Taking on the Reading Challenge

Victoria's Premier Steve Bracks has challenged for the second year Victorian students from Prep to Year 9 to take up reading. The program called Premier's Reading Challenge runs from 21 January to 31 August 2007.

My sons have signed up for the challenge and when they successfully meet the required number of readings -15 books including 10 from the Premier's booklist - until August, they will get a certificate signed by the Premier and get their names published in the newspaper. This early, my son Gino was happy to tell me that he has already read 3 books from the list and with the number of books he's been checking out from our public library plus the requires readings in school, he's bound to complete the challenge way ahead of the deadline.

This could be a great idea for Philippine school librarians to adopt (minus the publication of names in the newspaper coz we all know it's expensive) at the start of the school year in June and culminate during the Library and Information Month. Don't wait for your local officials, school administrators or even DepEd, to initiate a similar activity coz promoting reading is not exactly their top priority.

Games and Competitions

Every so often and depending on the season, our library conducts games, quizzes, and competitions with prizes at stake open to all students.

To welcome the new school year, there's a competition to solve word puzzles and we're giving away a number of cute pocket-size staplers for students who will borrow three or more books in one transaction, which of course we did not announce for obvious reasons.

Last Christmas, we had a guess-the-number-of-Santa-chocolates-in-the-jar. This was a tricky one because the glass jar's design made it difficult to count the contents. And during the AFL (Australian Football League) season, we asked the students to guess which team will win the championships.

We do get a lot of responses from the students and the prizes we give out are not really expensive. For the footy guessing game, we gave out coffee vouchers and for Christmas, the winner got to take home the glass jar and all the chocolates inside.

It really takes a lot of creativity and ingenuity to market the library and it doesn't have to hurt the library's budget.

Apologies

That was the heading of the first slide of my power point presentation for my first library instruction this school year.

I apologized to my students (there were around 16 of them) because I was going to bore them with library-related stuff and requested them to bear with me. And I think this started me off on the right track because by the time they have settled and read what was flashed on the wall, they were all laughing and up to the end of the session they indulged me with their attention. It helped, too, that I placed animation to the presentation where there was none previously. (Someone else prepared the ppt for use by all the trainers.)

After hearing my colleagues' feedbacks on how their library sessions went - the students looked bored was the most popular one - I just had to think of a way to get their attention. And with my apologies, I not only got their attention but also managed a few chuckles and smiles as the session went on.

All in a day's work. I have another session tomorrow and Friday and I'm looking forward to doing my apologies again.

Move on

I just finished reading an invitation sent via email to the 1st Quezon City Librarians Congress this coming 22-23 Feb at Hotel Rembrandt with the theme "ICT Issues and Concerns for Librarians and Information Professionals". I also remember of another seminar which will be held next week organized by the Ortigas Center Library Consortium on developing communication and leadership skills.

Although I laud the organizers for their efforts, these have already been themes of many a seminars years ago.

I did look at the QC Librarians Congress program and the only ones I find interesting are the talk on Information Literacy by Mrs. Lourdes David, which I believe is a very timely issue and which should be advocated not only by the accredited professional association but librarians as a whole and given that Quezon City librarians were the subjects of an IL study, and that of Mrs. Susima Gonzales on updates in the profession. However, if you're a subscriber to the e-groups at Yahoo and Google and have been reading Von's blog, you'd be pretty much up to date with what's happening to Philippine librarianship. And with all due respect to the other speakers Dr. Ofelia Carague and Ms. Perla Garcia, who are very knowledgeable in their respective fields, I do hope they will be dishing out something librarians do not know yet.

I have been on the board of a couple of library associations in the country and coming up with a conference is no walk in the park and requires a lot of brainstorming and a lot of creativity. A good place to start would be the Filipino Librarians Googlegroup where there are a couple of relevant issues and discussions posted and a number of possible resource persons from the group.

More of an appeal than a suggestion to professional library associations in the Philippines, please move out of your comfort zones and do not be afraid to tread untested waters because that is the only way for the profession to grow. For instance I've read from Inquirer Online that more public schools will be recipients of PCs from NGOs under various IT for Development Programs, so where does the public school librarian stand in the scheme of things? Would they simply be bystanders and fence-sitters or be actively involved in training? This could be a good topic for a forum.

We need to look at the bigger picture on how we as librarians can contribute to the greater good without losing focus on what we do. Otherwise we're taking a step forward and two steps back.

Our public library

The new Sydenham branch of the Brimbank Library and Information Service opened two months ago. It boasts of state-of-the-art facilities and a wonderful collection of books, audio-visual materials, and periodicals. We can borrow up to 20 library items at any one time including 5 DVDs and periodicals. Isn't that cool!

Below are some pictures taken inside the library. I deliberately did not take pictures of the library's interior so as not to invade the privacy of other users. Suffice it to say that it's a place you'd want to keep going back to especially in very warm weather. And I know someone in Marikina City who would like her public library to be like this.

My sons checking out the comic books collection. Oooh my brother would just love this collection

My youngest son at the self-checkout station. He just loves doing it. And yes he checked out the pile of books on the left.

There's nothing better than drinking a hot cup of latte/cappuccino/machiato/chai/chocolate while enjoying a good read or while surfing the net only for $2.