Now that I have been in Turkey three years and have completed almost two months of the fourth school year I have decided to change my blog name.
Originally I thought I would post about being in two worlds - the world of the classroom and the world of the library but guess what - it is one world for me. The library is my classroom and when I am in classrooms I am bringing all the richness of the library.
I thought I would be writing about the two worlds of down town Istanbul and out at school but with technology despite the physical distance (and three days last week of more than three hours on the road I still physically feel the distance) there is no distance. Our library is available to everyone 24/7 and more and more of our collection is too. There are differences between our print collection and our electronic collection yes - but it is all one collection.
I imagined I would post about New Zealand and Turkey. I have been posting when in New Zealand and when in Turkey but the challenges, positive and negative, for school libraries in both countries are very similar.
So here I am - making the change to LibraryBond. I like the idea of the commitment of "My word is my bond" - it speaks of promise and trustworthiness. I like the 'promise' you can find in a library and a librarian, in this case promise meaning a reason to expect something. I hope people come to a library with the expectation that they will find things. I hope people come to see me with an expectation that we will work well together, to solve a problem, to find a resource, to enjoy a story or teach a skill.