Kate Garnett, school librarian at Elizabeth College in Guernsey, is a very lucky lady!  Due to close collaboration with her DT department, she was able to commission an A2 student to make this fabulous iPod Pod for her library.  Anyone else have customised furniture built by students – and if so, what?  I would love to feature photos on Heart if you have them.

Another great video from school librarian Lenny Dutton.

This great video is produced by school librarian Lenny Dutton.

I just had to put multiple pictures of this beautiful bunting created by Annabel Jeffery from the King’s School Worcester, for a World Book Day display around her school. I am amazed at the hours and hours of work it must have been for her – but what an amazing result!  Students and teachers throughout the school were looking at the bunting and commenting – and no doubt issues have increased as a result!  What a fabulous and creative way to celebrate World Book Day!  What are you doing – anything innovative and special you would like to share?  Please email me at Heart and share your ideas with the world!

This is a fantastic and creative idea from Durham High School for Girls: 3D pictures.  Jacqui Durcan, school librarian, originally got the idea from art education where they look closely at an object to identify all the different layers.

National Story Telling Week as a great opportunity to make the images.  You need a descriptive scene from a story and then have the students identify all the different descriptive elements that best represent the story.  Then working in teams students produce the finished piece.  Students have to work carefully together to make sure things are in the right order – back ground to foreground – and as an exercise it is excellent for group work, planning and prioritising.

Past 3d image projects have included African Tales, Grimms Tales, Stories from Dickens and stories from the Canterbury Tales.

It’s the time of year that school librarian Helen does all the hard work for us, and creates a booklet of Christmas book and film tie-ins for over the Christmas period.  Staff and students in all schools really enjoy this guide, and it is a great starting point for lots of displays.  You can download the guide in html form for your own website from Issuu, or you can download the pdf from the Box files.  Remember to acknowledge Helen for all the hard work she has put in to this!

Isn’t this an amazing and inspiring picture!  I wish I’d thought of that!  This is a Christmas tree made of books constructed by school librarian Sally Todd, who is at St. John’s school in Leatherhead, Surrey.  It is apparently very sturdy, and it is a beautiful picture.  How do you decorate your school library for Christmas?  Do you have any beautiful pictures you would like to share with everyone on Heart?   Please get in touch and send in your jpegs.

Innovative school librarian Kate Garnett wanted some furniture for her library, and couldn’t find anything quite right in the catalogues.  So she simply decided to work with two Year 12 students as a ‘client’ for their AL Design and Technology coursework.  The results are below: a fantastic striking book return box; and a custom built magazine rack to fit an awkward corner.  Now why didn’t I think of that!

As you are thinking about making library guides for incoming students, how about making them a bit more interactive and embedding them on your blog?  A good example of this type is guide is this one from Frances at Stromness Academy:

One of the privileges of writing this blog, is the fantastic emails with information that I get sent.  This is an example of one such email.  Frances Tout, the librarian at Broadoak School wrote to me to show me the fantastic comment wall that her school library made in response to National Library Day.  Students and staff were invited to make comments on post-it notes and to attach them to this wall – and just look at the number of great responses she received!    Then Frances went on to mention her school library website, and would I like to take a look.  The website is amazing, and one of the best examples of a school library website that I personally have come across. The website has everything students need – author websites, latest news, subject links, information links, student and staff top books – it is jammed full of great information, but with a readable, unfussy style.  Frances reports that the Year 7 students have really taken to the blog, as have staff, and there is a staff only area which has the latest reports on reading and literacy.  I hope you agree that this is an example of exactly why we need professionals in our schools – librarians are so much more than just ‘book stampers’ and Frances is a great example of this.