Laurence Library

Love Your Library

As we approach mid-term, the library is getting busy with borrowers, classes and Homework Club. Library staff have been busy providing new e boards to celebrate HASS Week and to promote our fiction collection. Staff have also been preparing resources for English teachers to support the wider reading program. Tamsin Sykiotis has been working on these invaluable resources since joining our team last year. 

From the start of term 150 books have been borrowed from the Library, demonstrating the popularity of our diverse fiction collection. Homework Club has also been busy. Wednesday 21 February, for example, 34 students signed in for help in the Library after school. Homework Club, with teachers available to work with students, runs from 3.30pm to 4.30pm Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Currently the library holds 2,983 books, representing 20 per cent of our resources. We have 14,236 digital resources available to us through our Click View provider. Students can access ClickView through the Library homepage. Recently added as a tab on our Library home page is a link to EBSCO. EBSCO is a research data base that provides our teachers and students with access to a myriad of scholarly sources.

Additionally, we have access to ebooks through a new tabbed platform, Overdrive. This is a subscription to non-English language publications specifically for our International students. All students can access these books. Funded by a grant from the Anglican Schools Commission International, this collection provides a wonderful resource, not only for these students, but also language students who look to challenge themselves.

Currently I am reading The Red Queen by Margaret Drabble, Tom Lake by Ann Patchett, Friday  Brown by Vikki Wakefield and Salt Rain by Sarah Armstrong. The Red Queen is an interesting novel exploring the life of an eighteenth-century Korean queen who does not want her life to be forgotten. Her story intercepts with that of a contemporary academic visiting South Korea for a conference. Drabble’s novels often explore the seemingly ordinary lives of women, this theme is enlivened by the crossover with the past. Likewise, Ann Patchett’s novel plays with the overlap of past and present in contemporary rural America. Set in idyllic cherry growing country, the novel maps the key decisions that shaped the protagonist’s life. Friday Brown and Salt Rain are both young adult coming of age novels. Both deal with mother/daughter relationships, single parent families and dealing with the death of the solo parent. Set in contemporary Australia these novels highlight the issues facing young people today.

Dr Annette Pedersen

Library Coordinator