Staff News
At the start of the Michaelmas term we welcomed Hazel Forbes as a new member of the Wodehouse Library staff. Suzie attended the meetings of the group of Librarians in Independent Schools in South-East England (LISSEE) at Ardingly and of the Independent Schools’ Librarians Group (ISLG) at Emanuel School.
During the Lent Term Suzie went on a Dewey Decimal Classification training course at Whitgift School, whilst Hazel attended the course ‘Assertive Communication for School Library Staff’. Both Hazel and Linda began ICT training with Natalie Harzic in the IT Centre.
There were a number of School Librarians meetings this term. Paul attended the School Libraries Group (London and the South East) meeting at Hampton School where he spoke on Library newsletters, newspapers and websites. Paul, Marianne and Suzie attended the Eton Group meeting at Eton College; Paul and Marianneattended the ISLG meeting at KCS Wimbledon. On March 12th the Wodehouse Library hosted the Lent Term meeting of the LISSEE group. Around 30 librarians attended the meeting which included a tour of the College Archives, visits to the Junior and Lower School Libraries and a splendid lunch. The main focus of the formal meeting was Academic Integrity and Alison Brett, Assistant Librarian at KCS Wimbledon, gave an excellent presentation on the subject, whilst Paul spoke on bibliographies and referencing sources. In addition, Paul and Marianne travelled to Marlborough College to meet with representatives from Marlborough and Bryanston to discuss the place of Libraries within Virtual Learning Environments.
Paul was appointed to the Committee of the CILIP School Libraries Group (London and the South East) and has taken on the role of group treasurer. He has also been accepted as a Mentor for the School Library Association and is working with his first Mentee, a school librarian from Southend.
During the Summer Term Paul attended a marketing INSET which produced lots of useful ideas. Suzie attended the School Library Association annual conference at the University of Strathclyde. Paul and Suzie attended the LISSEE meeting at City of London Boys’ School and Paul attended the ISLG meeting at Caterham where he spoke about Library websites and VLEs
The highlight of the year, however, were the School Librarian of the Year Awards held in Westminster where Anne Dawson was one of the Honour List librarians. Paul, Suzie, Gail and Marianne attended the awards as Anne's guests.
Charity
The libraries together raised over £2,910 for charity this year; money came from overdue fines, sales of withdrawn books, and sales of student newspapers. In the Wodehouse Library money was collected from book sales and library fines for the RNLI and a total of £176.46 was raised. Over the Lent and Summer terms the Lower School raised over £128 to help buy books for the Buwembe School in Uganda. For Book Week in March they held a large sale of withdrawn stock from the Library themed “help to buy books for someone else in the world”, and they have donated all proceeds from the last two issues of the Dulwich Despatch. The Junior School raised £2605.85 through the annual Readathon. DETAILS
Author Visits
In October, Henry Nicholls (OA) spoke to an audience of about 60 staff and boys about his book Lonesome George. In November Alan Gibbons came to visit the Lower School. He delivered a workshop, had lunch with the pupil librarians and gave a very interesting talk to the boys. In January Melvin Burgess spoke to Year 9 boys in the Old Library and the following month we welcomed Kevin Brooks who spoke to boys in Year 10.
REPORTS & PHOTOS
WODEHOUSE LIBRARY
STATISTICAL SUMMARY
1608 items were added to the library stock during the year, and 1144 withdrawn from circulation. This brings the total stock to 25,591 items, of which 21,996 are books. 120 items were purchased as a result of boys’ own recommendations. Where we have been unable to purchase we have borrowed from the British Library (10 books and 12 periodical articles) and the London Library (5 books).
Loans have fallen by 7.5 % compared to 2006-2007. However, 2006-7 was an exceptional year and this year’s loans are 16% higher than in 2005-2006.
Fiction loans have increased by 10.6% thanks, in part, to increasing opportunities for pupils in Years 9 and 10 to visit the Library to borrow recreational reading. There has been a significant rise in fiction borrowing amongst Upper School boys: Remove fiction loans are up by 33% and Sixth Form loans by 65%.
Non-Fiction borrowing has fallen by 13.65%. This is particularly noticeable in the Upper School where loans to boys in the Remove have fallen by almost 40% and to boys in the Sixth form by 8%. The most significant falls have been in History (down 18%) and Religious Studies (down 21%) although most subjects have seen falls of 10% or more. The exceptions are Classics, Economics/Business Studies, Biology and PSHE which have all seen a significant increase in loans.
Although loans have fallen the number of active borrowers (those who have borrowed from the Library this year) has risen. This year 76% of boys in Years 9 – Sixth Form have borrowed from the Library compared to 74% in 2006-2007 and 68% in 2005-2006.
The Library currently subscribes to 24 online services and the majority of these continue to be well used. Training in their use is given to boys in PSHE and in relevant subjects and efforts must continue to be made to ensure that a systematic training programme is maintained so that boys are aware of these more reliable and authoritative online resources.
OTHER NEWS
Promotions and events
World Book Day was celebrated with a display of books from around the world linked to the nationalities of boys at the College: this display which featured photographs of boys holding books proved particularly popular!
