Friday, August 19, 2011

Signs and wonders in IICS library

This week the new signs were installed in our library. After attending an IB MYP librarians' workshop I came back determined to improve our library signs. We began researching about library signs and then consulted with our school marketing department. What did we want? Bilingual English and Turkish language signs to show students and teachers where different parts of our collection could be found. They had to be clear, easy to read and complement the existing signs in the school. We read many articles on signs in libraries - all pointing out that first impressions really count. Signs to me are different to displays and posters. We will create some guidelines about displays and posters in the library this year. Importantly the IBO nature of this school should be reflected in what is seen in the library. The Learner Attributes need to be on display. We will be working on displays more throughout this year - more blogs to come. Some great websites showing school library displays are school library displays by Elaine Pearson and creative library displays

 So our old signs are on the way out. They were small and very hard to notice and read. We often were directing people to the parts of the collection they were looking for. This made them more dependent on us. The new signs are big and beautiful as you can see. So far only staff have seen them but the comments have been very favourable. In two weeks time I'll let you know what the students say.