Category: Librarianship

Literacy in the Library

Kirsty MorganLeave a comment

One of the highlights of my week is when the Year 7 literacy class comes the library. Last year’s group learned about the non-fiction section, and about how the Dewey Decimal System can help them find books on the subjects they’re interested in. They used the music library and saw the range of music genres that we have on CD. They created library posters, designed their own book blurbs and wrote reviews of books and music. I led a project in which they created their own Zines. And best of all, they’ve been using the library more, both inside and out of class time. I’ve noticed they come up and talk to me more, they ask for books and I always try to buy their requests if we don’t have it already, and they have become far more confident library users, just in time for them to start needing the library more as they transition from the equivalent of primary school to secondary school.

So, I thought it would be fun to look back on the lessons where the library played a bigger role.

Where Dewey Start?

I cannot take credit for this literacy/library team-up. At the end of last year, the literacy teacher, Mr Wong, approached me for ideas about a one-off library lesson to introduce the Year 7s to the Dewey Decimal System. It was a fortunate coincidence that, when first starting in the role, I had looked into library lesson ideas and come across several library lesson packs on the website Twinkl – including one that specifically targeted Year 7s.

7 workbooks for the year 7 library
Year 7 Library Activities Pack from Twinkl

Guided by the ideas in the activity pack, and a bit of trial and error on how best to fit the lesson to our school library specifically, we’ve found that it works really well, and have now run this particular lesson six times. The students learn about the non-fiction library, and where they can find different books. I demonstrate the layout, making sure to point out anomalies (like the fact that they would find Fairytales in Social Science, Pets in Technology, or Computers in General Miscellaneous). This guides my development of the collection towards subjects that excite them (Dinosaurs!) and also lets them hear about the non-music subjects that we have books on, which is useful when over a quarter of the collection is classed under the 780s.

They then complete a worksheet that lets them explore the non-fiction collection further: they select books from each of the main 10 categories (i.e. the hundreds) and answer questions about them. They then work out where they would look to find the answers to a list of general knowledge questions. This helps them practice using the Dewey Decimal chart, and develops their study skills. For example, one of the students suggested that he could look in the biographies section to find out who discovered penicillin. While he’s not necessarily incorrect, this led to a discussion about how he might need to know the inventor’s name in order to find a biography, and it would rely on our having an Alexander Fleming biography in the collection. He agreed that the answer might be more likely to be mentioned in one of the books about Medicine, but insisted that if he needed to find out the answer he would ask Google (and, in this instance, quite right too!)

Reviewing the (book and music) Situation

Later in the year, the class went on to write music and book reviews. For the music reviews, I was able to direct them towards our magazine corner, where they could see examples of professionally published reviews in the music magazines the library carries. This highlighted to them that the magazines were there for them to use and also that they were learning skills that were useful in the real world. As Mr Wong pointed out, it is possible that this might actually be a viable career option for these musical students.

They also wrote book reviews, specifically of books that the library already carried. When they were completed and marked, I used Canva to uniformly style each of their reviews and set up the Reading Corner to be a more permanent “Year 7 Recommends” display. The reviews were also uploaded onto the library catalogue, which some of the students were very excited about.

The display was a success across the years. The Year 8 choristers (who have their Prep sessions in the library), had a lot of fun reading the reviews and talking about the books that had been recommended. There was also a noticeable surge in Rick Riordan issues among the Juniors after the Percy Jackson books had been put on display. I received multiple requests for the Magnus Chase and Heroes of Olympus series which now fill an entire shelf of our fiction collection!

Zine there, Done that

Towards the end of the school year, I suggested to Mr Wong that a good final project might be to make “Zines” – short magazines centered on a topic of interest, traditionally fan-made with a limited print run (if any). My idea was that each student could make their own Zine about a piece of media or hobby that they enjoyed. Then I would make copies of each of the Zines to add to the school library, and Chetham’s could have its own Zine collection.

