CILIP Conference 2020: Stop, Collaborate and Listen
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Kimberley Lawson, Assistant Librarian, Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Penrith I came to librarianship as a second career and have grown from being an 'enthusiastic amateur' to become an effective school librarian, Chartership candidate and reading influencer through the power of collaboration. #CILIPConf20 #NewVoicesBigIdeas
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CILIP Conference 2020: Stop, Collaborate and Listen
- 1. My Life in Libraries
- 2. Shawfield Primary School World Book Day ◦ Worked with Waterstones, Farnham ◦ Every child in school had a new book for World Book Day Summer Reading Challenge ◦ Worked with Surrey Library Service ◦ Every child visited and joined the public library and borrowed a book ◦ Most SRC completers of any local school Library refit ◦ Worked with Hampshire Schools Library Service ◦ Attractive and safe refit commissioned
- 3. Queen Elizabeth Grammar School Breakfast Book Club ◦ Worked with Chef & Pastoral care lead ◦ Alternative time & venue for Book Talk Reading Aloud in Lockdown ◦ Worked with authors & publishers ◦ Maintained library & reading profile over lockdown Twitter ◦ CILIP YLG NW Committee ◦ National Shelf Service ◦ Webinars, training, book chat, reviews, giveaways…
- 4. MCLIP Visits Information Literacy ◦Padlets ◦ Worked with SLS colleague & HODs ◦Newsguard ◦ Worked with SLT & Head of Citizenship
Editor's Notes
- I want to talk about how much support for developing professionals I have found since joining the world of librarianship. I have always been around libraries. My Mum was a librarian, now retired. This was my local growing up, North Watford Library – great memories of activities - Saturday job aged 15 Somehow, a career as a librarian never occurred to me – we’ve already heard from Luca about the need to raise the profile of the profession. I took a degree in environmental science, & chose a career in charity fundraising and marketing.
- I have come into librarianship as a second career, when my son started school. I took to being a school librarian like a duck to water. I was very aware that I was an enthusiastic amateur – needed help from people with more experience. Fundraising & marketing were both very competitive environments but I’ve found librarianship to be very collaborative. Here are a few of my proudest moments from my time at Shawfield, where other people and organisations helped me to deliver a project: We lived in a village with no bookshop nearby and I was pretty sure the World Book Day vouchers were not being well used. So I invited our nearest branch of Waterstones to come into school with the WBD books. Every child in school had a new book by the end of the day and for some of them it was the only book they owned and it was lovely to see them reading them in the playground. The last summer I was at Shawfield, I worked with the local public library on the Summer Reading Challenge. During the summer term, every class in school visited the public library, all the students were enrolled as members. The librarian gave them a talk, an activity & a story and they borrowed a book. We had the most completers of the SRC of any local school despite being one of the smallest. And some of our school families became regulars at the public library. After one of the mismatched old shelves I inherited fell on a student’s head, I was allowed to commission a library refit. I invited the adviser from Hampshire Schools Library Service into school and we discussed ideas & ways to use the space effectively and the result was the beautiful new shelves you can see in the photo.
- I now work at a secondary school in Cumbria as part of a team of two. Even though my experience and confidence has grown, I still cast my net wide to deliver projects and find best practice. So again, here are a few highlights. Breakfast Book Club Book clubs are tricky for us because of the size of our space – we have to close it to other users, so I wanted to find a different venue. I worked with colleagues in school: our chef and Pastoral care lead to pilot Breakfast Book Club back in January; Book talk over bacon butties in the canteen before school. School paid for everyone’s breakfast – even mine! Hope to repeat it when restrictions are lifted. Reading Aloud in Lockdown I worked with a couple of authors & publishers to make sure I had the right copyright permissions to record myself reading aloud for students. This helped to maintain the profile of the library & reading over lockdown. I must mention Twitter; I joined to build a professional network and have found it to be an endless source of ideas, encouragement, book recommendations & information. Just a handful of the things I’ve got involved in that I wouldn’t have known about otherwise, include: YLG NW Committee, which I was invited to join this summer, having participated in Zoom meetings during lockdown National Shelf Service; a lockdown project to promote ebook lending via YouTube, where every day a different librarian recommends a title. This is a still from my video, recommending The Skylarks War by Hilary McKay. Webinars, online training courses, regular book chat
- I’m working on Chartership, which I hope to complete within the next few months. I wanted to increase my knowledge of the sector and through contacts that I have, I’ve been able to visit the University of Cumbria library, where staff and very kindly gave me a day of their time and it was an eye-opener for me how different a university library is from a school library. I was also in the process of setting up a visit within Cumbria Library Service when lockdown started and I hope to visit the medical library of my lovely MCLIP mentor. I have found other parts of the profession are very generous in sharing their time and expertise, so don’t be afraid to ask. Information Literacy – one of my areas of development for Chartership that I’ve been able to . A colleague from another Cumbrian school very kindly offered a training Zoom about Padlets during lockdown, which I leapt at. Having learned from her how to use them, I’ve worked with the Head of History, to create Padlets for Y9 history classes which would usually come to the library for group project work, now not possible due to Covid. The geography department find out about it and might take this up. Unexpectedly, I was offered a free trial of the Newsguard browser extension, which rates news websites for transparency & credibility. I’ve been working with the Head of Citizenship over the past fortnight to deliver Critical Literacy lessons to Y7&8, which has been great experience and something that wasn’t really covered in school previously, so I’ve already got it lined up to deliver something similar next year.
- I have undoubtedly learned such a lot since joining the profession and I feel that in the process I have achieved a lot for the students in my schools. Help and support has come from all sorts of different sources; some I’ve gone looking for, some has cropped up unexpectedly. I encourage everyone to reach out to colleagues and contacts to see what you can achieve together. Thank you.