School Libraries During COVID-19
Written by Madison Dearnaley, Teacher Librarian, Pacific Lutheran College
I’d love to meet you at the National Education Summit Brisbane where I will be presenting at the Capacity Building School Libraries Conference on 5 & 6 August 2022…..come along and say Hi!
COVID-19 changed a lot about 2020. The massive and devastating impacts have been felt by families and communities around the world. There have also been many smaller impacts. Perhaps it would be easier to talk about the number of things that have not changed during the last 6 months than to list the things that are now different in our lives.
Working across two school libraries during the time of COVID has been illuminating, exhausting and rewarding. We changed many things, from how we got books into the hands of students to our lesson delivery and services offered. But something that didn’t change was the focus on student needs and providing them with the books and resources they need and teaching them the skills to survive in an increasingly disruptive world.
Books and Reading
Getting books into the hands of students was our priority. As Term 1 was drawing to an end and we were unsure about what Term 2 would look like, we encouraged students to borrow as many books as they and their families would need. It was wonderful to see students leaving the library with boxes and bags of books and then coming back for more. Parents dropped by to collect books for their students and themselves. Shelves emptied. It became clear what genres and titles were most popular - mystery, as is always a hit; romance, because who doesn’t need something light-hearted during a global pandemic; and fantasy. Unsurprisingly, the many novels about plagues and diseases that change their characters’ worlds were slightly less popular (but if you are up for it, I highly recommend This Mortal Coil by Emily Suvada). We noted these preferences and made sure to focus our next round of purchases on these collection areas. This is just one way that we try to ensure our collection is student centric. This is a practice that we will continue, as a student-driven collection is a collection that encourages a strong connection with the books.
Once Term 2 began with learning from home, we introduced a click and collect service. This was incredibly popular with students and parents were beyond grateful. One mother was keen to grab a few cooking books, crying “I’m running out of ideas. I miss being able to go out to restaurants.” Parents and students dropped by, filling their bike bags with treasured tomes. Again, students were leaving with bags full of books. Reading and learning, as well as a love of books was alive and well in this time of isolation.
Once on-site learning resumed in late Term 2, the onslaught of returns began and we faced the quarantine questions – how long was long enough, would wiping them down help? The library communities around the world connected to ask each other what methods they were using to keep their patrons safe. It was important to us to keep books circulation, to enact a process that would keep both the library staff and the students safe.
And at the end of a very overwhelming Term 2, it was our pleasure to create library care packages for our school staff. A bag of a few carefully selected books, some chocolates and a tea sachet was just a very small way of us saying well done, you made it. The response from teachers and staff was overwhelmingly positive and grateful and this is a practice that we will continue into the future.
Online learning and resources
Of course, a library is more than just books (though books are very important). We, like so many library teams around the world, sprang into action, connecting our students to online databases, story times, ebooks, audiobooks, learning guides and more. Library lessons were put online and run via video conferencing. We added ‘ask a librarian’ services to the library catalogue. There was also time for updating library websites, advertising the new services we were offering, as well as connecting students to fun activities. We were able to launch our library’s own Twitter and Instagram accounts to connect with our students and continued to use the library’s Facebook page to share updates with parents and staff. One of the things I enjoyed most during COVID lockdowns was running our book clubs via the school learning platform group page and video meetings. Being able to let these students continue to connect, to just chat about what they were reading, debrief about online learning and laugh together was very rewarding.
Many of these implementations will be maintained long after COVID restrictions have been lifted. The move to online platforms and services during learning from home has extended our abilities to connect with students and families, promote our services and provide students with the resources they need when they need it. These will all continue, as will our book club group pages, social media accounts and updated library homepages.
Communities and Connections
I have never had access to more professional development than I have during the last 6 months. It seems everywhere I turn there is another webinar, Twitter chat, online conference, or virtual author event and I WANT TO JOIN THEM ALL. I must thank all the professionals, organisations, and conference providers that offered these opportunities. If you missed it, the National Education Summit have created a virtual conference. I also created my own list of my favourite professional development learning links for school librarians. You can find that here - https://madisonslibrary.com/2020/07/15/professional-learning-and-development-series/
The library, literature and information community, as many communities did, rallied together to provide resources and access to those who needed it. Libraries, publishers, authors, and storytellers around the world worked together to provide students with the resources and opportunities they needed to make it through online learning. Many of these were so helpful and the teachers we passed them onto were extremely grateful. They have also changed how we look at resources and resource subscriptions. We are fortunate to be able to continue with a few of the digital subscriptions offered to our students during COVID-19. These subscriptions and online services, along with the library staff promoting them and teaching students and staff how to best use them, will greatly increase the resources the students have access to and their digital literacy skills, as well as making life a little bit easier for teaching staff.
Housekeeping
While the students were learning from home, the staff at our school were onsite. That meant that in between taking care of the essential worker children learning onsite in the library, running online library lessons and packaging packs of books for students to collect, we librarians had a little bit of time to tackle some of those tasks we usually didn’t have time for. We undertook the annual stocktaking and audit of the collection – important for ensuring the collection is diverse, relevant, and up to date. Some school libraries used the time to genrefy their school library collection. You can read more about our library’s genrefication process here - https://madisonslibrary.com/2017/11/25/ramblings-genrefication/
School Libraries During COVID-19
During the COVID lockdown period, I was fortunate to work with the Students Needs School Libraries campaign to create a blog post series featuring the work of school library teams during COVID-19. These posts shared a glimpse of the hard and amazing work school library professionals were doing to serve their school communities. From story times complete with fancy dress-ups to building library resource websites, these school library teams did it all. While the above gives you an idea of what our library team did during the learning from home period, the blog post series shows the very diverse range of vital actions undertaken by school library teams, both across Australia and around the world. You can see the posts on the Students Need School Libraries website - https://studentsneedschoollibraries.org.au/covid-19/
What I Have Learnt
I have learnt so much during the COVID-19. I have learnt that school staff and teachers have the most incredible resilience and ability to just keep going, even when exhausted and stretched beyond their limits. I have seen once again how vital school libraries are for students, staff, parents and the school community. Not only for providing access to books, resources and learning, libraries offer a safe place to escape or connect - whether that is onsite or virtually. It is that heart, that connection that makes school libraries such a wonderful place to work and so important for all students.
I’d love to meet you at the National Education Summit Brisbane where I will be presenting at the Capacity Building School Libraries Conference on 5 & 6 August 2022…..come along and say Hi!