I brought in a couple of example Zines that I had at home (including the Laser Girl one I made as a present for my sister when she got her PhD), and Mr Wong drew up a plan for how we would structure the lessons. The students spent several weeks planning and making their Zines. We taught the students the folding technique to make little 8-page booklets, and they planned out each page, and then worked on the Zines for a few weeks in the sessions before completing them for homework.

It was exciting to see the finished products, and we ended up with 23 Zines covering an eclectic range of topics:

  • movies (Star Wars; Marvel; genres)
  • books (Harry Potter; How to Train Your Dragon; the Evil Dentist; murder mysteries)
  • pets and animals (from dogs, cats and other pets to porcupines, ants and newts!)
  • hobbies (sewing; girl’s cricket; maths; music; Minecraft; different types of pens)
  • Taiwan
  • the Zodiac
  • Viruses

After the students were finished and the Zines had been graded, Mr Wong passed them to me and I began what turned out to be a far-too-long process of converting them to be useable in the library. I started by scanning each page, which made them quite faded. Not realising how many I would need to do (and how long each would take) I used software to boost their colour, and remove the awful grey tone of the paper background. My reasoning was that, since the library was benefitting from the students’ work, they shouldn’t be put on display in a condition that was worse than the students had given them to me in. Some of them had put in so much effort that I felt it would have been a shame to undermine that due to the technological limitations of our scanner.

As I went along, I developed methods of speeding up the process, but in retrospect, I spent far longer on them than I should have done (including working on them at home, while watching TV). If I hadn’t realised the enormity of the task when I did, I could have been there forever. 23 Zines of 8 pages each would have had me digitally enhancing 184 pages in total, which (if I’d spent as long as I was spending on some of the penciled pages) could have taken me up to 92 hours! In the end I kept all the work I’d already done, but I resorted to enhancing only the front and back pages (i.e. the outside covers), of the remaining Zines. We’re planning to do the Zines again this year, and this will be my new method, which will save me a lot of time. The actual process of printing, processing and covering them, then adding them to the library catalogue only took a couple of days (around my other library work).

The end results were very cool, and the Zines are a great addition to the library. I love finding ways to involve the kids, and I’m looking forward for them to see the display when they return after the October break.

Now, please enjoy some extracts from the student’s Zine project:

  • The front cover of “Fabric to Sew With” had scraps of fabric cut out and sewn onto it
  • “A Girl’s Guide to Cricket”. It’s interesting to get a glimpse into the students’ hobbies.
  • The pages of “Different Types of Pen” were written using the type of pen being discussed, which I thought was pretty neat.
  • “M.A.T.H.”. Fun maths facts!
  • “Good dogs for first time owners”. Look at the delighted spaniel!
  • “The Star Wars Strategy”
  • “How to Look After Your Fish”. Nice food!
  • “Taiwan: a country of discovery” had a pop-up book inside the Zine!

Back to School reflection: What I did on my holiday

Kirsty MorganLeave a comment

After a good amount of time off work over the summer holidays, I am happy (if a bit nervous!) to be returning to the school library tomorrow. I had a lot of plans for when I was off, and some of them I completed, some of them I at least started, and many of them I didn’t get around to. Either way, I thought it would be nice to reflect on the summer before the new school year washes all of it into oblivion.

School’s out for the students

The students finished their school year on Friday 9th of July, but I still had a lot to complete so I spent the following two weeks in the library most days working on four main tasks.

Firstly, I shelved almost all of the books and music that had been building on the Covid quarantine shelves. That was quite a lot of work, seeing as so much music was returned last-minute, and I’m still getting used to the layout of the chamber music library (where we have shelves and shelves of parts in brown envelopes). Full disclosure, there are a couple of items that have been left so that I can ask my ever-helpful evening staff where the music should go!

I catalogued and processed a huge pile of music. We had received a fantastic donation of beautifully bound full and miniature scores from a member of the public. They are in such good condition that I have decided to add all of them to the library stock (replacing tatty copies where possible), but with probably over a hundred items in total, getting through it all is quite a task. I made a dent, but never fear, there’s still plenty of cataloguing waiting for my return tomorrow!

