVER. This was time-consuming.

Do I still hold the same views in 2023 from what I wrote in 2018 - yes.

Also, there are no labels for the Premier's Reading Challenge (PRC) featured, whether its on the spine or inside the cover, causing more difficulty for those participating in PRC. 

Am I doing this with formal genrefication in mind - I will explore it but that will come later. 

Schools Catalogue Information Service

To date, I have not posted about Schools Catalogue Information Service (SCIS).

In recent times, I have had to rely on it to have a number of older items in the library collection catalogued. Generally, they have made it easier for us as school library staff to catalogue items by virtually ending our need to manually catalogue an item. 

I have had to search their catalogue to determine if they have data for the resource, then transfer either the SCIS ID or ISBN into the data entry in the catalogue (Available on OLIVER), then either enhance or overwrite the existing data. 

If it has not been listed, then I place a request with SCIS. 

I am impressed by the service that allows us to photograph key sections containing information about a book such as the cover page, copyright details page etc, fill in key details and forward onto SCIS. The book does not physically have to be sent unless SCIS request it. 

Whether the book was published yesterday or many years ago, don't worry about having to catalogue it yourself. It does take a little time to take photos or scan the pages you need and fill in the online form, but it will save hassles later.

Also over time, if SCIS updates details and the data was obtained through SCIS, it will update it on your catalogue. 

Is your library collection really ageing? - Progress Report + ClickView and OLIVER

Last week, I completed the list of books without publication dates to determine the age of the books in my library collection, and the final figure reflected an estimate that I took back in November when using a spreadsheet; I applied a formula from the Awful Library Books Blog and OLIVER got it to within one year of the estimate.

Now, I will have a date to start aiding me in weeding an ageing collection and target books that are older than that date before shifting to books past that date. 

But I also discovered a fault in OLIVER that was keeping my collection appearing younger than it should be - Clickview Items were appearing as books in format. It meant that in OLIVER I had to change the format to video to ensure that only books were listed as format and change. 

Another opportunity arose as well, updating catalogue records on SCIS as well. There are a number of items that are not linked to SCIS, which means extra work, but I feel that it is important to ensure that each book in our collection is correctly catalogued but also with the correct data. SCIS is integrated with OLIVER which means data can be automatically updated. 

Is your library collection really ageing?

As a member of the Management Committee for the School Library Association of NSW (SLANSW), I wrote a feature for their blog on determining the average age of books in your library collection.

Being a members-only article, I will not post it here in its entirety, but I will provide you with a link to the Awful Library Books Blog if you want to read up about the process, as it was a source that informed me in preparation of the article

I have found it useful as a starting block to weed books, especially if there are a lot of books to weed. It means that books that are not as old face the chopping block first.

Responses to OZTL_NET Messages on Recess and Lunch Supervisions

I would like to express my thanks to those who responded to a request for information relating to recess and lunch supervisions in the school library.

I would like to keep the comments as anonymous but also present a summary of points that may need to be considered based on how schools manage it or individual perspectives.

• Check your award to see what breaks you are entitled to - It is likely you have the same expectations as a regular teacher relating to break times and duty expectations unless explicitly stated otherwise. 
• There are federal laws that mandate the length of breaks for an employee that they are entitled to. 
• If you have problems with securing breaks for lunch etc, consult your union if you are a member and speak to your school leadership.
• I know this from experience myself, but was reminded that in some schools, regular teachers provide the recess and lunch supervision either to give the teacher librarian an opportunity to have a break OR to supplement existing supervision to comply with supervision requirements. This can be seen as a workaround for a teacher librarian who is placed on a full teaching load, but there is a risk, would regular teachers be willing to undertake the supervisions if asked to do so and if complies with the conditions of the award in relation to playground supervision. 
• Every school will have its expectations. Some schools will be happy if the library has to close during recess or lunchtime to allow for breaks e.g short, staffing

2023 Starts - What am I up to?

The last time I placed an entry in this blog was in August 2022, sharing an article about how COVID-19 and remote learning in fact led to more children reading, which was encouraging news.

I start the year much more settled and more in control than last year. Twelve months into a permanent role has thrown its challenges and did take up a lot of energy. That is why I stepped back from posting entries and even forewarned it. 

The past few months also gave me ideas on what I could post or share. I think some of the decisions I made are starting to yield some results as well. I still think it will take time.

One area of interest for me professionally has been library procedures and policies. It may feel like it takes time from our teaching role or even attending to what happens on the library floor itself, but without procedures or policies, how can one manage the space properly. I have created a basic collection development policy. It will need refining, but I need a foundation to start on. I can update or add to it over time. 

As a Arts major in Economics, the use of money and resources is of big interest. It affects the decisions we make and what we do in our libraries. If one does not have processes and systems in place, how can one advocate for resources and for funding, and then when the funds arrive, spend it wisely. I have set myself the challenge of creating a budget policy and processes to help me and whoever succeeds me in the future.

Finally, I requested some information last year relating to work breaks and library supervision during break times on the OZTL-Net forum. My next entry will be on this topic to thank those who provided their responses.