Opening Evening

On Thursday we welcomed prospective students and their parents to the school, and it was wonderful to see so many of them in the library. Huge thanks to those students who helped us out, especially those who took the time to dress up and spend the evening telling people about the library. You're all stars :D

Currently reading: The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide

September again...

So, you know how I blog every September and resolve to blog more? Yeah. Oops.

There are some big changes this year, and though my resolution is once again to blog more, I'm hoping that I'll be spurred to action.

For starters:
Our budget has been cut. We used to have £7,000 to spend, now we have £2,000. This will cover our LMS subscription, the security gates, one or two essential periodicals and, er. That's it. Oh, and paper for the printer, but only up until the end of November. Our book budget from the school this year is a big fat £0, which has come as a real blow. Our lending figures were up again last year, the library is well used by students and staff, lunch and break times are joyous chaos, and we've been cut. The mission this year is #OperationNoBookBudget, which you can follow along with on Twitter (we're @RPS_library) if you are so inclined. The aim for the year is to remain positive (very difficult) and still provide a good service to our students. Last year, over 80% of our loans were books that we'd bought in the last twelve months so maintaining anything close to our traditional lending figures is going to be hard.

So far we've been hugely lucky in that people hearing about our plight have been absurdly generous. We've been opening Amazon parcels wince the beginning of term to find items from our wish lists, I have a car full of books kindly donated by the wonderful @mattlibrarian at Farrington's School and two boxes of donations from Hot Key books, who are not only excellent publishers but lovely people too. It's not yet known if we'll be allowed to even publicise our wishlists to parents but the reactions and responses from fellow librarians have been stunning. With a bit of luck and a show of good sense from those in charge, parents will be able to contribute and hopefully keep us going! There's a new curriculum and several new exam specifications coming in this year that have absolutely no resources in the library so the situation is going to get desperate pretty quickly.

But there is good news.
The library has new windows! After years of freezing all winter and baking all summer in our greenhouse of a building, we now have new windows that 1. open, 2. don't leak, 3. aren't mouldy and 4. are double glazed! The 21st century comes to Roundwood! It's made such a wonderful difference to the space up here. It's cleaner, brighter, easy to control on terms of temperature and so much safer. The old windows were single glazed and not even toughened, so when they broke it was only the manky self adhesive reflective film that stopped showers of glass everywhere. All of the old parts of the school are being reglazed, which is fantastic. In a way it's galling that millions can be found for windows but there's no funding available anywhere for school libraries, however much I love the new ones! Not dreading winter is quite a good change.

Currently reading: The Dream Thieves, by Maggie Stiefvater; Outlander, by Diane Gabaldon; One, by Sarah Crossnan.

Woah there, September!

Blog post

So here it is, another September. Once again one of my targets for this year is to get back to regular blogging, with the added incentive that this year I’m bribing myself with Twixes, so it should actually work.

There’s a busy year ahead of us! We’ll be taking part in NaNoWriMo again, helping our students to crash the 50,000 barrier and take off into the world; we’re working with the folk at Hoo’s Book Fest to bring about even more booky goodness; and we’re launching our mobile library, which will be making its way around the school at break and lunchtimes, staffed by our enthusiastic KS4 student librarians. Students will have a selection of the most popular books to choose from and can use the service to reserve, return and renew books from anywhere around the site.

Project Rainbow, our LGBT group, is growing in numbers and enthusiasm and is being headed this year by Tegan in Year 12 who has some excellent ideas for events and fundraising plans. I’ll be going on the Stonewall course for school champions later this year and will be spreading the word with staff and students.

Nerdfighters will be continuing on Wednesday lunchtimes, with this year’s theme of Myths and Legends for projects. Those completing projects will be invited to an Alton Towers trip at Easter. Because rollercoasters.  The 24hr Readathon will be taking place again at the end of the spring term. Last year, sponsorship raised enough money to buy two iPads and a Singer sewing machine for the library. The use of our non-fiction collection is dwindling, as expected, so it’s great to be moving more towards online resources. The sewing machine (we’ve named her Adele,) has proved very useful already and has been embraced by the Craft Clubbers and those who have adopted the library as a Maker Space. I’m looking forward to hearing from students later in the year about what else they’d like us to offer.

We’ll also be putting in a bid for some funding to establish an elibrary, using the ebook service from Brown’s, which is designed for school libraries and won’t trip us up with licensing laws in the same way that Amazon did with the Kindles. Fingers crossed, we’ll be able to set up before the end of the year, but it might take a funding bid for the next financial year to get it fully up and running.