I also did my best to spend the remaining library budget, having been advised if I don’t spend it I lose it. The students can look forward to a few more books, some replacement music for lost copies, and eight lovely new pairs of headphones – enough for every library computer. I don’t know where the previous pairs kept disappearing to, but I think it might be worth creating a headphone sign-out sheet, to make sure these new ones are always returned.

My biggest challenge in the weeks leading up to the end of term, and the two following weeks where I was in the library on my own, was creating lists of all of the music that was still out to school leavers and would need to be tracked down. This task was particularly difficult because, despite being a music school where ensemble music is in high demand, the library system software we use cannot track multiple borrowers. This means that every set of music is only ever out on one borrower’s account (regardless of how many parts there are). Although we try to keep a manual record of who has which part, with over a thousand outstanding items at the end of term, going through every single envelope to notify students of their unreturned music was a huge job – and certainly not one I want to have to do every single summer. I only just managed to get it all completed in time to send out final warning emails to all the students before I left for Scotland, but I’m going to have to work out a better system for future years, or I might have a nervous breakdown!

Four crates full of brown envelopes
All of the empty envelopes still waiting for parts to be returned to them!

Visiting my parents!

After all that stress, I was super excited to travel back to Scotland to visit my parents for a few weeks. It was so nice to see them again, and my sister, Jenny, was there too for part of my trip. On my first night, Jenny introduced me to the anime Assassination Classroom, which is about a group of school students trying to assassinate their evil yet adorable teacher: a betentacled alien that plans to destroy the world if his students don’t kill him first. It’s surprisingly good.

The weather was gorgeous every single day of my visit, so we did a lot of outdoor activities. One day we walked along the beach for a forest/water walk in Greenock and ate ice-cream and another day we went to a market in Helensburgh where we listened to Glaswegian busker Maryjane singing ‘Let It Go’ from Frozen (in the middle of a heatwave). My dad and I went for a 50km cycle along the River Clyde, which was super fun but also extremely tiring, and at one point I fell off my bike. Although I’m pretty sure I hated everything and everyone by the end of it, it was great to cycle with my dad again and we both really enjoyed it.

On another beautiful day we visited my aunt and uncle in Stirling where we walked around the King’s Knot and learned the story of the Stirling Wolf. Apparently, during a Viking raid, one of the raiders accidentally stepped on a wolf causing it to howl out and wake the sleeping Anglo-Saxon garrison. This gave the garrison time to prepare for the invasion and force the Vikings to retreat. And now the howling wolf emblem can be seen all over Stirling. How bizarre is that?!

What is property? Property is stress!

After my visit to my parents, I still had three weeks left of summer holiday, and in this time Calum and I wanted to make some headway into buying our first home. Calum took a week off work, so we set up a meeting with a mortgage broker and started looking at properties. In total, I was able to arrange eleven viewings although five of them cancelled on me before the viewing could take place. Calum and I attended three of the remaining viewings together, and I attended three on my own because Calum had to go back to work. Although it was quite frustrating and extremely stressful, there were still some good parts. On one extremely wet day, after a viewing, Calum and I visited Worsely Village, where we walked around the Tudor-style streets and along the canal in the rain. There were even some cute metal ducks!

Even with the support of my parents (who were great at sending me suitable houses that I might have missed), and Calum (who did everything he could while also working full time) and the mortgage broker (who’s invaluable advice was fantastic help), I found the entire process really grim. I looked at house websites for hours ever morning, calling up estate agents to try to arrange viewings only to be told the houses were already under offer, or they were no longer accepting viewings. Not to mention the palaver navigating the disgustingly stupid system of Freehold vs Leasehold housing (don’t even get me started).

But eventually, less than a week ago, we got an offer accepted. Hooray! It’s a nice house, in a pretty area, and well within our budget, which is fantastic. We will probably need to do some work on the bathroom, because for some reason quite a few houses in Manchester (including this one) have a toilet with no sink next door to the bathroom with the sink in it. This feels very disgusting to us, and we’ll need to get that changed, but otherwise the house is great. It has a lovely shed for our bikes, and a nice big living room, a pretty kitchen and a utility room where we can put our washer/dryer and install our first dishwasher (such luxury!). There are also two relatively big bedrooms. Calum’s has a wee cubby area where he will be able to set up his workspace, since he is planning to work from home more often, and mine has a huge built-in wardrobe and a cosy alcove where I think I’ll be able to fit my bed.

