Knocking on Doors: Outreach in a School Library

I love leaving the Library to visit classrooms to deliver information literacy lessons, it's one my favourite activities.

I usually talk about proper citation, avoiding plagiarism, responsible researching and providing reliable sources. However, as you'll see below,  I've also had some unique experiences that were really fun and exciting.

It lets students see me in a different light and learn something new, it takes a little bit of pressure off of the teachers (hopefully) and on a selfish level it gives me valuable experience.

I've had some success leaving the four walls of the Library in the past year and I wanted to share my ideas on what I feel works.

Barge in on Meetings

Not literally, but sometimes you've got to "barge" a little bit via email in order to get access to a meeting. The best way I've been able to reach teachers is to sit in on Subject Leader Meetings. In our school, each subject has a Leader and they all meet a few times a year. I make sure to sit in on at least one of these meetings, preferably at the start of the year. I spend about five minutes outlining my services as a professional librarian.

I also arranged a meeting with every Subject Leader in the school when I first started, just to introduce myself and what I could offer them. 

The goal is to deliver the fact that you can take some pressure off of them, this will always get their attention. I also stress the fact that I will tailor the presentation to their specific needs. After I leave the meeting, I promptly email them to remind them, this has proven to be very valuable. 

I understand that not every school will have Subject Leaders, if this is the case, you're job is a little tougher but I've never regretted sending an "All Staff" email to promote something so that might be the best way to go. Also, you can't beat one on one meetings with teachers in the staff room. 

Tailor Your Talks

I've mentioned this briefly already but I can't stress how effective this has been in getting the attention of different teachers.

For example, I provided talks on proper citation rules (Harvard Referencing) avoiding plagiarism and reliable research skills to Dance, Music, Film, English and Drama departments. Each one was focusing on a different assignment so I changed each presentation to reflect the subject. 

This takes some time but is worth it in my opinion. For example, our Year 11 dance students were creating a dance that was inspired by the political upheaval in Chile in the 1970s, they also had to write a report on it. I came in and provided a brief historical background on the topic, showed the students what we had in the Library that would assist them with their research and provided a list of reliable web sites.

In addition to these kinds of visits, I also had some more unique ones.

I visited nine different Year 7 Art classes to assist them on their Art Award project. To do this I used Read Write Think's Trading Card Generator, which you can access by clicking on the image below:

To read the complete article on my adventures with the Art Department, click here. 

I also visited 6th Form (Grade 12 & up) Film classes to help them with their end of term film project. This was a great experience and culminated with being asked to accompany them to the British Film Institute Library in London. The BFI is the largest holder of film related material in the world and as an amateur film buff it was an amazing experience to help those students who are so dedicated in becoming directors & actors with their projects. 

To see an overview of what I covered in the Film presentation click on the image below.

Finally, I visited a bunch of Year 7 English classes and delivered a "Google it Better" presentation which I took from Tiffany Whitehead's series of presentations. You can access them here. 

I changed mine around somewhat to fit the classes I was speaking to. If you'd like to see my version, which worked great in one 55 minute class, click on the image below.

I plan on visiting many more classes in the upcoming year and tweaking my presentations to fit the classes even more. It's been a lot of fun collaborating with other librarians and putting together these kinds of lessons for the students.