LIBRARY
from Mr Tyrrell, Head of Library
During this time of year it is always nice to settle in with a good book and to accommodate this, the libraries across the College have been busily purchasing a variety of new books during the past six weeks. Students are encouraged to come into the libraries and enjoy these new resources during the colder months ahead.
During the summer holidays, the libraries across the College have had a system change which has resulted in new workflows for Library Staff and the boys. The new system has also been implemented to branch across to PLC and as a result, both colleges now enjoy inter-library loans from each other's collection, vastly increasing the number of books both our boys and girls can access. This process of migrating and blending the entire College collection over to the new system has been steady. A few items that I want to mention specifically are as follows:
Overdue Letters and Procedures
To workflow the process between the three library locations at Scotch and PLC libraries, we have now instituted a single system that handles overdue letters and the accompanying processes. Three reminders will now be emailed to students reminding them of their overdue loans and a final letter will be sent to parents. This process is now consistent across the Middle School and Senior School and a similar system will soon be applied to Junior School Library loans. Whilst we work through this new system, we ask for your understanding as we streamline and remove any issues that we might find occurring.
Loan Periods
The College has also opted for consistency across the College for loan periods. A two-week loan duration has been selected with reminders for overdue loans occurring every two weeks after the due date. It should be noted that students with an item overdue longer that eight weeks will no longer be permitted to borrow items, until the other items have been returned. As always the Teacher Librarians associated with the various libraries, are more than happy to help with any concerns.
At the end of the term, parents are reminded that any items that are still overdue with periods exceeding 9 weeks will mean that Accounts will be sent the value of the item and a new book will be ordered.
Overdrive
As we move the library through to a new model of access, the College now has the ability for all the community to access a variety of ebooks. These can be downloaded onto a variety of eReaders (iPad, Kindle, Kobo etc) and 'how to' guides will be sent out to all parents soon. As with our above, this is a collaborative enterprise between Scotch and PLC and we are now working at adding additional titles to the online collection. Parents are encouraged to use the service and to access this by clicking the following link: plcscotch.lib.overdrive.com
Requests Systems
The library has now centralised its requests system into a single point of contact for all of our community. The email address library@scotch.wa.edu.au and this now provides one point of contact for all the College libraries and we encourage everyone to use this service. Parents can use this service for additional support with homework for their son, proof reading of reports, requests for additional reading materials, requests for purchases etc.
If you have any concerns or questions, please don't hesitate to contact me. I am always available for a chat most mornings before school in the Bunning Resource Centre on the Senior School campus.
