School Librarian of the Year 2012

Nominations for the School Librarian of the Year 2012 will close on 13th January 2012.  Nomination forms were included with the Autumn issue of the School Librarian and are also available to be downloaded from the School Library Association website.

Please nominate a librarian who has outstanding qualities.  All school librarians in Durham do an outstanding job.

Christmas Activities

It's that time of year and school librarians in Durham have been putting some festive fun into their libraries.

At Belmont Community School LRC there has been some Christmas themed competitions.

• Design a bookmark
• Write a Christmas Mini Saga
• Christmas Mystery Read

Christmas Mystery Read under the tree

At Dene Community School of Technology, card craft students had been making Christmas cards to be sold at the school's Christmas Fayre

Kids Lit Quiz 2011

It was great to see Durham represented in the North East Regional Heat of the Kids Lit Quiz on  Monday.  Belmont Community School, Durham Johnston, Durham High School for Girls and The Hermitage all had teams entered in this international quiz.

A fun afternoon was had by all, staff and students, and it was great to see so many students who were not only enthusasitic about reading but also very knowledgeable.

Durham High School for Girls were the highest placed Durham School finsihing in 2nd and losing the heat by 1 point to Gosforth Central.  The girls showed excellent all round knowledge but especially in the Music and Rabbits Rounds where they scored full marks.

Belmont Community School also did well in their first time entering the competition and finished in 6th place.

Belmont Community School KLQ Team
with Quizmaster Wayne Mills

Welcome to our blog

Hello, and welcome to our new blog which we have created in order to share our ideas, knowledge and experience as school librarians.

As the name might suggest we are a network of librarians who work in schools throughout County Durham, in the North East of England. We meet up in a different school library each term throughout the school year and discuss all sorts of topics relating to school libraries. In fact, we had a great meeting on Tuesday which Jaqcui Durcan hosted in the (rather lovely!) library at Durham High School for Girls. The topic for discussion was e-books, blogs and new technology. Jeff Wilson, ICT Director of Moorside Community Technology College, gave a presentation about how iPads and other new technology is used in lessons at the school. The presentation included a video blog the headteacher had made to show the difference uses of new technology - the video is included below. 

The video prompted some interesting discussions about the use of blogs, Twitter, iPads and other technology in schools and their libraries.

Angela Roe from Belmont Community School, an administrator for Caroline Roche's (Resource Centre Manager at Holmesdale Technology College in Kent. Caroline is passionate about reading, and library advocacy. She is also an accredited SSAT Lead Practitioner for 2010/11) The Heart of the School website (a brilliant site for librarians...and other educators!), talked about the importance of advocacy and the need for school librarians to Shout About all of the fantastic things that happen in/as a result of the school library. Indeed, CILIP have launched a Shout About campaign, in which they are encouraging people to raise awareness of the value of school libraries and School Library Services, and the important role they play in the lives of the children and wider communities that they serve. You can follow the campaign on Twitter via the #shoutabout  hastag.