And I’ll be continuing my use of the Bullet Journal system that I trialled for the second half of last year. So far it’s proved an immensely useful and flexible way of dealing with the varied and oddly paced workload that accompanies a school library.

The new Year 7s are settling in well, with inductions on-going and surveys being completed. Once again I spoke at the new Yr7 Parents' Evening about the importance of reading and the benefits it can offer. Getting my own research up to date was again so useful, and I found some of the evidence that was used to show that regular readers have a 10% advantage in maths. It's all down to neural pathways, and now I'd like to do a stack more neurological research! I may need the medical dictionary... The Year 8s are currently filling in their reader surveys so that I can track progress from last year

Oh, and it’s Open Evening next week! The library will host book themed cos-players for the evening and our display with be based around Shelfies, photos of staff and students’ bookcases. There’ll be a guess the bookshelf competition for students to complete.

Phew. Busy start!

NaNoWriMo 2013

Well, it's all over. NaNo 2013 has come to an end and as ever I've been stunned by the hard work and dedication of our writers. We had around 30 students taking part this year, not as many as in 2012 but our dropout rate was far lower too.

After a month of lunchtime and after school workshops, word sprints and melt downs, our month culminated in a final frantic day of writing on Friday 29th.  Kind and understanding teachers excused them from their lessons and they headed up to colonise the library. It all started calmly enough. Neat groups, sat around tables and pouring out words, but within an hour the structures of society fell away and chairs were abandoned, writing forts were constructed out of chairs, beanbags and snacks. It was wonderful!

My highlights of the day:
Sacha hitting his word goal and doing victory laps of the library.
Kiera weeping as she killed off one of her characters.
Huw's exploration of torture (though I admit this was more disturbing than I should encourage).
Robyn's wonderful scenes between her two main characters. So. Cute.
Caitlin setting down for a quick snooze with Hobbes, the libary tiger.

Well done to everyone who took part, both those who won and those who were still slogging away at the end of the month. You're all stars.

3…2…1...Open Evening is GO!

Well, it’s nearly go. It will be go on Thursday, when we once again open up the school to the hordes of local Year 6 children, enthusiastic Year 5s and there’re always a few Year 4s being shown around with parents who clearly believe in extreme preparation.  The whole school is looking spick and span, with the newly refurbished hall is looking particularly impressive.

Up here, we’ll be showing off our collection and sniffing some of our new books, with some of our student librarians settling down to do book covering, sticky sticking and reading chat. We’re also hosting several small workshops run by our Craft Club members, which is just wonderful as we’re just able to hand them resources and off they go. Kiera in Yr 9 will be running a Zentangling workshop, ably assisted by her new apprentice Millie, Robyn in Yr 9 will be running a crochet session and Theo in Yr 8 will be teaching prospective students how to make flapping paper origami cranes. I’ll be supervising these things, sneaking off to read a few pages of my book (I’ve finally jumped on the Gone Girl bandwagon and OMG… Remind me never to get married. Ever.) and gabbling about books and reading to all and sundry.  Usually we send several families away with long lists of recommendations to take a look at, which always puts a smile on my face.

Our huge notice board out along the English corridor will be split this year into features about our most popular books and awards for our most avid readers, with additional sections on Nerdfightaria and Craft Club. As ever, it’s nearly impossible to tell if you have enough resources for that thing until it’s time to put everything up, but I’m hopeful! Have been inspired by Pinterest this year and have coloured in all my staples withSharpies. Yes, I am that sad. But they look really pretty and everyone else will be really jealous. Just you wait and see… 

And how the blazes do Frank House have so many House points already?! They're up over 400! C'mon Wilberforce, this year is OUR YEAR.

Happy New Academic Year!

It's September again! Seems that it came round really fast this year, but we were glad to come back to our lovely students and a new intake of Year 7s who seem more excited about reading and books than any we've had so far, so it should be a great year!  Have already identified a key group of comic fans who I'm hoping will join us to shadow the Stan Lee Excelsior award.

