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So how are school librarians coping now, two years on from lockdown?
School Libraries Group
Doing the digital pivot B
EFORE the first lockdown in March 2020, school libraries had vastly different stages of digital
provision; some had a good range of digital resources already, from eBooks to online journals and newspapers.
These libraries were better able to make the instant digital pivot that we, alongside our schools, were required to do. Other libraries, either through having less funding or perhaps librarians who were not yet ready to take the library online, were left with suddenly having no library provision available. However, the strength and resilience of school librarians meant that there were a variety of ways that they ensured that their library was able to carry on providing a service.
If you look on the Great School
Libraries website and navigate to the Case Studies page (
www.greatschoollibraries.
org.uk) you will see twenty inspiring articles about how school libraries rose to this challenge. Some librarians ran regular book clubs and book chats with students online using Teams. Some allowed students to reserve books online using the online library catalogue and then either let students come to the school to pick up the books, (quarantined for three days and packed in paper bags), or if the school was situated in a town, they would deliver the books to doorsteps themselves (see Case Study from Beauchamps High School, Essex). The Online Support Case Study from Dr Carol Webb showcases the dizzying range of activities that she provided for the students and staff at Portsmouth Grammar School.
What also helped school librarians at the time was the incredible generosity of many of the providers of digital resources. Some of the larger, more expensive databases like JStor made their resources completely free to schools for the duration of lockdown. Ebook providers such as Wheelers also made collections of books free to
September 2022
INSIGHT
schools so that they could engender access to reading for all. Some librarians read aloud to students during Teams sessions – this again was generously allowed by publishers, so long as the recording didn’t go online for general viewing. Some authors like Cressida Cowell read from How to Train your Dragon regularly so that schools could plan lessons around her book without having actual copies to lend to students. There was also a website created by the Copyright Licensing Agency which allowed textbooks that the school owned to be scanned and then activated so that specific pages would be sent to students. One such list of publishers and authors was put together by CILIPSLG Scotland:
www.cilips.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/ YA-online-resources-SLG.pdf
Online author visits still continued, after the initial shock of lockdown, and most schools soon booked authors to visit via Teams or Zoom, so that students could once again be connected to ‘live’ authors. These visits lacked the excitement of having an author in person; however they also proved to be more economical for both the school and the author as no travelling was involved. Online author visits still continued once lockdown eased and are now a regular part of a library’s provision. CILIPSLG was due to host a Conference in April 2020, which meant that we had to instantly decide whether to put the Conference online or cancel it. We opted for the online version, retaining many of our original guests, and had the pleasure of introducing new guests such as Margaret Merga, speaking to us from Australia. This, of course, would not have been possible in the previous iteration of the Conference. We have also run several successful digital training days, with participants from all over the UK. These librarians were very happy with the new digital option, as many of them had been unable to travel to the previous training courses held at CILIP HQ in London. Our committee meetings as well have been held on Zoom for the past two years, and the majority of meetings
Caroline Roche is Chair CILIPSLG and Co-Chair Great School Libraries Campaign.
will be in the future, although we do plan to meet from time to time ‘for real’ to cement friendships. However, we have two committee members who are international school librarians – one in Dubai and one in Italy, which, again, would not have been possible before and we would have missed out on two very valuable members of our team. So how are school librarians coping
now, two years on from lockdown? Most of us are more confident in using digital tools and continue to use them. The digital pivot forced us to learn new skills quickly – alongside our teacher colleagues – and these skills have enhanced the offering to our communities. When many of the free resources returned to paid ones once schools reopened fully, many schools retained the resources as they discovered the value of spending budgets on digital resources for students. There is now, I feel, more acceptance of the value of digital resources amongst school librarians who had, perhaps, been more hesitant before. Many now see the benefit of having a mixed offering – although it is still true that students, overall, prefer to use hard copies of books. However, during holidays and other times of emergency, the digital offering comes into its own. And what of the future? – Fully digital does not satisfy everyone, but having no digital resources impoverishes students too. Hybrid libraries are the way forward, I believe, and lockdown has forced school libraries to take a great leap forward into the digital library world. IP
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