So that’s pretty exciting, and all we need to do now is meet with our mortgage broker again, set up our solicitor, get a survey from our mortgage provider and a homebuyer’s report, exchange contracts and keys, get a new bathroom, move all our stuff across to the new house, and move in. Easy-peasy.

SLA ‘New To School Libraries’ Webinar

Kirsty MorganLeave a comment

Earlier this month, I attended an online webinar for new school librarians, hosted by the School Libraries Association (SLA). On the whole, I think it was pretty useful: it gave me cool ideas for how to use social media to promote the library; info on the different kinds of documents (policies, reports and plans) that a school library should have; suggestions for clubs and events the school library could run (I quite liked the sound of a graphic novels club); information on arranging the library layout (display spinners are your friend!); and advice on eBook providers, unions, stock weeding, and using book and publisher fairs to pick up library goodies like bookmarks and posters. But the flashiest idea I’ve worked into my library so far was inspired by a demonstration of how to make short showcase videos to let students and staff know what items the library has in its collection.

As a specialist music school, Chetham’s has a lot of international boarders and so the school celebrates Chinese New Year. About a month ago we were asked to see if we could do anything to contribute to the celebration, so I picked out a few China-themed books, with the intention of making a library display. However, since most of the students are studying from home at the moment, and haven’t seen the Burns display yet, I decided to instead make a video showcase that they could watch on Twitter. The webinar presenter suggested using the free software Animoto, but I used Movavi pro, which I already owned and which up to now I had mostly been using to make fan music videos for the Cats (1998) musical. Click on that link at your own risk(!).

We had plenty of relevant non-fiction books, but I was a little surprised by how few fiction books I could find set in or about China, or even just featuring Chinese characters. I think my difficulty can partly be attributed to my still being pretty unfamiliar with the library stock and partly to the shallow descriptions in our library catalogue entries (which I am slowly working to improve), so I am sure that I missed some potentially suitable items. But I still found it odd that the collection was so sparce, especially seeing as the school does have quite a lot of Chinese students.

I was doing a fiction shop anyway, because Scholastic had a sale of 10 My Story books for £6.99 (what a bargain, amirite?), so I purchased a few books to boost the China collection, including a very nice picture book about the Chinese Zodiac story. I added them to the Chinese-themed books, music and DVD that I had already set aside, and took photos of them dotted around the stacks. I then edited the photos into a slideshow with public domain music. I downloaded a Chinese New Year resource pack to make the video fancier and more coherent. I even edited the music a little because I only realised after I’d already created the jump-cut section with the non-fiction books that there should probably be some kind of introduction.

Overall, I’d say for my first library video the showcase worked out okay, and I had fun making it. It took roughly the same amount of time to create as a physical library display would, and it was more likely to be seen and enjoyed – particularly during the current lockdown. It received a fair amount of engagement, including some likes from teachers and students, which made me very happy. Although I probably won’t be creating videos a lot, they are a good tool to have in my kit to make everyone aware of the stock we carry. And I’m pretty excited to see what else I can do with them!

A Man[chester]’s a Man[chester] for a’ that

Kirsty Morgan1 Comment

Earlier this week it was Burns Night – the first one Calum and I didn’t celebrate in Scotland. Manchester is only a 4-hour drive from my parents’ house in Glasgow but, I think like a lot of distances during the current pandemic, it sometimes feels a lot further. Don’t get me wrong, I am super grateful and happy to have my current head librarian role at Chetham’s School of Music – the kids are great, the staff is lovely, the work is fun and I’m in the very enviable position of having a permanent position in my dream job before I hit thirty.