So, what's going to be happening this year?  Hopefully, loads! I've had my contract upgraded to full time, from term time only and a set number of hours per day, so fingers crossed, all the little extras and activities that I've always wanted to get going (yes, including regular blogging) may finally get off the ground. I'm looking forward to the following things:

• NaNoWriMo! I'm going to be hitting November at full pelt again this year, with a large crowd of young writers at my side.  There will be snacks.
• 24 Hour Readathon.  It took a surprisingly short amount of time for the students to convince me that it would a good idea to do this again. It certainly was an experience last time, even if it did lead me to the woeful conclusion that I'm too old to pull an all-nighter.  Woe, woe and woe indeed.
• Reading programmes with Year 7 and 8.  In consultation with our literacy coordinator, Mrs Briggs, we're going to be getting Reading Passports for all our younger students and using these as a keystone for our work on developing good learning and reading habits, and reading for pleasure.
• Scholars' Projects.  This is an expansion of the Nerdfighter projects that we started working on a few years ago, and will be targeted towards our Gifted and Talented students, known as the Roundwood Scholars.  There'll be more structure to it that the 'off you go' attitude of the Nerdfighter ones, but there is a lot of student crossover so I know I'll be seeing some amazing work! Hoping that I can engineer a trip to Alton Towers as a reward. No, not just for me, for the students.  And me. I do love a good rollercoaster... *sigh* 
• MOAR BOOKS! We don't really need to go into detail with that one! There will be more books, and more reading. Along with coffee, that's the best thing ever.
• Craft Club. This will be continuing after school on Thursdays, so our knitters, crocheters and sewing fans will have a weekly focusing session, possibly involving snacks. 

I'm also going to be following the progress of some of my local librarian colleagues, who are trying out a new system of working with the non-fiction parts of their collection.  The idea is to make it much more focused and more directly relevant to curriculum modules, tying non-fiction back into research and learning.  It's a wonderful idea and a mammoth undertaking to get it in place, and I have absolute admiration for those who are trying it out! 

It's going to be a busy year.  Looking forward to it :)

What a half term...

This has been a very difficult start the year, with the loss of Mr Geraghty and bereavements for several members of staff, and awful news for some of our ex-students.

The library has been very much a centre for all of us struggling with the events of this term so far, and I'd like to thank all our students for the kindness they've shown the staff and each other at this time.

Please welcome Mrs Chandler!

It's a new year, and we're welcoming a new member of staff, Mrs Chandler, who is taking over from Mrs Sweet now that she's retired.  She may look very familiar to a lot of people as she's been working as a parent volunteer here for years, but it's great to welcome her to the library team!

Please drop in and have a chat.  I'm determined to teach her to crochet before the year is out...

Year 7 Reading Programme

This year we're launching a new Year 7 reading programme, aimed at refocusing our energies on reading for pleasure.

The beginning of secondary school is a challenging time for many readers, as the business of school  and life can take over from reading, and a lot of students find that they put books down and don't pick them up again.  Our aim this year is to ensure that this doesn't happen.

Year 7 students are being asked to read for ten minutes a day, every day.  We're tracking their attitudes to reading via a survey and will be tracking their reading through the use of library Reading Logs, which will be issued to students each time they have a library lessons.  Huge numbers of commendations are up for grabs! We'll also be writing more reviews, making recommendations and developing our use of the library as a resource.  For more details, please drop me an email!

Another academic year gone by *sniff*

Hard to believe that it's the end of the school year already! It's been a fun one, with so much going on.  And we have big plans for next year too...

Project Rollercoaster - The Grand Finale!

Around a year ago, our Nerdfighters asked if they could go to Alton Towers.  I told them that if they prepared magnificent research projects on rollercoasters, then yes.  They did.

Here's Isay's account of the day:

On the 16^th May 2012, I and twenty one other students as well as two members of staff sampled the early morning sunshine at the gates of Roundwood Park School. We were waiting, an hour before school starts to board a coach on what was to become a tiring but exciting day.

Since the beginning of last year, the library has become home to a new club called the Nerdfighters. Once a week, we gather in the library, discuss topics that interest us and come up with ways to make the world suck less. One such discussion contemplated the brilliance of rollercoasters, and before too long a project had been founded with the condition that if we worked hard and produced projects with a rollercoaster theme, we might be able to justify a school trip to a theme park.  So that was how we found ourselves boarding our coach with cries of DFTBA    (don’t forget to be awesome) on our way to Alton Towers.

The coach journey was subdued for the most part, with many of us trying to catch up on our sleep before reaching our destination; although by the final hour we had had many renditions of ABBA tracks as well as having set up the tradition to cheer whenever we saw anything relating to Alton Towers. This then lead to the coach being very noisy as we reached the village of Alton!