Window displays throughout the year have included 'The literature of 9/11', 'Anniversaries in 2008', '1968: the Year that Rocked the World', 'Prize-winning Books' and 'Inside the Covers' a display of book illustrations inspired by 'The Age of Enchantment' exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery. The 'Guess who's coming to dinner?' competition on Founder's Day tested participants' knowledge of Old Alleynians, and tied in with the exhibition in the Archives exhibition area.
A new version of the Library Guide was produced and widely distributed keeping users informed of resources and facilities, and the Library has been actively involved in the production of the Upper School newspaper Black and Blue.
Reader development
The Wodehouse Library developed its links with pupils in the Lower School by hosting the Book and Breakfast Club once a week in the Periodicals' Room; the group read and reviewed books shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. A number of booklists were revised and updated including the staff recommendations list (now in its third edition) and 'Books to Enjoy' lists for both Middle School and Upper School boys. All year 9 and 10 forms came into the library to discuss reading and choose books - this is reflected in the higher fiction borrowing in these years. In the Summer Term we surveyed boys to find out their favourite novels for teenagers - the leading title was The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon.
Information Skills & Training
All Year 9 classes received a two stage Library induction. In a PSHE lesson each class was introduced to the staff, resources and procedures of the Library and completed a worksheet testingtheir navigation skills around the Library. In a subsequent English lesson each class had a discussion session about reading for pleasure and then had the opportunity to borrow. The Boarders received a short induction session and a small number of Remove classes visited for subject specific induction. The most effective introductions to the Library, however, have been those conducted to classes visiting with specific research objectives where pupils can see the relevance of the Library and its resources to their needs. This was achieved by class visits throughout the year, notably in English, history, religious studies and PSHE. These included sessions on bibliographies and referencing sources with the Remove RS classes. It is planned that in the last part of the Summer Term next year much greater use of the Library will be made by Remove boys preparing for their Extended Essays.
Facilities
A number of improvements were made to the Library during the year. A new flat screen tv was installed in the Issue Desk area showing BBC News 24 and teletext headlines. A large number of videos were withdrawn, many of which have been replaced on DVD. In the summer holidays the carpet in the Periodicals Room and the IT and issue areas was replaced and alterations and improvements were made to the issue desk. Power and network sockets were added to the desks in the IT area to enable boys to connect laptops to the network whilst work on improving the wireless network in the library are ongoing.
Self-evaulation
During the Lent Term the Library carried out a survey of samples of boys from Years 9 -13 which enabled us to draw up a development plan for the coming years.
Staff Reading Group
The group continued to meet throughout the year. Attendance varied between 6 and 14.
Paul Fletcher
Wodehouse Librarian
Issues in 2007-2008 totalled 4390, with the highest proportion (78%) of issues from the fiction section.
As well as the regular visits by English classes, a large number of classes used the library each week throughout the year for research across the curriculum. Topics researched included microbes, alternative energy sources, rocks and minerals, castles, the English civil war, and mammals adapting to the environment. There were also information skills lessons, over a four week period for Year 7 boys and a five week period for boys in Year 8. The following skills, important to independent learning, were taught during these lessons: citation, skimming and scanning, writing bullet points and putting information found “into their own words”.
The Book and Breakfast Club met throughout the year on a Thursday morning. It is a small but highly motivated group of boys who shadowed the books nominated for the Carnegie medal. All the boys in the group read the shortlisted books. Two days before the winner was announced at the end of June, we went to Alleyn’s for a very successful workshop. There were groups from four schools in total. Following the workshop, the winner was announced - Here lies Arthur by Philip Reeve, who will be coming as a guest speaker to the Lower School in November.
Three excellent editions of the Dulwich Despatch, now in its seventh year, were published this year. They included a fantastic selection of articles and raised in all over £120 for our chosen charity, which was to buy books for Buwembe School in Uganda.
A large number of competitions and quizzes have been arranged this year. The most important was to design a Lower School Library tie and there are a large number of pupil librarians hoping to be awarded this tie.
It has been another busy and productive year in the Junior School Library. A total of 9963 items were issued, of which 6084 were fiction, an average of 30 per pupil which is very encouraging. The library stock currently stands at 8627 items, 3705 fiction and 4922 non-fiction.
This year for the first time the Year 3 classes were timetabled to be in the library without the support of their class teacher. Basic information skills were introduced and the session always ended with story telling. The information skills programme which Year 6 pupils have followed in previous years was successfully embedded in the History curriculum and continued throughout the year with pupils studying Britain since the 1930s. In Year 4 and 5 there was opportunity for both shared reading during English lessons and research based lessons in many aspects of the curriculum.
I accompanied visits to the Science Museum, Bloomsbury Theatre, to our Field Centre in the Brecon Beacons and to France, where I also helped with the administration.
We had very entertaining visits from author Jeremy Strong and story teller John Harris.
I was delighted to be included on the Honour list of librarians for 2008. This is an award organised by the School Library Association, the highlight of which was a ceremony at Birdcage Walk followed by tea at the House of Commons. The process began in July 2007 when I was nominated by Penny Horsman; my addition to a long list meant a visit from a team in November which resulted in my inclusion on the short list. Thanks are due to all the Junior School staff who were involved in the day visit, to Richard Oubridge who put together an excellent presentation for inclusion at the ceremony and to my colleagues in the College libraries who are a constant source of support and inspiration.
Anne Dawson, Junior School Librarian
August 2008