Library Orientation

East Coast Bays Library, Auckland, New Zealand

Every time my colleagues go on vacation I ask them to do something special for me - take their photo outside a library. AS a result of their generosity of time and spirit I have many great photos of my wonderful colleagues outside libraries across the globe. What do I do with these pics? I use them as a resource for library orientation.

In New Zealand we gave all new students in year 9 (start of secondary school) an activity that involved finding out where in the world their library was using clues on the back of the photo. We called the Amazing Library Race - once they had the correct location they had to locate resources about their country at specific places around the library thus getting to know the layout of their new library and some of the online resources (database and library web page) as well. The students loved this activity - our library team loved it too though it was exhausting (so much so we only ever scheduled three in one day)

Celsus library, Ephesus, Turkey

Now I am in Istanbul I am using the same idea but adapted for a teacher orientation. I love our library catalogue "Destiny" and I really want to introduce our new teachers to some of its features. I think it is a great tool for encouraging reading and information literacy skills. We took the new staff through this orientation last Wednesday with some great feedback about how useful it was and how much they enjoyed the experience. 

My challenge this year is to add a great library orientation for our new students. I want to use the photos and the activities. My New Literacies Team colleague Caroline suggested I use a buddy approach so that someone in the class who has used Destiny before team up with the new student and they work through a checklist activity to ensure the student has some hands on introduction to the system. I love this idea. I will start to craft such a thing to try out as soon as possible. I guess it should be in grade level for relevance and appropriateness. My mind is a whirl with ideas. 

In the meantime - why the photos of libraries around the world? Relevance and context - I want my colleagues and students to be aware that libraries are contributing positively to communities all around the world. 

Where in the world is the library orientation?

Me at Celsus Library, Ephesus, Turkey

So the new staff have had a whole week of orientation. Talks from the Business Office, talks about the IB programmes we run, sessions about culture shock, health insurance and tours of the school.... then they get a one hour (only one hour!) library orientation. How to use Destiny and  how to use the library. As always I try to make maximum impact in the allotted time so I resort to a method we used in New Zealand with new students at the start of each year. Make it into a game. 

Every holidays I ask my colleagues to have their photo taken outside a library. I use these library photos as a resource for an activity. People are given the photo and shelf markers made from the photo and then they have to find out information about the country the library photo was taken. They then locate books about the country on the catalogue and put the shelf markers where the books are on the shelf. The last activity is to label a map of the library. It is simple and fun and from the feedback I got we should have spent longer on the activity. All in all a successful introduction to our library.