I Know You Are Curious....

.... About the Library.

Side note. I've tried to format this better and it isn't working.  So.

Fish Tank at the entry.

There are actually two libraries.  One is more for the younger kids, and one for the DP programme, grades 11 and 12.

This is a trilingual area, so every section of the library has three colors.  White for English, Yellow for Chinese, and Green for Thai.  There are picture books in these three language, easy readers, regular fiction, and just a large selection of works to choose from.

From the entry way.

It's a pretty large library space, about 14,000 volumes, which is pretty normal for its size and the size of the student population.  It's unfortunate that there isn't really a space for the MYP / middle school kids.  This is a very primary centered library.

There is a ton of support, though, which is great.

There are two full time librarians, myself and Erin.  She's getting her degree in Library Science at the moment and is very in tune with the needs of the school.  She's a huge resource for all the teachers and I hope to follow her example for the other teachers as well.

The little person area, full of picture books.

There is a cataloger, a wonderful Thai woman, and she sits and processes new books all day long.  I'm glad that she likes that, because cataloging isn't really my favorite activity.

Her new husband, who sits right next to her, does a lot of the physical processing of the books, and also helps out with the circulation and reshelving.

Ms. Neng, who is the first person I met, is a Thai Chinese superstar.  She does a lot of translation in Chinese for the books, helping put traditional Chinese into simplified Chinese for the picture books.

Looking towards the older students area.  The upper lever
is all theirs.

There are people in all the time, in fact, helping wrap the books in plastic and just working as they can.

I'm greatly impressed with all this support.  There are some libraries in the states that have just one person, the librarian, trying to get all of these things and all of the work accomplished single-handedly.  Even more, there are librarians who are working on their own in several schools, sometimes a different one each day.  That is absolutely insane, and does nothing to help the children.

View from the back. 

In this school, Erin and I have the freedom to teach classes and work with teachers without having to worry about  whether or not a book is catalogued properly.  Especially in a multi-lingual library like ours, we need competent people to process the books.

Neither Erin nor I speak or write Chinese or Thai, so in this we are not the experts.  The library assistants are able to process the books and give us a few words on Destiny (the library system) to help us understand and search the catalog for more information.  Unfortunately, Destiny does not allow searching in other languages as we may hope.  So, our people are extremely valuable.

Plus side.  There is hot water for tea and coffee at all times.

The DP library for grades 11-12.

The DP library is in a whole different building, just for the older kids.  There are very few things in there too, just some magazines, college searching materials, and a few reference type books for students to browse.  A very nice Filipina woman runs this library and helps out the students.

Our main goal this year in school is to make ourselves a resource for the students, someone to ask for research and reference help at any given moment.  It will be a challenge, but it will be great.