Library 

For the Victorian Premiers’ Reading Challenge!

The site will close next week. It has been very busy this week, so if you have books to log I would strongly advise you to do it now. I cannot add lists of books to classes in this new version of the website, so I really need your help to log them for yourself. I also need to go in and verify the books read for all our wonderful reading students and that will also take time at a point when the site will be very busy. Well done to all our readers and their families for supporting them to join in with this very beneficial activity.

Remote Library and Physical Library:

This year has been completely different to any other. Our Senior School Library has been many things so far. It started the year of 2020 with our old furniture and a similar usage pattern. Our new furniture arrived in the last week of term (which was also the week we were told to go on holidays early due to COVID 19). 

Ms Welst and I used this week set up a welcoming space with our new seating (much of it soft covered). We completed the setting up in week 3, and enjoyed looking at the fruits of our labour, excitedly waiting to welcome our students back once it was possible.  As we were returning at a time when the full impact of the virus was unknown but enough information had been shared to indicate wiping down surfaces between classes and, the difficulty of cleaning soft furniture, let alone thousands of books, we had to make changes. No shared equipment, limited use of soft covered seating, very controlled processes around touching of books, and a Reading Area that had become a recording studio! Term 3 saw the library become the host space for remote learning. 

At Junior School, where there is no student furniture (we had to remove the soft floor cushions to reduce risk), we managed to continue some access initially but for the short time we had students back on site we made the difficult decision to continue our “remote” lending processes, with students having their Library lessons in the classrooms and the books being delivered using a version of our click and collect module.

None of these situations have a precedent. There is no road map for what we have been managing. How we manage the return to site will be up for negotiation and publicised once confirmed. In the meantime, our Click and Collect BooBook Borrowing is still functional. As students start to return to school we are also hoping to see books return in greater numbers as most traffic has been outward bound.

Further information will be provided as it comes to light.

Thank you to all families for your understanding, support and email questions. It is a pleasure to work in such an affirming environment.

Margaret Simkin

Head of Library