The radio station has had a special 'Celebrate Libraries' fortnight (from 8th to 21st November 2014) featuring a range of special events focusing on the "wonder and awe" of libraries. I hope that events like this will help to highlight to eveyone all the unique, quirky and awesome things that libraries have to offer. Many UK libraries have closed in the last few years and they continue to be under threat, so the more positive publicity the better, before any more are lost
I really enjoyed this animated poem, entitled Library, by Scroobius Pip which was commissioned for BBC 6 Music's celebration of libraries. The radio station has had a special 'Celebrate Libraries' fortnight (from 8th to 21st November 2014) featuring a range of special events focusing on the "wonder and awe" of libraries. I hope that events like this will help to highlight to eveyone all the unique, quirky and awesome things that libraries have to offer. Many UK libraries have closed in the last few years and they continue to be under threat, so the more positive publicity the better, before any more are lost
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As soon as our school term ended in June, I set off to Melbourne for a three week work placement at La Trobe University's Borchardt Library, in Melbourne. I am hoping to work in a University Library in the future so this was a great opportunity, as part of my Masters course, to gain University experience. I had also decided that it would be interesting and exciting to travel to a library in a country where I have never lived or worked in order to increase my knowledge and experience of international librarianship.
During the three weeks I had the opportunity to visit many other departments within the library and gained an insight into their work. As well as Collection Provision I also spent time in:
Everyone made me feel very welcome and they were extremely generous with their time, sharing lots of information about the library and their work. The library contributes to the University's Vision by providing:
As mentioned, this is just a very small sample of the areas that I found interesting during my placement. I thoroughly enjoyed my time at La Trobe and gained valuable knowledge and experience of work in a University library. I was made to feel very welcome by everyone, and the Collection Provision Team even had a farewell tea party for me on my last day! :)
Jacqui, our Director of Libraries, is in the process of deciding which furniture to buy for the new extension. She thought it would be a good idea to collect the students' opinions on possible furniture choices. Over the last fortnight we've had a range of chairs in the library for students to try, so they can let us know what they think of the furniture. This has been a very popular idea with the students, they've enjoyed trying out the chairs and giving us their opinions.
When I returned to work after the long summer break, it was exciting to see the progress on our new library extension. The scaffolding was still up outside and inside was still under construction but the whole structure was there and it didn't take much imagination to see that the space is going to be a great, new addition to our library! Now, just three weeks later, the room is looking almost finished. The builders had cleared all the scaffolding etc. before term began. They've been working at the weekends since term started to finish off the flooring, electrics etc., so there is no disturbance in the library during the week. The rest of the library is open as normal, we just have one row of desks that cannot be used, but apart from that it's business as normal. So this is what the extension looks like at the moment:
It has been a really interesting week and I've learnt a lot about working in a University library. As my reason for being here in Melbourne is libraries, I decided I should visit the State Library of Victoria while I'm here. So yesterday, after I'd been on a wonderful guided walking tour of the laneways of Melbourne, I headed to the State Library of Victoria. I arrived at the library just at the right moment, as a guided tour was just beginning, so I tagged along. It was a very interesting tour, I'm sure I wouldn't have explored as much of the library if I had looked around on my own, and the tour guide was very informative. Here are a few photographs of my visit, I loved the domed reading room! Even though the Senior Library is already quite large we sometimes find the library is so popular that students have to hunt for an empty seat! The school is continuing to expand so there will be more students next year and therefore an even busier library. In order to continue to provide a quality service to all of our community, an extension is being added to Senior Library over the summer holiday. As well as providing extra capacity, this area will provide a new kind of space for our students. We already have a Study Zone, where students can study quietly, and an Interactive Zone, where they can talk and work together. This new space will provide for all kinds of collaborative work, with mobile furniture that students can move around to adapt the space to their needs. As mentioned in previous posts, the new area will also include a small Makerspace to encourage creativity and collaboration.
