1.Be passionate and treat everyone fairly. We should be willing to help people of all grades, races and backgrounds.

2.Have good communication skills, meet readers and show them all the materials available in the library.

3.Be open-minded. We should critically appreciate our own cultures and personal histories, as well as the values and traditions of others. 

4.Have intellectual curiosity and always try to help develop the collections in the library. Also we should keep updating ourselves in our own subjects, also in knowing newer sources, books and journals published in the fields of interest.

 

Librarians&teachers:

5.We should have team-work spirit and need to Collaborate with leaders and subject teachers to get resources needed and to design the places, collections and services of the library so as to make the library a welcoming, active space for learning, research, and reflection.

 

Librarians:

6.Keep in touch with the readers by displaying the new arrivals, sending them new lists of books added to our library.

Be risk takers and dare to accept challenges.

 

In the library, we can set up several functional areas, such as computer area, discussion area, reading area and so on. Librarians can work with teachers and students to design activities and provide opportunities and venues for students. Also teacher and students can use all the online/ offline resources in the library.

 

In the classrooms, students can not only use online resources through their own computers, but also read books on the small shelves in their classrooms. 

 

In the classrooms&hallways, the libraries can post the introduction of new books, the comments of recommended books or recommended reading lists from subject teachers on the whiteboard for students' reference.

2. Protect resources, data entry and other administrative work.

3. Teach students how to access information while using it responsibly.

4. Manages or supports multipurpose spaces, pastoral care, just-in-time learning, and a wide range of activities relevant to student life.

5. Support and energize reading, inquiry, multiliteracies, approaches to learning, approaches to teaching, and learner profile development.

6. Try to make the library a welcoming, active space for learning, research, and reflection. 

The infrastructure and the design of the school library should be attractive, informative with good graphics and colour posters, the sitting area should be comfortable and quiet, with fast broadband

As a teacher-librarian I collaborate with classroom teachers to ensure that the collection in the library supports the units of inquiry. (...) I meet with the PYP and MYP curriculum coordinators, and classroom teachers, to decide which units include a research component and focus on these throughout the year.

And parents are also involved: “Last year, we initiated an ‘adopt-a-shelf’ program in which parents are invited to come in any time throughout the day to organize their shelf.”
 

Another great idea about how to involve the whole community: 

A functioning library provides the information and possible directions that learning and teaching need to go, and when properly resourced guides lifelong learning as well. Delivering a curriculum without a functioning library is akin to flying a plane without an instrument panel.

The blog “Libraries in the 21st century: the struggle between perception and reality” states the importance of the services provided by the librarian: 

“Some schools remain unaware of the expertise librarians bring to learning and teaching in the information age, assuming that libraries merely support written curriculums instead of inquiry and personal development across the community.”

In the blog: “The librarian’s voice should be heard, as much as any teacher’s”:

Creativity and imagination are key strengths of any librarian in the 21st century, as much as they are for any writer of children’s literature. Librarians are also storytellers and great listeners, which require adequate social and interpersonal skills.

The library's collections include not only printed books and papers, but also many digital materials such as e-books, articles in electronic journals.

Libraries and librarians need to communicate with school community members for this.

We collect and preserve resources, connect users to information, support curriculum, and care of users

They are involved in the library by suggesting about collection and planning collaborative activities

They help librarians organize bookshelves, and lead projects to promote reading among students

They give storytelling regularly

We can invite storytellers who read aloud in local language

We can borrow resources from local library and museum

Physical and virtual libraries complement each other. In addition to physical resources, virtual libraries and online resources are necessary for school libraries especially small ones like us. Users can access millions of books at any time and any place. Nowadays, online resources have proven themselves as extended learning space. 

However, the value of library/ians should be more important in this digital age because the users need to be guided and instructed to access the information they need. 

As we promote multicultural and multilingual learning, our library is the place to provide mother tongue support for students coming from other countries. Since the majority of our students are Japanese, students from overseas are a kind of minority in our school. For them, reading books written in their first language must be meaningful. It also inspires other students to find diversity.

 

In our school, for PYP, a set of books related to a unit is placed in the classroom library at the beginning of the unit to provoke students' interest. I wonder if it is considered as a catering which is stated as a less effective practice in Ideal libraries: A guide for schools. 

-physical resources(books, periodicals, magazines, journals, audiovisual media)

-virtual resources(ebooks, online resources such as databases, encyclopedias, articles)

As IB learners are required to be aware of the global context, offering them broad and updated information is essential. Big advantage of having virtual resources is the immediacy. You can find the latest and reliable article about COVID-19 on some databases.

In our library, whose collection is very small, virtual resources will be a great help. However, as long as the library is a physical space to welcome users, we should have more physical resources to support and inspire them. Paradoxically, in the library, people can access the resource which is well-organized by the classification, without turning on their devices.   

    Make plan and purchasing list of resources based on the request from teachers/students or suggestion from distributors, negotiate with admins, contact to publishers/distributors to place orders, add resources to library system, remove out-of-date resources  

    Maintain and preserve resources and equipments, listen to inquiries from students/teachers/parents, intervene in conflicts between users 

    Displaying resources/tools/photos to introduce some specific topics

    Connect students and teachers to information they need, and related information it may help them, introduce available resources out of school(public/academic library, museums, News In Education activities)

    Attend collaborative meeting to know what support is required in each class

    Give annual library orientation by level to teach library rule, classification, and how to use online resource, plan and implement awards promote reading, 

+1 Catering

Put a set of books related to the UOI(in PYP) in the classroom library. Is this catering? 

Management is always keen on the development of the library and its system to provide a wide range of facilities working closely with librarians. Teachers and librarians work on the collaboration to deliver the quality in line with UOI. Each member of the learning community is a care-taker of their learning space rather than a librarian to look after its responsibilities of collection each and every time. 

I believe we can set up a small collection of books in every corner of the school to support it, users, whether its classroom, staff room, and cafeteria of the school operated directly from the school. In my former school, we were struggling with the group of students who often get non-academic periods on daily, inviting them into to library was a hectic task sometimes, so we build a room for their personal studies where they can use the space as a cafeteria, we had put library resources there like magazines textbooks and other needed material having a teacher to supervise them all the time. 

Other aspects of the libraries are e-libraries, online libraries where all the curated resources are available for its user to browse from anywhere without the time and place limitations. IB library/ians are good with the implementation of the technical tools to provide its user a good feel of the resources. The use of online resources has increased this time due to the pandemic then earlier. 

I spend 65 % of my annual budget for the library since my library is small targeting thousand to two thousand books every year. 

In my library selection process plays an important role, I enroll different departments in it, like, to select books on critical thinking, a philosophy I engage TOK teachers, global issues. I also engage students to provide their monthly wish list to have better experience in reading. I always manage to balance the collection by keeping the need of all the departments. 

For new arrival, I always follow some of the sites to check new books in the market and their reviews, I mostly follow Goodreads, Gatesnotes (bill gates blog) and title waves.