But I miss Edinburgh. I miss my family and friends. I miss the comfort provided by first minister Nicola Sturgeon’s open explanations and conscientious decision-making. I miss uncrowded streets and parks, and generally better Covid compliance. I miss prevalent recycling bins and a proper pelican crossing system and standard bus fares that you can just contactless tap without needing to tell the driver where you’re going. I miss the security of knowing that most people around me will be anti-Brexit and have left-wing politics. I miss proper cycle lanes and conscientious drivers and being half an hour walk from the beach.

Nonetheless, Manchester has its good points. People are generally more friendly and helpful. We deliberately chose to live in Prestwich, which has a whole network of parks. And I did find what might be a cycle path the other day. The trams are fantastic and punctual. It has all sorts of Communist history (Calum and I went to see a statue of Engels’ Beard over the Christmas break, and the public library next door to my school has ties to Karl Marx). I’ve met lots of people in Manchester who are pretty left wing and anti-Brexit (and Manchester does have a Labour mayor) so I’m probably being a bit over-cautious about Mancunian politics. And, most importantly, it’s where Chetham’s School of Music is situated, and I’m super loving working there!

Although there were no Ceilidhs or parties with friends or public events, Calum and I decided to celebrate Burns Night anyway. I was working that day, so I wore my tartan pinafore, and I’d made a library display celebrating Burns Night. I lined the bookshelves with tartan fabric, and I used some of the remaining fabric along with some pipe cleaners and coloured tissue paper to make a highland dancer and thistles. I was surprised that the school library didn’t have any Burns poetry, so my mum donated one of her copies to the school, and in the same package she sent me her haggis piggybank that I put on the display as well. The lockdown has meant there aren’t many kids in the school right now, but I have still received three compliments on the display so far – which made me very happy.

When I got home from work Calum was wearing a suit and his tartan bowtie. We had haggis, neeps & tatties ready meals for dinner, and listened to Celidh music on Spotify while we waited for the microwave. We also danced a little – although neither of us could remember many of the steps. For dessert we made cranachan by layering Muesli, double cream, raspberries, and honey – Calum’s was prettier than mine, but they both tasted good.

Calum’s was way fancier than mine…

After dinner we browsed the internet for video games set in Scotland. I was excited (if a little bemused) to discover that there were three different video games based on Jeff Wayne’s musical version of The War of the Worlds (one set in Glasgow). Like, not merely the H. G. Wells book, but the 1978, synth-heavy, prog-rock opera concept album of the book. There’s a ZX Spectrum survival game, a real-time strategy game for PCs, and a vehicular combat third-person shooter for Playstation! Isn’t that utterly delightful? Don’t you feel the world is a little bit awesomer just knowing that these three separate, entirely different games exist?!

For some ungodly reason, none of these games were available to buy on Steam, so we watched the Disney Pixar Movie Brave instead. We’d both seen it before a few times, but it holds up to repeat viewing – I particularly enjoyed the mischievous baby princes, the cute will-o’-wisps, the crazy bear carpenter lady, and Patrick Doyle’s atmospheric score (although I do have to wonder why none of the characters sing – isn’t this supposed to be a princess movie, Disney?).

Overall, I enjoyed our Mancunian, indoors Burn’s Night (and day). It was quiet and a bit haphazard, but it was fun and reminded me of home. I am looking forward to being able to attend Ceilidhs again, though.

…Wait. Does Manchester even have Ceilidhs?!

[*Quick Google Search*.]

Turns out: yep!

You can’t really see it very well, but we’re both wearing dark tartan.

Kirsty Morgan Music in sunny Manchester, outside Chetham's School of Music

Guess who’s the new librarian at Chetham’s School of Music?

Kirsty Morgan4 Comments

Hey, guess who’s moving to England! Spoiler alert: it’s me! I’m going to be the new librarian (well, “Head of Learning Resources”) at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester. And I’m super looking forward to it. Okay, sure, I’m a bit nervous, but I’m mostly excited. It will be a chance to combine my enjoyment of music librarianship with a person-facing role, which I think will be great.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve very much enjoyed working at the National Library on their Music Retroconversion Project. I’ve learned so much about music librarianship and cataloguing and libraries. And it’s been fun to work on a project that has a definite endpoint and final product. I was also given the opportunity to write three blog posts about the project for the National Library’s Blog – which was really cool. However, I did miss getting to interact with library patrons – they make every day different and I like helping people find what they’re looking for.

