Yet another busy year in the library is drawing to a
close, with many new resources purchased and catalogued, and the continued
popularity of the varied lunchtime activities - Story Time, Letters and
Numbers, Craft Day and Movie Day - on offer each day. Lots of information about
what happens at our wonderful school has been added to the library blog. The
library staff has continued to endeavour to make the library a user-friendly
and welcoming centre for students, staff and parents.
Our rearrangement of the book shelves, with the Junior
Series and Quick Reads books displayed in easy access baskets, has proven to be
very popular. Students in Years 4 – 7 now also have easy access to the Series,
Picture Book and Fiction sections, with a dramatic increase in the borrowing of
series books. We continue to reassess our readers, weeding old resources and
purchasing new readers to supplement shortages.
We have processed approximately 1000 new resources
this year, including books, games, equipment, audio and computer software, many
purchased to complement the new Australian Curriculum. Thanks to the P&F, our
subscription to Sunshine Online, a wonderful resource which gives us access to
over 300 titles with more than 1 000 activities for our students, has been extended
for next year. Our continued participation in the Woolworths Earn and Learn
initiative this year meant that we were able to purchase from Modern Teaching
Aids a wide variety of resources to the value of 128 510 points – we look forward
to receiving the resources early next year. Thank you to everyone who supported
this promotion.
Book Week this year with its theme of Champions Read,
was well supported, with children and staff getting into the spirit of the
theme and coming along to the Book Week parade dressed in a varied and most
interesting array of champion costumes. We were very lucky to have two local
visiting authors – Katrina Logan and Janet Reid – come to talk to students
during Book Week. The feedback from these visits was very positive.
Book Fair was also a success, with children purchasing
many books and accessories and the resulting points earned meant that the
library could purchase many new titles to supplement our fiction and
non-fiction collections. Three lucky children each received items to the value
of $20 from the fair, thanks to the raffle run during the week.
Another welcome addition to our library is the new comfortable
seating we have purchased for the children. This lovely setting will be a
welcome extra ‘chill out and read’ zone for the children when they come to the
library and will brighten up the entry. Thank you again to the P & F for
approving the purchase of these items. In addition, the new Welcome mat that
now graces the entry also helps to improve the look of the library, both in
practical and aesthetic terms.
We would like to give a very special thank you to
those wonderful parents who have given of their time as volunteers to help us
by covering books at home and cleaning and shelving books – without your help,
many tasks would take much longer and our children would not so readily have
the benefit of new resources. Thank you also, to our few dedicated library
monitors who have regularly given up their lunch times to help out in the
library. In all, it has been an exciting
year and we look forward to another productive year in the library in 2013.
Judy Sorbello and Margaret Milligan
