The Lighthouse Diary #55: BA Library Fundamentals Students Version

And we kicked off the first week of the Academic Year! Here is what I sent the members of the community from our experiences with the students during Foundation Days.

This week’s library orientations and classes in our new location have given us valuable insights into user traffic and interaction dynamics. To better accommodate our growing number of students and expand our collection of books and resources, we will be making some adjustments to our physical arrangements. Stay tuned for announcements about new book additions that you can integrate into your classroom.

In our Library User Education segment, we successfully conducted orientations with our grades 7, 8, and 9 students, all of whom have since borrowed books from the library. We also held additional sessions for grades 9 and 10 to evaluate students' understanding of reference sources, search strategies, and reading comprehension. We plan to launch reading campaigns and library promotional activities this term, with opportunities for student volunteers to get involved. If your advisees are interested in reading, media studies, or pop culture, consider encouraging them to join or help form a book and media club. Flynn and I are here to support, guide, and mentor them.

Our grades 10, 11, and 12 students have begun selecting books for their Personal Projects (PP), Extended Essays (EE), and Internal Assessments (IA). This is a promising start, and maintaining this momentum will be crucial.

From our interactions with students, we’ve observed the following:

- They are confident in using and navigating our library OPAC.

- Few students recognize the value of creating reading lists in our OPAC.

- They take longer to read from and utilize print sources.

- Their skimming and scanning skills require improvement.

- Many were surprised to discover that the table of contents and indexes are useful tools for locating information.

We look forward to further collaborations with you and your students.