This is the best event of the school year, post-pandemic start. It took a lot of planning and work from members of our school's staff, but it is worth it. Finally I am seeing the faces of students again.
One thing about our start is that things are a bit different. Only half the students come each day, divided by year groups. We are wearing masks or face shields (I prefer the shields because smiles can be seen!). And, of course, the library is closed to students.
However, despite being closed to classes and students searching for books, we are "open" for business! Just before we were able to reopen the campus, we started a trial "Click and Collect" program with our Early Years, then our Years 1-2, students. Parents could watch a tutorial on how to search the catalog for books; they filled out a form with requests for books afterwards. We had collection times for the parents. Now that students are back, we altered that to include delivery to classrooms for the students who returned. Some students are still at home, online learning, so the parents can collect their books in front of the school with a "drive-thru" service. The most difficult part has been the screencastify tutorials for parents; not because it's that difficult, but because when filming with screencastify, the narrator has to start over if they mess up! (Let's just say that I didn't make double digits in the number of tries, but it was close! A few weren't my fault. I was interrupted by people needing my assistance.) We are going to modify but continue this program for summer check outs!!! (Of course, the library is now resembling last fall, with boxes of quarantined books awaiting check in and disinfecting!)
This has been great! In fact, as soon as we extended the service to all year levels, our library got a WHOLE lot busier as we collect the requests, check them out, and package them for delivery or pick up. This picture is just SOME of the requests for this week!
Because not everyone is back in school, we are still continuing some online storytelling, crafts, digital breakouts, and Family Fun Night games. I also am working with EPQ and EPQ-mini students. (EPQ is Extended Project Qualification, and it involves research and artifacts based on the dissertation being written. Examples include the effect of the pandemic on economies, genetic mutations of liver cancers, impact of different factors on the choice to be vegan, and more.) There are still budget concerns, working on building the collection in preparation for next term, and more!
Meanwhile, we have had the opportunity to create some promotional spots for different library collections. This started with us all home and using Zoom. Once back together, we have altered some of the ways we do this because the echoes and feedback from 8 devices (even spread through two floors of the library) was a bit of a problem. We have had fun advertising our alien/science fiction books with Librarians in Black, showing highlights from our Thai Collection, and being "classic" librarians. Our newest videos show off graphic novels, nonfiction, and picture books in fun ways. (We have "Where's Mr. Bank?" as a parody of "Where's Wally...known in the US as Waldo...)
Here is a sample of our videos:
Finally, being closed to students allowed us to finish one task that we had been wanting to do for months. We have semi-genrefied our Junior Fiction section. Semi-genrefied? Well, our Senior Fiction is organized by genres, like in a bookstore. Rather than try to recreate that, we have labeled all of the thousands of books with genre labels. This allows students to try different types of books to see which are their favorites. The books themselves are still in order by authors' last names.
We have slightly over a week before the end of this school year. Hopefully we will be able to be open and at least in some resemblance of normal in August.
