It is quite a while since we've published our In the Know Blog, but with libraries, especially school libraries currently in the spotlight with the campaign #StudentsNeedSchoolLibraries we thought it timely to re invigorate this blog and let you know what has been happening in our libraries at Gippsland Grammar.

We will also share innovative ideas happening throughout the library world.
In the meantime have a read to see what the author Nick Earls says about libraries and librarians...

IT’S NOT ABOUT SHELVING THE BOOKS AND KEEPING KIDS QUIET

This post was originally published on Nick Earls' blog on 21/09/2015.

Some schools no longer have teacher-librarians and, the more I see of teacher-librarians, the less sense that makes to me. What’s next? No teachers? Kids turning up to the classroom each morning and inventing the day ahead? Maybe there’s a note on the door about what the curriculum has in mind, maybe there isn’t …

Each time I’m told that a school no longer has a teacher-librarian, I’m told that the school still has a library, as though the building does the job all by itself. I imagine, as usual, classroom teachers are expected to take up the slack and add the library to their already overcrowded list of duties. And kids are taught how to check books out, as if they’ve suddenly been up-skilled, and as if that’s what it is that teacher-librarians do (along with putting them back in the right place, and stopping things getting too noisy).

Some news for schools thinking of going librarian-free: having some books on shelves in the school’s second-biggest building – along with a chillout zone with half a dozen lunch-stained beanbags – does little for your students lives without a well-trained passionate human or two in there to wake the place up and get the most out of it.

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