End of term.....

First term is over and it has certainly been a busy one. The KS2 production was a huge success with all 4 year groups producing superb performances of "Stories we love" including Mary Poppins, Egyptian Cinderella, 12 Labours of Heracles and the Wizard of Oz.

I have been using the time when they were at rehearsals to try and catalogue the book donations and start to process the new books. In the midst of all this the IT team finally decided it
was time to try and get Oliver up and coming. The Secondary Librarian and I dutifully backed-up our Athena databases, took the necessary screen shots and got them sent to Softlink in Australia. After a couple of hours the timeline came back - data check this week, when we are on holiday and perhaps a functioning system by 23rd January, just before the Chinese New year holidays start. I don't think either of us anticipated that it would take this long. We had been doing manual circulation but made an executive decision to use the Athena for circulation again and manually update the Oliver circulation when the system is up and running.

Just as well really, as I already had 3 boxes of returned books and endless sheets of paper with loans which I input in a mad rush on Friday afternoon.

Last day of term and we hosted the whole school Assembly in the Library - it was really good to get everyone in. Those wheeled shelves are certainly easy to move! We also had a parent from the Foundation group doing some story telling to the little ones - she's a French librarian from Alliance Francais so it was really useful to make contact.

Time now to rest and relax. Have come down with the cold so am feeling quite miserable. I am intending to sort out a Library monitor programme and some Library skills over the holidays but that will have to wait for a day or two until I am feeling better.

Only one week to go....

Not quite sure where I am up to this week. Been a bit mixed up as our KS2 students and teachers are heavily involved in preparing for their Production which is next week. For me, it means a bit of juggling around of Library slots and some classes just not turning up.

Met with 4 other Librarians on Tuesday evening which was brilliant. Good to have contact with other people in the same position. We are planning to start up a network group like ALESS in Hong Kong and the Beijing Librarian's network. Already started to swap supplier information and agreed to try and organise an author visit between 3 schools. Got a great contact for the Government book supplier in Beijing and she has already quoted me for several series which are missing from our collection. Just hope the purchasing dept don't hold onto the order for too long.

The IT people came on Wednesday and promised to install the long-awaiting Oliver Plus on Thursday morning. Thursday morning came and went with no word, so continued to use Athena for the day. A sudden flurry of emails to and from Softlink in Australia in the afternoon but here we are on Friday afternoon and still no Oliver. Not quite sure what the problem is, and to be honest I don't want to ask anymore. It seems like our IT techs are not completely sure how to answer the questions required by Softlink for the remote installation so don't know what will happen now.

Am hosting the whole school assembly in the Library next Friday morning so we'll see how my movable shelves work! Not sure how many students will be there, we should have 325 but some have already taken off for hols and with the KS2 production the night before, I think many of the kids will be too tired for school on Friday.

Staff social next Wednesday evening so that should be a good chance to meet some of the Secondary teachers - I don't know any of them!