Moreover, working in a music school library has kinda been a background totally-never-gonna-happen-fantasy dream for me since university.

Tag Cloud Schema

When I was studying my ILS Masters at the University of Strathclyde, we were assigned to create “schema” (i.e. different models of organising knowledge) for a set of 10 items. I chose a collection of showtunes for solo voice with piano accompaniment, and arranged them in ways that would best suit a hypothetical Musical Theatre School Library. It was one of my favourite assignments because, aside from the obvious perk of working with showtunes for uni credits, I found it really interesting to think about what information would be needed by the school pupils if they were looking for audition pieces. I enjoyed the problem solving aspect of arranging my schemas to suit that. Things like key, range, time-signature, tempo, voice type, number of bars, etc. didn’t obviously fit into the standard bibliographic categories, so I chose models that gave me the freedom to customise.

This was the first spark that made me think it would be really cool to work in a music school library, but I didn’t seriously think that could happen, since there are very few such jobs in the country. Therefore, imagine my delight when JUST as my National Library contract was coming to an end, the position at Chetham’s School of Music was advertised!

Chetham’s Library

So, obviously I applied and was pleased when I progressed to the interview stage. I travelled to Manchester by train for the interview, and it was my first visit to Manchester ever. I was so excited. I went down the day before and stayed at a nearby Travelodge. That evening I had a sausage supper from the local chip shop, and the staff there were super friendly and wished me luck for my interview. I completed the interview while wearing a mask (which was definitely an experience). And the people at Chetham’s were all very lovely and the school was this really pretty castle-like building in the centre of Manchester. What’s more, the school shares a site with Chetham’s Library, the oldest free public reference library in the English-speaking world. I didn’t get the opportunity to visit it because it’s currently closed, but I will at some point because it looks just like something out of a fantasy story. I’m sure there’s all kinds of magical tomes and cursed writings and probably a ghost or ten hiding among the stacks!

Anyway, shortish story shorter, the people at Chetham’s School liked me and offered me the position and I start in November! How utterly, awesomely, amazingly super is that?!! Yay!

I was Anti-Rickrolled!

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I was Anti-Rickrolled by a catalogue card today! In case you don’t know, Rickrolling was a trend few years ago, where a person’s expectations of seeing a funny, cute, interesting, exciting, etc. video were subverted by the video instead turning out to be a clip of Rick Astley singing the song Never Gonna Give You Up. The internet is weird.

Working as the Music Retroconversion Project Junior Editor (pre-COVID)

So, anyway, in my job as Junior Editor on the National Library of Scotland’s Music Retroconversion Project, I review hundreds of music records each day, against scanned images of the original catalogue cards, to check they are correct to go into the online catalogue.

The batch I am working on right now initially shows the front of the card with the title, performer and shelfmark of the music record, then you click to see the back of the card, which displays a list of song titles.

Imagine my excitement when one of the cards I was reviewing was a Rick Astley album! I even said out loud to no-one, “Oh my gosh, am I actually going to get Rickrolled by a catalogue card?!”

My somewhat-unjustified elation was cut short when I clicked to see the back of the card – and the song wasn’t there. There was a whole bunch of different Rick Astley songs that I’d never heard of, but not the famous one! Not the one that was used to subvert, annoy and prank expectations. And thus, by not having the song on the record as I’d been anticipating, I was if anything MORE Rickrolled that I’d have been otherwise.

Well played, catalogue card … Well played.

May the Fourth be with You!

Kirsty Morgan2 Comments

It’s the fourth of May – do you all know what that means? It’s Star Wars day! I first got into Star Wars when I started university ten years ago and, although I’ll never be as keen as most of my friends are, I enjoy it quite a lot. I’ve seen eight of the films, some of the Ewok TV show and about 15 minutes of the Star Wars Holiday special. I also own a teddy Ewok – because I found the idea of a teddy of a teddy alien delightful! And now that Calum and I have purchased a Disney+ subscription together, I think we are in store for several Mandalorian evenings! (Ooh, Star Wars themed Mandalorian evening… that is an idea I can get behind!)

