Research help & getting the library ready to move!

Mr Carron and I have been very busy this week seeing the Year 11 boys undertaking their IB Extended Essay. We’ve been going into classes to help students with their research plans. Boys have also been popping into my office all week to seek individual assistance. The boys have got really diverse research interests, which is one of the things I love about being a librarian—I get to learn about huge a variety of different things. Think  tactics of the Roman Empire, narrative and visual voice, artworks that evoke emotional responses, the environmental impacts of Olympic Games, the rise of robotics in film making and much more!

We’ve been helping boys hone their research questions, identify key themes and keywords they can use to search for information, helping them use the library catalogue to find books, showing them which databases are the most relevant to their subject areas, and showing them how to search these databases to find relevant information.

Other library staff have also been really busy—Mrs Jagger has been working with Mrs Tanase to organise the Literature Festival and Mrs Davis and Mrs Tsang have been helping me to start preparing the Library for the big move. We’ve started reviewing the non fiction collection, so if you see us in amongst the shelves with sticky coloured dots, you’ll know what we’re doing! We do ask that you don’t peel off any of the stickers, otherwise we won’t know what we’re up to!

I’ve also been busy getting to know some of students. My competition last week that went out in the New Daily saw the first ten boys to come and tell me their favourite book win a Killer Python jelly snake—this seemed to go down a treat!

Ms Crystal Choi
Head of Library Services