2021 Roundup – St Margaret Mary’s Secondary School Library

The blog is back! Watch this space for monthly updates from St Margaret Mary’s and St Oswald’s School Library.

2021 Recap – What have we been up to?

eBooks & eAudiobooks: The library continued to roll out the Libby app to all S1 pupils in both St Margaret Mary’s and St Oswald’s school. The eBooks, audiobooks, and eMagazines supplement the physical stock in the library, offering pupils a broader range of formats and books, with accessibility features to make the reading experience more inclusive.

Pupil Library Committee: This year, the school library has created the Pupil Library Committee to help provide young people’s voice in the stock and library service. Duties include shelving and organising stock, selecting books to be featured in the library’s monthly newsletters, create and deliver quizzes/activities, and curate monthly displays. Some members of the PLC have also been heavily involved in stock selection, focusing on graphic novels, thrillers & horror, and enhancing our Equality & Empowerment collections.

Book Week Scotland: The library hosted a very popular manga quiz for both BGE and S4+ St Margaret Mary’s pupils and St Oswald’s BGE pupils . We were also delighted to have award-winning slam poet, Ash Dickinson, deliver a session to Mr Cawley’s S2 class.

EAL book group: We’ve continued our EAL book group this year. The project is funded by the Scottish Library and Information Council on behalf of the Scottish Government through their Scottish Library Improvement Fund, which support innovative projects in the school library sector. The EAL project is aimed at pupils who are developing their English literacy skills whilst also placing an emphasis at valuing home/original languages and multilingualism. In addition to reading books and completing literacy-based activities, pupils are invited to create multilingual signage for the library and contribute book reviews to school library newsletter and magazine. In November, our group met the talented Neil Slorance, who delivered a virtual session to the group where he taught them how to create their own comic.

The project also supported the library’s first ‘Community Languages’ collection, a section devoted to books and resources in languages other than English. Many thanks to GCC EAL and Dyslexia Unit as well as Multilingual Library Scotland for their recommendations. We’re excited for the upcoming Languages Week Scotland and International Mother Language Day (Feb 21st), where our group will be looking at an array of international book awards and festivals for young people. On a city-wide level, our group is collaborating with other EAL book groups to create a pupil-led Glasgow Guide by and for pupils. Work on the guide is still ongoing and we’ve commissioned Metaphrog to design the cover and background.

Workshops: During the autumn, the school library delivered an eResources workshop to Dr Moody’s English class. The workshop introduced pupils to how to think critically about using online media resources to their assignments. The Higher English class were introduced to ProQuest and Gale Literature Resource Centre.

Library publications: This year, the school library has continued its monthly newsletter, packed with book lists, reviews and the latest news in the YA literary world. An interactive format is circulated via the English department. The Glasgow School Library service has also continued its quarterly digital magazine, Swatch. In it, you can find author interviews, guest features, book lists, crafts, quizzes and more. The upcoming issue will be released in March. Links to past issues are below.

Winter 21 Autumn 21 Summer 21 Spring 21 Winter 20 Autumn 20

January/February book lists:

Best books of the year 2021 – BBC

Best new books January – Book Trust

Best new children’s books February – Toppsta

Bookbug book of the month January – Scottish Book Trust

Book of the month February – Scholastic

Debuts of the month February – LoveReadingforKids

Great Books Guide 2021 – Book Trust

Monthly Roundup January – Love Reading

Top 10 Audiobooks February – Love Reading

UK Public Library Authorities ‘ top eBooks, audiobooks and digital magazines borrowed in 2021 – Overdrive