Category: Public Libraries

Never Underestimate the Little Things

Published on by sengaw3 Comments

Trees at Queens Park in Invercargill

My baby boy is now 11.  It feels like it has just snuck up on me.  It seems such a short time ago that he was born and then later had his first day of school.  This year he has started high school and is absolutely loving it.  His favourite subject last week?  Latin!! I wouldn’t have picked that in a million years.

One of the joys of children at this age is watching them develop, become more independent and form opinions and ideas of their own.  No. 2 son has been selected for one of the Year 7 Living Minds groups which is part of the GATE programme and during their first session the students were asked to introduce themselves to each other as they are from different home rooms.  They had to say one thing about themselves that was funny, one thing that was interesting and one thing they loved doing.  I was curious to hear what he had shared and asking him resulted in an unexpected lesson and treasured gift.  I laughed along with the funny thing, nodded sagely at the interesting thing and was quite overcome when he shared the thing he loves to do the most.

And here it is, the thing that I thought was no big deal, but turns out to be pretty special to my lovely boy. Over the past few months we have developed a routine of going to our public library on a Saturday morning.  We pack our books to return in our backpacks, walk through our beautiful Queens Park (photo above) on our way to town where we visit the library to change our books and then we go across the road to the wonderful Three Bean Café and have breakfast. We do any other messages we might need to do while we’re in town and then walk home again. I enjoy it as we chat about things we might not otherwise on our way there and back and I satisfy myself that he’s got something he wants to read at school and at home, but I hadn’t realised just how much something so simple meant to him.

This has served as a lesson and a reminder for me. Don’t underestimate the little things. Enjoy just hanging out with your kids while you can. Start making your memories today!

Towel Day 2013 – Invercargill Style

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I love my local public library. Not just because I have flock-mates and friends who work there either! I am a regular visitor both physically – at least once a week, usually to pick up a book I’ve reserved – and virtually, trawling the catalogue seeking books I want to read, the blogs for book recommendations and downloading e-books onto my tablet.

I’ve always thought we had a cool library …. but they’ve just taken their coolness to a whole new level. Check out what they’re up to … and then start planning your own Towel Day for 2014!

A Day in the Life of a School Librarian

Published on by sengaw2 Comments

Creating the Future for Libraries blank book

I had the utmost pleasure today to join with a group of 50-strong librarians at the LIANZA Otago/Southland Library Assistants Day held at the Invercargill Public Library and share with them about what it means to be a school librarian.

Where to start!! No two days are ever the same and what you start out planning to do at the beginning of the day may look totally different by the end of the day, so the challenge was how to go about showing the variety and breadth of work that we do in a school library setting.

This presentation is what I eventually came up with.

It turned into a bit of a time and motion study of one day of work for me in the James Hargest Library.  I then finished with some thoughts and ideas about how public and school libraries can begin to think about working together.

If you have any great examples of working with a library that is in another sector, I’d love to hear about it!  Please share them here so others can benefit from your fantastic ideas.