Tuesday 15 May 2012

CPD23 - Thing 1

Ok, I have decided to take part in CPD23 this year. Its a scheme were you do 23 (surprise!) different tasks, one each week(ish) to help your continued professional development, simple. I found it last year, but only when it was almost finished - my usual luck.

The resaon I'm (attempting) to follow the course this year is to try and keep up with technology - lets face it I'm waaaay behind and its hurting my nerdcred! I need to get back up to speed and start using some of the wonderful tools available.

Also professionally I'm hedging around the edges of a few things (promotions, jobs) and I need to get my skills up!

Short and sweet, but there you go.

You can expect a CPD23 post about once a week from now on - lets see if I reach the end of it!

So... I take it back

You know how I said in the side bar over there that my library wasn't post-apocalypic... I think I take it back, just a little.

 


As you may or, may not know I recently got a shiny brand new library yay(!). Well, as the lights go out every 20 minutes on the dot and, as were at the very bottom of the world here, it is pitch black when they do, its begining to free pretty apocolyptic here. At least it does once every 20 minutes.

So far the shelves have been judged unfit for purpose (because you know it was a secret library, shhh, and we so didn't tell them we'd be putting books on them), I have dubbed them Bannana Shelves!


And, yes, I do demand it is said in banana man voice, every single time.


The lights have litterally fallen out of the ceiling - luckly during the school holidays. And a dozen other petty annoyances (broken sink is broken). Including my library system going down, in the middle of a lunch break, and insisting I haven't paid the bill! *headdesk*.

Add to this the hundreds of students that swarm the place like the bandits out Mad Max every lunch time because its new and novel and it really does start to feel like the end of the world - or at least has me wishing for it!
 

Library discipline, so much easier with shot guns
(also TV show Jeremiah, like The Tribe all grown up, go watch it)


I'm bening to miss my old moldy, fally downy, out of the way library - it wasn't pretty but at least it was functional.

* I'm sat here, alone, at 5.00pm on a thundery night, the lights have just gone out, a poster has fallen off the wall and the printer has started beeping for no apparent reason whilst the computers gently creak as they cool. Looks like we might have brought the library ghost with us from the last place - but do you think that's a seal of approval?
  


Wednesday 25 April 2012

Hehe, Book Ninjas

Just read this post at Geekosystems about the ALA's work opposing, well, everything libraries usually oppose.

Now, you should all know about the involvement of libraries and librarians in fighting for and protecting your rights *stares hard* don't you!? (Go educate yourself now if you don't! The link above is a good place to start if you're in the US).

I love the image of us as book ninjas :)! We're the bunned, bespectacled freedom fighters of the information revolution - which by the way has been going on a lot longer than you think. There was a day when the idea of sharing books was as heinous as people seem to think sharing digital content is today, but, guess what, we're the ones still standing - take note ebook publishers.

And thanks for blowing our cover Geekosystem ;)






Monday 23 January 2012

Day in the Life of a School Librarian - sort of.

So my Line Manager has asked my to do a day in the life as part of our campaign for another member of staff. I think it turned out slightly better for you than it didn't to send to the SLT so here it is - think of it as my penence for not posting, and maybes as a litle bit of an excuse as to why...

8.00 – arrive and open up the library, about a dozen students in to do homework, borrow books, read papers – one kindly donates the metro
- make a note to investigate the I paper we received info on it last week.

8.20 – Get everyone to go to form, fix printer – apparently now it has too much paper in in it. Sit down and check SLN – Stonewall has released a list of recommended LGBT books for secondary schools, also its LGBT history month next month – I see a display on the horizon! That would be one of our changing displays sorted next month, (the other is going to be for national libraries month).
Blocked… both Stonewall and LGBT History Month sites are blocked. Beg list via email off SLN and get my campaigning shoes on!

8.55 – Papers arrive and lessons start. Issue/Return like a fiend. Check First News for book adds, and add them to our buying list. Packages arrive, check the invoices, process to go to finance and get them marked off in our budget folder (provisionally, my colleague is in charge of the budget but she’s on maternity leave I just do enough to keep a vague idea how much money we’ve got.)

9.20 – Hear back from SLN Two wonderful people have sent me the list! And one mentioned that she had the same problem with blocking and that they’d blocked Darren Shan too – yup he’s blocked for being ‘Occult’ – start checking with other authors, apparently the ‘Wicca’ series not occult, oh and neither is Anne Rice…




Give in to temptation, email our IT company the word seriously and the URL.

9.45 – More issue/return and add a new borrower because IT won’t fix our auto-update. Clear tables ready for the next class. They’ve finally learned to wait outside for their teacher so that makes things a bit quicker.
Issue/return. Rinse repeat.
Start in on making poster for lesson 5 – can’t find the old one but it’s a quick job.

10.30 – Lesson out, with all the chaos this usually involves, and break time in, about 30 kids on and off.

10.45 – Break time over, but as usual it take a lot of effort to get them to leave. Oh,damn, fire alarm. get everybody out close up, lock up, stand in freezing cold for 10 mins!
Get back to library – looks like my next research class have decided not to come up, but can’t get away with doing anything in the library because the moment I do they’ll turn up – sods law – so its back to desk work. Print out my poster and save for use in the new library too (yay that’s a tick on the AP). Can use this quiet time to do some packing too.


11.50 – Run out of boxes 8-O how on earth we’ve run out of boxes I don’t know!
Further investigate seating for the new library – find exactly what we want quickly and its cheap, something must be wrong.

12.00 – Nearly lunch time make sure everything is set up and start on libray website since that can be stopped and started when needed away from desk. Scrap that finishing an order so that we get it before we move – need the box! Also clears some of our requests book. Spend most of the hour running around shoutng about the library rule - I need to get no food and no phones on a tape so I can just play it.

13.50 – Wow well we topped out at about 100-120 pupils this lunch, but order’s done and gone down, class in now – lovely and quiet (comparatively) but all the computers are going down – corrupted user profiles! Arggh many calls to tech support. Also general Accelerated Reader supporting. Log in, log out, log in log out…
Quickly tattle some DVDs – we really need to stock check them but tahts for Tuesday morning when we have enough free lessons to get it done – and then its back to the library website. This thing will be up by march damn it!
Issue/Return, Issue/Return….

14.00 – time to go home – yeh right! Finishing up to do. Reservations to print and another class waiting to come in. Issue/Return, Issue/Return….well actually for this class its mostly renew.

14.10 – Now its only to give the teacher their poster, visit finance, do the pigeon holes and I am … no such luck more PC’s erroring out!

14.20 – Ok NOW I’m going – at least to leave the library! After that getting out gets much easier.


14.45 – I was wrong, only managed to leave 45 minutes after my shift ended.