The Pre-game Show:

  1. I conducted surveys to find out what the perception of the library was amongst faculty and students.
  2. As a good librarian, I read about the place of libraries in 21st century education and found special comfort in John Palfrey’s, Bibliotech.
  3. I talked with other librarians at all levels of education about what they felt the role of the library is in today’s educational institution.
  4. I went to cohort.
  5. Based on my action planning and brainstorming, I went back to my school and thought about how our library fit into this new model and what concrete changes needed to be made in order to translate my HMW into action with tangible results. I came up with three main objectives.

The First Period:

Go to faculty and show off. Palfrey advocates for going to the teachers in order to gain an audience with the students. My own personal experience echoed this and so I made meetings with the faculty and even got air time during our monthly meeting. During this time, I reintroduced them to our fiction collection and I showed them the power of our databases, what they can do and how they could be used in their classes. After picking their jaws up off the floor, they promptly brought their classes to the library. This has translated into a 64% increase in database usage over last year and the year isn’t over yet!

Second Period:

More display space for fiction. This is something I have struggled with in my beautiful classic library with oak shelving lining all the walls. When they redesigned the space, they did not think about displays. I will be sure to advocate for this in the next redesign as I am very happy to report, IT WORKS! I wanted to refocus the library on reading for the sake of reading. Much credit here goes to my assistant librarian Jenna Cameron, who has taken this concept and run with it, creating visually appealing, topical and often engaging displays for our books. Statistically speaking, going back 10 years in loan history, we have never had this many fiction books loaned out in a single year AND we are almost triple the loaned fiction over last year and it’s only April! (This cannot be only Jenna and I taking out books)

Third Period:

Redesign the library webpage. This was a must. The webpage has always bothered me and over the years I have made changes and adjustments to it but it has always struck me as very stagnant and boring. In some ways, I really couldn’t blame the students for wanting to use Google over our resource page. I give you Exhibit A…

So, I partnered with our IT department and set out to make some fundamental changes. First, was to divide it into the IB year groups (PYP K-6, MYP 7-10 and DP 11-12). Now, depending on what grade you are in when you sign in to our Tigernet, you will see resources and information that are applicable to you. Second, trim the fat. Take out resources that are not in regular use and target those that are going bring the students in thereby increasing their perceived value of the library as resource for credible information. Third, add in a library booking form for students to book time to talk with their librarian about the resources they require. Fourth, make it look pretty! I give you Exhibits B, and C.

OT!

Aren’t they beautiful? With this step complete, I want to continue to develop the online presence of the library. I would like to create instructional videos for choosing appropriate databases, research aids, citation aids and research question development.

Phew! Time to start planning for next season 🙂

 

 

 

Final F2F Slide Deck

6 thoughts on “It’s Playoff Time

  1. Yes! What a great journey – I love how you pulled in the teachers and students with the help and support of a colleague. I love how you pulled them in with displays and an appeal to practicality (“Databases can help you in your job!”).

    @lmustard and I have talked a lot about the role that librarians play in the emerging world. One result of this conversation has been a theme for our students in questioning ‘what is the authority of print in a post-truth era’. While this conversation has started, I know I can take a lot from your work here to help inject it with more life.

    Thanks!
    Garth.

  2. @wdarby, this is an unreal and entirely thorough process that you have pursued and described. What a powerful journey you’ve been on – one that clearly began from a place close to your heart. You have effectively modelled the design process and demonstrated its potential power – using concrete data no less! As Garth suggests, the extent to which you consider, empathize with and empower your users is incredible.

    Books and a love of reading have often been at the heart of my own professional journey and, as you know, there is real magic to unleash in our students if affected in just the right way. I love telling them that there is no stronger indicator of “success” than a love of reading. So great Wendy. I can’t wait to hear more about it on Friday.

    @mneale @acampbellrogers @ashaikh

  3. Wendy,
    You have made some significant progress with your action plan and have the data to prove the fruits of your labour! Congratulations. The displays that you and your colleague have started are obviously having an impact as well. Just reflecting on my own classroom – I wonder if you could expand this to provide/suggest mini displays in the individual classrooms. Although I have a books of interest out for kids, I don’t couple them with interesting artifacts, attention grabbers or hooks to inspire my students. Our Senior Learning Commons teacher does a fabulous job of this! Be sure to check out the display cases when you are visiting on Friday. I think I have a some planning to do now as well, and I will definitely be reaching out to our Learning Commons staff for some support! Thanks for the inspiration, one of my favourite things about Cohort21.
    See you Friday,
    Lisa.

  4. Wow! Wow! Wow! I am in awe of your progress.

    Wendy, congrats!!! You took on a lot this year and you achieved so much. Any one of the initiatives you mentioned would have been a lot but to have taken on all of them and seen such gains in circs and class visits…it’s amazing.

    I can’t wait to hear more tomorrow. Nicely done, fellow librarian 🙂

  5. @wdarby – I’m so proud of the journey you’ve taken this year! You accomplished more in the library in one year than I did in five when I was in the same position!
    But what is with this announcement snuck in at the end of your slide deck?? Where are you going??

  6. Wendy! This is nothing short of super-stardom! First of all, I love the playoff metaphor applied here, it’s brilliant! Secondly, great use of metrics to show the impacts your changes have made. The steps you chose to focus on this year were so ambitious; these are changing times for libraries, so much to consider in the approach to reviving this most important of spaces to adapt them to the future. Your ambition was clearly driven by your passion which was obvious from day 1, you’ve done exceptional work here Wendy! And ummm … are you moving to Malawi? !!

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