Actual Facebook comment when I received the teddy ewok for Christmas: “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh!!! I actually now own a teddy ewok!!! This-makes-me-happier-than-it-has-any-right-to!!!!!”

Anyway, I want to share with you a display I created while I was still working at Milngavie Library. Here’s a bit of background: Milngavie Library has a LOT of Star Wars books. Fiction, non-fiction, adult, junior – from the hard in-depth The Military Science of Star Wars to a Lego Star Wars boardbook for tiny children Stories from the Galaxy. We have trashy paperback novel spin-offs, fancy hardback novel spin-offs, graphic novels for all ages, huge art books filled with beautiful screenshots or intricate spaceship designs… I counted fifty-seven Star Wars books for adults and a quick search of the catalogue just now returned 107 titles about or relating to Star Wars. You get the idea. The point is, we had a lot of Star Wars books, and I wanted to make the readers aware of this. So I created a display. This was around Christmas time, so it lined up perfectly with the release of Star Wars Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker.

And I went full out! (Well, as full out as you can get on a zero-money, limited-timescale budget.) I papered the display in black and covered it with a string of Christmas lights to look like stars. I printed and laminated a bunch of stills from the films (with maybe a slight partiality to baby Yoda memes). I also printed, cut out and laminated a few pictures of the space ships used in the show, including a Death Star, the Millennium Falcon and “some kind of Jedi Starfighter” (Calum P. Cameron, 2020) that at the time I had thought was an X-wing. I hung these from an awning that I’d created to shield the Christmas tree lights from the bright surroundings and make them show up more.

Left to right: Death Star, “Some kind of Jedi Starfighter”, Millennium Falcon, 2nd Death Star

One of my library colleague lent me his toy lightsaber (that actually lights up if you press it) for the display – which was a huge success, particularly among the children. I wrote a very corny piece of text to act as the library themed opening scroll text and one of my other colleagues showed me how to prop it up on a pair of Christmas wrapper tubes, that I’d marker-penned black, so that the text appeared to be getting further away:

A long time ago in a library far, far away…
Episode 4 May 2020
THE LIBRARY JEDI
The new Star Wars movie is about to be released in cinemas and our REBEL LIBRARIANS have compiled a display of some of the Star Wars books carried by MILNGAVIE LIBRARY.
It is up to you, the MILNGAVIE ALLIANCE, to circulate the books and bring the enjoyment of Star Wars to people across the galaxy.
But bring the books back on time, or Vader will get you…..

I also cadged some black paint from the children’s afterschool club that meets in the same community centre. With permission, I painted one of the children’s librarian’s papier-mâché golden eggs black, and once it had dried, I used her gold sharpie to make Death Star markings. (I utterly destroyed the pen, but purchased a replacement from the local Tesco before anyone noticed!) This papier-mâché Death Star was too heavy for the wool that I used to hang the laminations with, but one of my colleagues found a black pipe-cleaner that I was able to use instead – and it worked perfectly! The display now had two Death Stars, but so did the Empire, so I felt it was appropriate.

It was a really fun display to make, and plenty of my colleagues and other people who worked in the community centre got involved. Although the display had to exclusively feature the adult Star Wars books, since it was set up in the adult library, it was right across from the door, so everyone could see it when they entered. Lots of children really enjoyed it, as did parents – and even some childless adults were into it. I don’t know what it did for the Star Wars book circulation numbers, but it contributed to the library being a fun place to be in for a few months. So I’d say it worked well!

One evening after the library had closed, the Community Centre caretaker turned off all the lights so I could photograph the display with all the cool lights.

Food for thought at the IAML Annual Study Weekend 2019

Kirsty MorganLeave a comment

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It’s so adorable!

