Waverley College Block - Term 3 2012

During weeks 1-7 of this term, I was approached by Waverley College to fill in for library staff that took leave during this period. This was the first block that I engaged in the role of teacher librarian.

Some of the jobs that I did included:

• Creating labels for the magazine collection and ensuring that they were easily accessible such as reshelving, ensuring that they were in the correct order. I found magazines and periodicals that required weeding as they had remained in the collection too long.
• Circulation (loans and returns).
• Assisting classes in accessing library facilities and services.
• Providing academic support to students during library lessons and when requested.
• Identifying suitable resources for use in the classroom.
• Responding to requests for resources e.g recording television programmes.
• Assisting library staff with catalouging - locating and downloading SCIS records and entering details into OPAC. 
• Updating learning resources such as providing texts for students undertaking HSC and Preliminary English studies. This was despite not specialising in this area of teaching.
• Assisting in the selection and acquistion of resources.
• Creating Resource lists.
• Recommending literature for reading programs e.g. wide reading programs or for leisure.

A fairly brief but concise summary.

What did I learn during this time?

• Developed familarity with the basic operations of SCIS - The fact I am doing ETL505 alongside this helped me to navigate and access the key features of SCIS. I found it confronting to start with but very quickly I was having little difficulty using SCIS.
• Able to have a "backup" system in the event of the circulation system failing such as keeping a manual record of loans.
• Effective liasion with members of various KLA's. At All Saints I only liaised with a history teacher. This time I had to liaise with teachers from across all KLA's. Feedback was positive.
• High focus on the client - I went for a retail approach to customer service because I find that this approach does work most effectively in catering to the persons needs. I was not afraid to ask teachers or students further questions about what they needed. This allowed for effective communication. 
• Updating learning resources - ensuring that resources available are current. I also considered their possible use for other subject areas and also around current student interests.
• Creating resource lists. I actually recorded them and provided them to the teacher librarian.
• How schools are incorprating ICT into their teaching and learning programmes and the role of the library in the process. 
• Building up a reading culture - Compared to All Saints, I tried to focus on locating items that students would actually enjoy reading as opposed to difficulty or reviews. For instance a year eight class was studying the writing genre of Science Fiction as part of their English studies. I was able to recommend to students a wide variety of books and where possible, related them to films and areas of interest to stimulate them in analysing texts or to read as part of their reading program. Many students ended up identifying a suitable text to anaylse and many borrowed a science fiction book for their wide reading. Also if students were unsure of what to read, I asked them questions relating to interests, preferences etc. With that information I recommended suitable books and in many instances, they borrowed the item/s.