Ruyton Girls' School - Senior School Annual Report 2014

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Library Resource Centre
Our focus within the Library in 2014 can be distilled into
two words: connect and collaborate. Seeking to connect
more strongly with our School community, we pushed out
our physical boundaries by providing new electronic
gateways to a wide range of online resources. Recognising
the value of collaboration, we seized the opportunity to
enrich our collections through the establishment of an
eBook consortium.
Early in 2015, the new library website will go live. It will
serve as a welcoming gateway to our virtual library,
allowing students to communicate, connect and
collaborate through a range of social media, including the
Library Instagram account, the Lit Club blog, Year 6Wiki and
our Tumblr account. Junior School students are using QR
codes to easily find new resources. Our library catalogue,
now searchable outside the School, provides links back to a
rich collection of online resources.
The eBook consortium established with Mentone Girls’
Grammar School provides our School community with a
significantly larger shared database of high interest eBooks.
The deeper and broader collection assists students to
satisfy their diverse reading needs and interests. This
consortium is based on best practice beyond the school
sector; sharing resources in this way is a powerful example
of innovative and collaborative library practice. In fact, a
2009 Harvard University Library report noted that the
future for libraries is based around access rather than
ownership. One of the five key recommendations indicated
within this report, was a need to ‘collaborate more
ambitiously with peer libraries and other institutions’.1
Within school libraries, a consortium of this type creates
possibilities for students to experience shared reading
experiences within a broader community; potentially allow
them to connecting with reading classes and literature
clubs beyond their own school.
As educators we strive not only to provide spaces and
resources that truly support and enhance our students’
learning experience, but also to work toward ensuring that
students function effectively in an information society, as
creators of knowledge rather than consumers of facts. By
working actively in curriculum planning we endeavour to
ensure our teaching programmes assist our students to
become both information literate and upstanding digital
citizens. Collaboration with classroom teachers and other
specialist teachers helps to ensure that information literacy
and digital citizenship are firmly embedded across the
curriculum and across year levels.
We have continued to connect with our students by
offering friendly and inviting spaces for students to read,
research and relax. These are spaces where students can
find opportunities to expand their horizons through
engagement with literature and where they are
encouraged to think more deeply about the world around
them. Likewise, we reach into the parent community
through the provision of our Parent Collection,
incorporating titles that have been purchased to provide
parents with reading material on a range of high-interest
topics within modern families.
The theme of this year’s BookWeek Connect to reading ~
Reading to connect, served to remind us of the power of
reading to connect us with each other and also reflect
on our own lives. Junior School students demonstrated a
lively and joyous connection to literary characters when
they dressed as their favourite character for the Book
Week Parade.
Students attended presentations from visiting authors and
illustrators including Mr Luka Lesson, Mr Gary Crew,
Mr Archimede Fusillo and Mr Simon Swingler. These visits
were well received, promoting discussion about books,
literature and the writing process. Similarly, Lit Club
provides a forum for students to meet and to share ideas
about what they are reading. Lit Club students enjoyed
attending conferences, writers’ lunches and DVD nights. It
was with a certain sadness that we said good-bye and good
luck to Charlotte Armstrong (Year 12), an important and
influential member of Lit Club for six years. Over the years,
she has offered leadership, guidance and encouragement
to many younger Lit Club members.
Another Lit Club Year 8 student was selected in 2014 to be
one of six National Inky Judges by the State Library’s Centre
for Youth Literature. These youth judging positions are
highly prized and much contested. Judges are required to
review a large collection of Australian and International
youth literature. Our student did the School proud as she
worked her way through the judging process and took on a
presenter’s role at the MelbourneWriters’ Festival and the
Inky conference.
Last year was a time to consolidate our connection with our
School community in both a physical and virtual sense.
New technology has provided a catalyst for us to rethink
how we serve students and staff, calling us to enrich and
improve our resources and services.While we continue to
1. To access the full 2009 Harvard University Libraries’ report go to: Annual Report 2014
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