Our timing was perfect and so after posing with Sid the Sloth, we found ourselves without any queues to have to deal with, and with the run of the park virtually to ourselves. We decided that going on absolutely everything was the best idea for how to spend the day, and so we started at the back of the park with Air, Nemesis and Nemesis Sub-Terra. For those who did not fancy the Nemesis Franchise- seeing that Air was a firm favourite – time was taken to sit out in the sunshine (!) and consult the map while commenting on the nerdiest topics available.

We then moved onto a small rollercoaster based on a mine train, which was fun and light hearted, before getting soaked in the Rapids- not helped by the fact that you could pay for a water cannon to soak unsuspecting riders! After a brief lunch break in which we cooed over some very fluffy goslings and then got chased by their parents, we walked on to the Sonic Spinball- which proved very popular indeed, despite the threat of rain.

Next was the highly anticipated Oblivion- in which you are dropped for 180ft into a dark tunnel before resurfacing at the other side at speeds of up to 65mph. While quite a few more of us just watched from a distance, it did not stop a good proportion of the group running from ride to ride and then regretting it afterwards.

Thankfully for some, the next ride was quite a walk away from the Oblivion part of the park. The time had come for us to embark upon the Dark Forest, which unsurprisingly, is home to what is reported to be two of the scariest rides in the park. First up was Rita, which was both the most anticipated and the most dreaded rollercoaster on the entire trip if the excited but nervous expressions were anything to go by. I personally was cursing my adrenalin-fuelled side for deciding that this particular rollercoaster would be a good idea, as for my first time on a ‘proper’ rollercoaster I had cleverly chosen one that accelerated from 0-100mph in 2.5 seconds with a G-force of 4.7. Nevertheless, we all piled on and although most of us were screaming, a select few still managed to sing the Muppets theme tune the entire way round.

Next was Thirteen, which had only a few participators, as many of us were too tired and still recovering form Rita to experience the only freefall drop in rollercoaster history.

We had by that point been on pretty much everything in the park, so we instead returned to Air by popular demand to once again feel as if we were flying. Then for those who still felt the need for adrenalin, Nemesis and Ripsaw were revisited, while the rest of us sat in the sun once again and marvelled at one member of the party who had managed to eat 10 donuts throughout the day.

While some of our group decided to revisit the Sonic Spinball and other rides, some of us who felt that our last ride should be one in which we once again got soaking wet, decided on The Flume. After being covered in water once again, as well as being attacked by rubber ducks, we exited our last ride and then encountered no less than a pirate driving down the street singing and dancing as he did so. Point Proven: Never underestimate the randomness of Alton Towers.

We left the theme park both exhausted and still wishing for more, although any thoughts of rushing back around the theme park were soon abandoned as everyone realised how tired they were on the coach journey. The day had been memorable, exciting, and a lot better than maths, and so we were sure that we would have many reminders of our trip for a long time to come. One of the ‘reminders’ however, became especially noticeable when we came into school the next day with sunburn from the lovely weather!

Our hard work over our projects definitely paid off, and we will certainly have a lot to ‘report’ at the next Nerdfighters meeting. One question came out of this trip however, and one that we as the Nerdfighter community really want an answer to. When can we go again? 

Carnegie Shortlist 2012

It's that time of year again and our Shadowers are fully geared up to shadow the Carnegie award again.  It's a brilliant shortlist this year, featuring some debut novels, as well as some from established favourites.  I was delighted to see A Monster Calls on both the Greenaway and Carnegie list, and am really hoping for a Greenaway win for it!  Of the eight shortlisted novels, I have read only three this year, so I'm looking forward to reading the rest.  I'm starting with Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys which already has me completely hooked only a few pages in.  


Our Shadowers will have a tough job choosing only one of these to win! 

The shortlist is:
 

David Almond MY NAME IS MINA 


Mina writes and writes in an empty notebook, and through her stories, thoughts, lessons and dreams, her journal grows into something extraordinary. A prequel to the author's CILIP Carnegie Medal-winning novel, "Skellig". 


 

Lissa Evans SMALL CHANGE FOR STUART

Ten years old and small for his age, Stuart Horten moves to the dreary town of Beeton, away from all his friends. But before long he is swept up in a quest to find his great-uncle's lost workshop, a place stuffed with trickery, magic – and danger.

