The Ubiquitous Library 24 May 2012

Attended a really motivating course run by Debbie from National Library Service. Aimed at creating a real and engaging presence on line as well as in the school, we looked at how other schools embed their library as part as the culture/presence of their school.
The main foci:

• Developing, organising and promoting your school library online and connecting with your school community.
• Investigating and evaluating school libraries online – how visible is your school library and what are the attributes of an effective school library homepage?
• A hands-on workshop to investigate, organise and plan a range of content for your online school library.

It was a great reminder, as the blog I had running for last years Librarians had 'fallen off' and I had not included the Library as part of the school web - some thing I manage! DOH!!
Hmm action is required Jan!
We started the session looking at defining our library and the web 2.0 tools we can use.
We then went online and had a look at the strengths and weaknesses of the online presence of some NZ schools, noting what worked really well and things to be aware of  when we plan our 'presence'.
The bottom line is to get a Library web page up and furnish some links from it... e.g. our vision; info for parents; our librarians blog and maybe a 'What's On' link.
This is all stuff I will need to set up but will have to do it as I have time.
The blog page is there ready for the Librarians to get started on to be monitored by our Infocentre Manager.
I can see the SJHS 'bookworm' being useful wee icon to use on the web page as a 'links' button for these pages.

ANYWAY A FEW BOTTOM LINE MESSAGES:

• Keep pages updated
• Get pupils to drive the blog content - they know their audience!

Think about  using delicious or Diigo for online bookmarking for favourites etc. I am go to explore using the educators facility for my class research on the Whanganui River.