Building work has just begun and will continue over the coming months. I will be away from school for the summer break so it will be exciting to see how the building work has progressed when I come back to work in mid-August. Last week we took the plunge and migrated everything from our Libguides platform to the new Libguides version 2. This is something we've been anticipating with a mixture of excitement and apprehension for quite a while. The actual migration process was all managed by Springshare, we just set a date and when that date arrived, all our content was copied across to the new system. On the whole the migration has gone well, all our basic pages have migrated perfectly and I love the new look. The images below show the two systems; although they still look quite similar the new system does have a much more modern, 'clean' feel. The libguides are also wider which makes them look clearer and less cluttered. Unfortunately we do have a few issues with our migration because we used quite a lot of coding in our libguides system. We used coding to create interesting pages with rotating picture galleries, tabbed boxes etc. These all need to be checked and reconfigured for the new version. The following images show, for example, what has happened to our tabbed boxes following migration: We did know we were going to have these issues before we migrated, so we didn't have too many surprises! Now the Reference Team are working hard to check every page of every published guide and rectify any issues. Once everything has been checked we will go live with our libguides 2 system. We're hoping this will happen in time for the new school year in August.
A few weeks ago I put out an appeal on Facebook for any makerspaces in Singapore that would be happy to share information with us and I was delighted with the response! Jacqui and I were invited to the Makers Meetup, we've been to Singapore Polytechic's Makerspace and last Friday we took up another offer of a visit. This time we had the opportunity to visit the new 'Home Fix Experience Centre', also known as Home Fix XPC. Home Fix has a chain of twenty-three DIY shops here in Singapore, with a further eleven in Malaysia and one in Indonesia. The company recently opened the 'Home Fix XPC'; a large makerspace at its headquarters on Tai Seng Avenue, Singapore. This space is being developed to enable people to come together to 'make' in the centre's workshops, which are well equipped with Home Fix tools and products. One of the reasons for setting up the centre was to provide people living in HDBs (public housing provided by the Housing Development Board) with somewhere to work on DIY projects, with more space and less noise constraints than a HDB. The centre is still being developed but it already seems to have an enthusiastic community of makers, as well as a number of companies who are renting space within the centre. Jacqui and I were welcomed to the Home Fix XPC by Ju Hu Soh who gave us a very informative tour of the centre. He also introduced us to Steward Lee of Leave a Nest who we hope to collaborate with for some practical workshops in our new makerspace. Ju Hu and Steward are going to come and visit our library in August, when our new school year begins, to see our Makerspace (which will hopefully have been built by then, but will not be furnished!) and discuss possible future collaborations. Our visit to the Home Fix XPC was very interesting and useful, we are very grateful to Ju Hu for giving so much of his time and so generously sharing his knowledge. Some photos from our visit: This morning, Jacqui and I had the opportunity to visit Singapore Polytechnic's (SP) Makerspace. We were made very welcome by Wee Kiang Yeo, who is SP's Maker Coach; he runs the space and organises regular making events. The space, which used to house the library's Reference Collection, has only been open as a Makerspace for six months. Next year the whole area will be refurbished and a purpose-built Makerspace will be created. The Makerspace consists of a very large open space with a smaller enclosed glass room where events are held - known as the 'Events Box'. Wee Kiang said that the use of the glass room for courses and events has been very successful and that space will be maintained when the Makerspace is refurbished. Wee Kiang emphasised the importance of branding and, as you can see in the photograph below, the SP Makerspace has a strong, colourful logo. He also recommended using movable, folding furniture in order to create a flexible space. Larger, sturdy furniture has been created by using different elements from IKEA - kitchen work tops combined with 'A-shaped' stands. These are used for the 3D-printing and other making activities. Other recommendations included connecting with other makers through maker meetups etc. and creating a blog to share your Makerspace activities with a wider audience. A successful Makerspace needs a good ambiance, connections with co-curricula activities (CCAs), teachers and infrastructure as well as, of course, money! The objectives of the SP Makerspace are
You can find out much more about Makerspace @ SP on their blog. Jacqui and I learnt a lot about makerspaces that will be very useful in helping us to set up our new makerspace at Tanglin. Many thanks to Wee Kiang Yeo for a very informative and interesting visit!
We then heard about 'Freespace' in San Francisco. This is a project that started just with a very tired, derelict building. People could go to the building and join together, collaborate and share in order to create a unique community space. These videos give an idea of what Freespace is all about:
There are now Freespace projects all around the world and they are bringing people together to colloborate and develop wonderful creative spaces. You can find some of the buildings here..
Dr Andrew Gung spoke about the Tech Plan Grand Prix, a techology/business plan competition which aims to include global participants, including Singapore.
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Suzanne Parfitt
I recently worked as Assistant Librarian at a British International School in Singapore. I've now relocated back to the UK and I am hoping to find a job that I enjoy as much as the one I've just left! Searching the ShelvesThis is my blog for interesting things to do with my work, my Continuing Professional Development (CPD), my studies or just anything that catches my eye relating to libraries, technology or books. Archives
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