Sonya Hartnett THE MIDNIGHT ZOO


Under cover of darkness, two brothers cross a war-ravaged country carrying a secret bundle. One night they stumble across a town that has been reduced to smouldering ruins. Amidst the wreckage is a zoo, filled with animals in need of hope.

 



Ali Lewis EVERYBODY JAM


Danny lives in middle of the outback. His older brother Jonny was killed in an accident last year, but no-one ever talks about it. Meanwhile his sister is pregnant, the rains haven't come and it's time for the annual cattle muster, during which Danny is determined to prove he can fill his brother's shoes.

 


Andy Mulligan TRASH


Three friends, Raphael, Gardo and Rat live on a heap of trash and spend their days sifting through other people's rubbish. One day they find something extraordinary – a deadly secret. From that moment onwards, they are hunted without mercy, and their lives will never be the same again.

Patrick Ness A MONSTER CALLS The monster shows up after midnight. It isn't the one Conor has been expecting; the one from his nightmare; the one he has had nearly every night since his mother started her treatment. But this new monster is ancient, and wild, and it wants something just as dangerous from Conor: the truth. Annabel Pitcher MY SISTER LIVES ON THE MANTELPIECE Ten year old Jamie hasn't cried since his sister's death five years before. Though everyone kept saying they would get better with time; things are now worse than ever. Dad drinks, Mum's gone and Jamie still has a whole heap of unanswered questions.

 


Ruta Septys BETWEEN SHADES OF GREY


One night, fifteen-year old Lina, her mother and brother are hauled from their home by Soviet guards, thrown into cattle cars and sent away. They are being deported to Siberia. An unimaginable and harrowing journey has begun, but Lina refuses to give up hope of seeing home and loved ones again.


Details from the Carnegie website.


As last year, we'll be posting our reviews both on our student blog, and over on the CILIP Shadowing site.  This year I'm hoping for more fan art, fan fic and the launch of a themed cake baking competition!  Fingers crossed for some author involvement too - watch this space... 

Reading Blanket Relay!

As the passion for crafting and making seems to spread (wooo!) some of our knitters are moving on to crochet.  We're working on a Reading Blanket to live on the comfy seats in the library, so that chilly readers can snuggle up underneath.  It'll be built over the course of the next few weeks in a relay, with the aim being to have someone working on it all break and lunch time, every day.

This was our day 1 progress, expertly modeled by top knitter and crocheter, Louise.  

Let's see how long it takes to grow! 

RPS on Pinterest!

Pinterest, an online pin board that can also act as a link library, has really caught our attention!  I've been pinning stuff to my own like a madwoman over the last few weeks, and now we've signed up an account for the library too.  Please follow our boards to see what we're adding to the library, what we're reading, and what we dream of having!

It seems as though Pinterest is going to be an incredibly useful tool for collecting visuals.  This should be particularly useful for Arts students who are collecting inspiration from around the internet.

If you'd like an account, please email me and I'll forward an invite to you as soon as I can.

Tools for the EPQ

Students in sixth form are working on their EPQs (Extended Project Qualification) and have been gathering research from books and the internet in their relevant areas.  Here are a few tools that they've been finding useful:

Evernote
Evernote is a free subscription service which serves as an online notebook.  Information can be categorised and the format encourages the recording of important bibliographic information. Evernote can be used to store notes, images, articles, anything.  Useful extensions are available for most browsers.

Watch this video for a quick tutorial:

Diigo
Diigo is a social bookmarking tool that quickly and easily stores all of your online bookmarks.  Specially useful for sharing your sources, keeping track of what you've been reading, and also getting access to collections of sites that others have already collected.

Zotero
Zotero takes these things a step further and formats your references into your choice of system.  We recommend that all students taking the EPQ at advanced level make use of a standard referencing system, in preparation for similar work at University.  The most commonly used is Harvard, but if students are already sure of where they're going to be studying next, they can chose to use the format of that particular institution.  The Firefox add-on is superb and I'd recommend it for anyone who is doing large scale research.  It not only formats website details for you, but can be used to track down the bibliographic information for books, journals and papers too.  Genius tool.

Reader Feedback Fun

Our active reading groups are always looking for something to get their teeth into and were recently asked to take part on a survey by author Neil Arksey, looking at the opening chapters of his new book, Intelligent Life.  Our students read the sample chapters and gave feedback online.  They were very impressed with the opening and have demanded copies for here, and continued to talk about what they'd read right up past the end of lunch bell (apologies to form tutors!)

