Technology Fail

The servers hosting our library software, the rather impressive Eclipse.net, are having communication problems today, so we’re slowly issuing everything manually and writing down every user who takes out every book. It’s a rather time consuming process but at least it means we can keep the whole library functioning as usual. It’s also an excellent test of whether I know where each and every subject can be found; so far today I have found cars, dinosaurs, psychology and vast numbers of fiction books. This confirmation that I know the collection so well is very comforting, as I’ve been here less than a year and I’m having to resist feeling slightly smug. Oh, I’m allowed to feel smug? Well, that’s alright then.

The Year 11 students who abandoned us two weeks ago (*sob!*) have been making good use of the library as a study space, and they’re quickly picking up the habit of maintaining peace and quiet and using the whole range of resources available, which will be great practise for them when they’re in sixth form.  Hopefully by mid-September we’ll be chock a block with people studying all the time. A full library is a happy library!

The Carnegie Shadowing scheme is going really well, and we’ve been able to get through an awful lot of reading already. Two of our students are rattling through the books at quite an alarming pace, but their enthusiasm is completely infectious and the reading habit and buzz about books in Year 7 is almost entirely down to their personal marketing techniques! The reservation queue for The Knife of Never Letting Go is getting ridiculous. Our Shadowing Site is looking good, and as you can see, they’re all being superb about posting their reviews, and the early discussions about a possible winner are already getting quite heated. We also made a video of their favourites so far. CILIP have announced a competition for the best use of the Shadowing Site, and we’re hoping hoping hoping that we’ll be in the running, as the prize is a chance to take 12 students to the Carnegie Awards ceremony, which would be amazing...