On 5th November EGA is moving into new accommodation - a brand new school built on the same site; we were lucky enough to retain our BSF funding when many schools sadly lost theirs. The grey windows in the photo are the new Learning Resource Centre which will be opening on 14th November to students.
Last week I overheard a Year 7 student pointing out to her friend all the different areas in the new building and telling her what she had named them. She announced that the Library was 'The Cloud.'
I thought this was a genius name - as you can see from the picture - it is grey, it is up in the clouds, it is an information cloud - there are so many analogies.
So. Welcome to The Cloud, our newly named Learning Resource Centre.
In three weeks time we will be moving into our brand new library, part of a completely new school building.I am excited about the move, albeit a little anxious.
I visited the site a few weeks ago and the signs are encouraging, in fact it was easily the best room in the whole school (from what I can tell as it is still a work in progress.) At that stage the library only had a carpet in place but it was bigger than I remembered. It is on the top floor of the school and has a fabulous view over Kings Cross and London.
Thinking about the new library made me recall the last 'new' library I moved into, which somehow had won a design award. To me it was a lesson in how NOT to build a library.
Firstly, it was between the reception and a creche. The building itself had a very high ceiling, so the acoustics were terrible and noise resounded around the reception area and into the library. At busy times there was nothing you could do about it, except for wait until the crowds had passed and calm was restored. In summer, with the windows open the noise of small children playing outside also floated into the library.
Originally it was built on two floors, very difficult for one full time and one part time member of staff to manage. Eventually, given the impossibility of managing a busy computer suite and a library in different locations, the suite upstairs was taken over as a classroom full time.
Apart from the dual floor problem, the LRC had two entrances downstairs, neither of which could lock. The back entrance led through to staff offices and the suite upstairs, which led to a further exit. This made it very difficult to control book loss. It was also a walk through for a constant stream of people; totally inappropriate especially if a class was in operation. We arranged for a lock to be fitted downstairs, but the door was forever being left open which meant students could get in when there were no staff on duty.
The lights were controlled by a switch in the LRC office. In the winter, when it got dark, we had to use a torch to unlock the office to switch the lights on. If you didn't have a torch it was difficult!
The shelves were custom made, the wrong size for books with large spaces behind so we had to make cardboard inserts to fit behind the books. They were also extremely heavy and difficult to move. Not good if like me, you enjoy moving furniture round and changing displays on a regular basis.
The computers were origially built in the centre of the tables, on a swivel design. Students liked to spin them round and turn them away from our prying eyes, and wires under the table got accidentally kicked, which meant the cables came loose and they were out of action a good deal of the time. Printers were located in a separate room and upstairs, which was totally impractical.
Despite all this we made the most of what we had and turned it into a very popular library. I updated a lot of the stock in particular the fiction, making it up to date, keeping up with current trends and charts. On more than one occasion a student remarked that the stock was better than that of her local library! We used the outside space for display. The lights were changed so that we could turn them on centrally and we moved the computers into a single area from whichwe could monitor use.I bought two printers and a scanner for the LRC. We purchased some standard library shelving and rearranged the layout to maximise light and space and improve the sightlines from the library desk. We also moved the desk in front of the office, which made everything more convenient and increased the area behind the counter and stopped students from cutting through.
In the end I was sad to leave it behind, (apart from the noise) because it was a lovely place to work and well used by the students. I'm pretty confident that the new library will be more to our liking - it has only one door which is a pretty good place to start and don't even mention that trend for new libraries not to have walls...in a school? Craziness!