Their names were put into a draw to win a signed copy of Intelligent Life, and the winner was Molly in Year 8. Congratulations Molly!  

To take part in the feedback gathering, please read the sample chapters and complete the survey.

The Federation of Children's Book Groups

I'm pleased to say that RPS Library will be joining the St Albans and District Children's Book Group, which is part of the FCBG.  We're really looking forward to taking part in the voting for next year's Red House book awards and getting to know some more of our local participants!

Red House Book Award

The winners of the Red House book award have been announced, with The Brilliant World of Tom Gates by Liz Pichon winning the award for the Younger Readers category, and A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness scooping up the award for Older Readers and winning the overall prize for the year.

What is particularly special about this award is that it's voted for entirely by children, so it really is a first-hand reader's choice of winner.  I was delighted to see Ness win, as one of my concerns was that few younger readers would be able to access the gut wrenching emotions of his book, which seemed to be the case with our readers here, but it's wonderful to see that they can and do.

Reading on a Kindle

Before the summer, I took one of our library Kindles on a test drive.  We got on quite well, and I quickly started looking at the Kindle as 'my book' instead of a device.  I decided to keep reading the Song of Ice and Fire series as ebooks to save my poor hands from breaking under the weight of brick sized books, and to test out the new Kindle model, which I far prefer.  

Today I finished the last book in the series published so far and it dawned on me that I have been reading the same series since August.  Five books. In five months.  This is far, far below my regular reading level.  So what's been going on? 

Part of it is down to the books, or should I call it the text?  I have loved reading this series, but found that after book 3, my attention started to wander but I had already committed myself to these characters and didn't feel as though I could stop*.  And with the eformat so easy to read, so light in my hands, I didn't feel reluctant to pick it up, as I usually would with tomes this size. When I've grown tired of previous serials, my hands have grown physically tired of holding them, I've grown tired of the covers.  This didn't happen with the Kindle so I kept going.  In a way, I wish I hadn't. Five books.  In five months.  When there are so many wonderful books waiting to be read, I've been left feeling a little cheated. 

Though I'm very fond of the Kindle and now have one all of my very own (wooo birthday!), I have come to a realisation.  My reading experience with it so far has been hugely positive, and being able to up the font size when suffering with tired eyes has been a complete godsend.  But I miss paper.  I miss the smell and I miss the ache in my hand from reading for too long. I miss the sense of progression through a book as the balance of pages read and unread starts to shift. The little percentage line at the bottom of the screen just doesn't do it for me.  Having the option of an ereader is wonderful, and its uses are many.  I'm very glad I have one and know that I will use it a lot in the future.  But it's also quite comforting to realise that at heart, I'm a book reader.  Long live ink, paper, string and glue.

*Smart move, George R.R. Martin.  Smart move. 

Letter to Councillors.

Here is the text of a letter that I have sent to the councillors who will make the final decision about the future of the Herts Schools Library Service on Monday 19th December. 

Dear Cllr.,

On 19th December you will be making the decision to either save or close the Hertfordshire Schools’ Library Service.  Having looked carefully into the process to this point, I have several concerns that I would wish you to consider.

Firstly, that the process has come this this far without consultation with the stakeholders in this service: the schools.  Before Tuesday 6th December there was no notification that the service was even running at a deficit, let alone in danger of closure.  That it had come as far as the Local & Libraries Panel without consultation is disturbing.  Having spoken to some of those who attended that meeting, I understand that they believed consultation had taken place, through the Schools Forum.  Sadly, this is not the case.  The Schools Forum is charged with making decisions on behalf of the county’s schools, but there is no consultation.  Headteachers and School Librarians were unaware of the proposed closure.  Staff have been shocked. 

The last consultation with schools on this issue took place in 2007, when schools were in a very different position.  Reductions to their budgets have taken place since.  The statistics provided in the report show that there has been a corresponding decline in the numbers of schools subscribing to the service.  This can hardly be surprising when Heads and department leaders have had to make the choice between staff or resource reductions.  Many librarians put off their subscription for this year, intending to buy back in when budgets had stabilised.  At no point was there any indication that the service was in danger of closure. In addition, the statistics show that last year there was in fact an increase in the number of schools subscribing: 14% from primaries and 19% from secondaries in 2010-11.  This has been put down to effective marketing and offers from the SLS, which shows very clearly that there is demand for its services.  Basing a ‘developing trend’ on one year’s decline, particularly when that one year coincides with dramatic budget cuts, is misleading.  It is a Traded Service and therefore commercial, and good commercial sense insists that your stakeholders be kept abreast of any financial difficulty.  This has not happened. 

