Sunday 5 February 2017

Beating the January blues in the LRC

It must be said that January is not my favourite month of the year. What with the 'six weeks-between-paydays' barren wasteland of a bank account, the short days and the general post-Christmas malaise I am pretty grateful when January has been and gone.

Having said that we've been busy bees in the LRC, which has helped to make the month fly by. That being the case, I thought I would actually write something about what we've been doing in the LRC (given that this blog's called 'gemslibrary' might be nice once in a while, eh?).

First and foremost we ran a couple of Love Your Library 'loyalty schemes'. The first scheme was linked to our 'Books into Films' display.


I was lucky enough to win a POS (point of sale) set of promotional posters, bookmarks and 'A' displays for A Monster Calls so was able to use these (thank you CILIP Youth Libraries Group newsletter!). I also received a large Rogue One poster free with my January edition of Empire magazine, so that went up too. The Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them posters were purchased for the princely sum of £2.99 from Amazon (the poster book is also available from Scholastic - so, if you have any Scholastic Rewards to spend it might be worth a buy). 



 A couple of rather lovely Year 12's helped me to pick out titles in our library stock which had been (or were going to be) made into films (or which were linked to films in some way). We printed out some pictures of clapperboards and stuck them on to the front covers of the selected books. If and when students wanted to borrow any books with the clapperboard stickers on them they were able to choose a 'free gift' (pencils, pens, rubbers etc).





Our second 'loyalty scheme' was a library loan raffle - every time a student borrowed a book from the library in January they received a raffle ticket and were entered into the prize draw to win a goody bag. The goody bag was filled with a selection of pens/pencils, bookmark, free book (I keep a stash specifically for this kind of thing!) and a few sweets - otherwise how would it be a goody bag?! :)

Now, we have a number of screens around our campus, including a large videowall in the main Atrium/dining area and I am lucky enough to be the person who updates these screens. Needless-to-say information about each of the 'loyalty screens' was displayed on screens around our campus! The screens are also a very handy way of letting competition/prize draw winners know that they can come and collect their prize from the LRC. In January I also started including 2/3 'At the Moment I am Reading...' slides a week on screens around the site using information that different staff members had given me. I have started with just staff reads but am going to broaden this out to include books that students are reading/would recommend.

A small team of student librarians in Years 7 and 8 work in the LRC during breaks and lunchtimes. The younger students are mentored and supported by a group of Year 12s. Whilst the team works well together I decided that I was going to shake things up a bit this term by putting them into teams and setting them some challenges. For each challenge the winning team would receive merit stickers and achievement points and, at the end of this term, the overall winners will receive a prize (as yet to be determined!). I wasn't sure how they'd respond to this...but so far they appear to be relishing the tasks!

Their initial challenge was to imagine that the Year 12s and I were the brothers Grimm and that we were putting together a new collection of fairy tales. However, we only have space left for one more story in our new collection. Each team of librarians had to come up with their own idea for a new fairy tale and then pitch it to the Year 12s who would decide which they would use in their new book. Each member of the team had to say something during their 2 minute pitch. In that time they needed to include their ideas of character and plot and convince the Year 12s to choose their story. Both teams came up with very original ideas and each pitch was carefully thought through and well-presented (neither team went over the time limit) - I was very impressed (as were the Year 12s)!

They've now been set their next challenge - they have 2 weeks to come up with a story sack that they could use to bring their fairy tale to life. Each team must either use recycled items, or items they have created - they should not buy items to go in the story sack. To say that our little team of librarians is enthusiastic would be an understatement...they are already busy coming up with ideas!

One last thing that we've been encouraging students to contribute to is our Wish Tree for 2017. Some time ago I was given a 5 foot artificial Christmas tree by one of our assistant principals (an English teacher) and we have endeavoured to get as much use out of it as possible!

It has been:



1) a novel tree (students write a book they recommend on a tag and tie it on the tree),


2) a poet tree (students choose or write a poem and tie it on the tree)


3) human-i-tree (this tied in with Human Rights Day in December. Students had to design a person with a human rights message and...well, you get the picture >> )



So now we have a Wish Tree in the LRC. The idea came from an assembly given by the same teacher who donated the treeto me. In the assembly she asked students to consider what their wishes for 2017 would be. I can honestly say that some of the wishes placed on our tree are incredibly moving. Let's hope that, by the end of 2017, they might have come true.

No comments:

Post a Comment