Some believe that schools have been consulted through the option to subscribe and have ‘voted with their feet’, but this is inaccurate.  Schools have never been given the option to subscribe or loose the service.  The choice they made this year was not to drive it to closure, but to save money in their immediate futures, believing, as we all did, that the service was safe.  The two choices are very different.  I was told that no schools have subscribed since the announcement of the service’s imminent closure. It can hardly be a surprise that schools are unable to invest in a service that they have been told should close. It will also have been very difficult for relevant departments to make arrangements for a new subscription this close to the end of term. 

The timing of this process is of deep concern.  The news only found its way to us, through Twitter, on the 6th December, barely 9 working days before schools break up for the holidays.  The run up to Christmas is an intensely busy time for everyone and for schools to have so little notice that a valued service is under threat, with the final decision to be made after the end of term, is worrying.  The process had already gone so far that many felt that they were already too late to take action, protest, or subscribe in time to save it.

The initial report (Murphy, 2011) into the future of the funding of the service recommended that the ‘SLS would require the existing level of funding from the education budget to be at least maintained.’  The Schools Forum voted in November to do just this.  Funding from the education budget has been guaranteed until 2013 and yet the recommendation was carried forward to close the service (Bignell & Murphy, 2011). This simply does not follow.  The initial report also mentions the potential for running costs to be reduced following the relocation from the New Barnfield site.  This does not appear in the report presented on 7th December. 

The potential impact of the closure has not been fully explored. CILIP (Chartered Instituted of Library and Information Professionals) and the SLA (School Library Association) can provide advice and guidance to schools and librarians, but they are ill equipped to do so, as the structure has traditionally been that they advise the SLS and the SLS advise the end user on a local level.  Problems such as a detailed question on copyright, the licensing of DVDs or the legality of access to information need swift resolution from professionals who are well placed to assist.  The SLS is the source of this for Hertfordshire.

The 7th December report is also contradictory in its assertion that the closing of Schools’ Library Services is a nationwide trend, while suggesting that schools and libraries would be able to buy into similar services from nearby counties. Hertfordshire Schools’ Library Service is ‘one of England’s largest and most respected’ (CILIP, 2011) and is often referred to as the SLS flagship.  Surrounding counties will be taking their lead from the decision made by Hertfordshire.  Closure of this service could create a domino effect of similar closures across the country. The closure of these services may be a nationwide trend, but is it really one that we want to be a part of?

There are no practical alternatives for the services provided by the SLS.  They are a hub for resources, advice and training.  They are a powerful buying group and have negotiated substantial discounts on otherwise unaffordable e-resources which will be lost to schools if the service is closed.  The Equality Impact Assessment (Bignell & Murphy, 2011) details the potential for negative impacts, with no action suggested to equalise this.  If the SLS is closed, over one third of secondary schools and nearly half of primary schools in the county will loose access to resources, and these are only the fully subscribing schools.  This represents thousands of children, thousands of learners.  An additional 15% of schools buy Pay As You Use services.  An recent poll by the Literacy Trust revealed that 1 in 3 children does not own a book.  Access to these resources has never been more vital.

Funding from 2013 is uncertain, as new school funding structures come into place.  Changes in the way that the SLS is funded and structured are necessary and inevitable.  The move to a new site should surely be seen as an excellent opportunity to make these changes and show the country an efficient, streamlined service that offers enough to be valued by schools to the extent that Headteachers are willing to invest more of their directly allocated funds.  I believe Tricia Adams, the Director of the School Library Association, has already offered consultancy in this matter.  To simply close such a wonderful resource because of an uncertain future runs counter to good sense, business logic and investment in the most important aspect of all: education.

Hertfordshire County Council have already shown that they value libraries and learning through an admirable refusal to close a single public library, despite the need for heavy cuts.  A Schools’ Library Service may be non-statutory, but this does not mean that it should be thrown away.  Please consider giving the Hertfordshire Schools’ Library Service the support it deserves and encourage a new direction in which it can prove its value and save itself.

With hope,

Miss Nicky Adkins

Librarian

Roundwood Park School