I was very pleased and excited to have been awarded a bursary to attend the International Association of Music Library (IAML)’s 2019 Annual Study weekend, which took place back in April. The report that I wrote about the experience is here, so please do check that out. As always, I never want to JUST plug my writing on other sites here, and like adding something extra to this blog when I do shamelessly promote myself. So, for that reason, please enjoy this rundown of all the awesome foodstuffs provided at the conference. Firstly, look at the quaint pick-n-mix that was made available. The sweets were in little flowerpots and the bags were tiny paper cones. How adorable is that?

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This cake was not a lie. It was delicious.

There was also a rainbow cake to celebrate 20 years of the Cecilia database, which contains information about all of the different music collections in the UK and Ireland. It’s a potentially really helpful tool, that I’m hoping might assist me in my future job searching. And the cake was really lovely – it tasted like vanilla.

I did not get a picture of any of the conference dinners or lunches that were provided. But they were pretty nice, too. I did learn very quickly, after the first night, that, as a fussy eater who doesn’t like to eat slabs of meat, I was better to request the vegetarian option. It meant I got to eat a wide variety of different risottos, and there was a very nice (if a little hard to cut) chocolate tart at the fancy conference dinner party.

I got a little nervous when it came to the dinner party. Everyone was beautifully dressed up, and I didn’t have anything special to wear (and I also wasn’t sure whether the bursary had provided for the dinner, so that was also a little stressful before it was sorted out). Everything turned out fine, though. And one of the waiters joked that I was very posh for drinking the Bottlegreen Elderflower Cordial with (gasp) sparkling water!

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Briefly relaxing before dinner.

Although I don’t drink alcohol, I was quite proud of myself for being sociable in the bar at the end of each day. It was a little noisy, but I really enjoyed talking to the music librarians, who were all really nice and friendly. I did stay up quite late both evenings, so I was super tired from all the excitement and socialising. It was quite nice to have a little break when everyone was getting ready for the dinner party.

The staff were also really nice and let me take some of the complimentary berry teabags to my hotel room. It was really relaxing to unwind in the early hours of the morning, watching Poirot with my fruit tea before going to sleep.

All in all, it was an awesome conference and the food was generally really nice. But for my proper thoughts on the conference from a music librarianship perspective, do check out the report I wrote for IAML.

It’s Piano Day… again!

Kirsty Morgan1 Comment

Gosh, is it Piano Day again, already? Last year, I celebrated with this post about joining the Henry Ford Band. So much has happened since then!

I played keyboard with the Henry Ford Band, and they’ve released their album on Spotify, Amazon and iTunes! My acquaintance with the bassist then led to my being asked to play the piano for Carla and Seana’s art exhibition at Glasgow Skypark, which I really enjoyed and wrote about.

I’ve written four dance reviews with Bachtrack, and honed my skills at writing reviews that are less enthusiastically complimentary that many of my others. I do find writing negative reviews harder because I don’t like being mean, but I think it’s important to be able to critique constructively, so it’s a good skill to have practised. I don’t think I’m alone; I’m sure it’s a common challenge for many critics who value being fair and genuine.

I finally got around to actually sitting (and passing) the ABRSM Grade 8 piano exam, which makes applying for certain jobs considerably easier. Plus, it’s nice to have the official certificate – it’s very pretty!

I also went on a one-day course at the National Library, where I learned a bit about how the Library is organised and the features it offers. I saw all sorts of old manuscripts, including some medieval choir books, in which the monks had drawn funny faces to amuse the altar boys during long services. I also read some very cute correspondences between author Muriel Spark and her artist friend, Penelope Jardine. These two were such avid fans of a British TV soap drama that, whenever one of them had to miss an episode, the other would write a detailed description of the programme, including describing the advert breaks!

I’ve been back at university doing a Masters in Information and Library Studies (yesterday was the last day of teaching), and it’s been absolutely fantastic. I’ve made many new friends, learned all sorts of skills, and become a better person. Yesterday, as a fun, last-day exercise, we were asked to take what we’d learned from the course and, in groups, create a design for a library, assuming we had unlimited resources. My group decided to create the University of Mars Academic Library. It included anti-gravity elevators, a virtual reality holodeck, vacuum partitions to block sound waves and allow for quieter study areas, book-retrieval drones, lots of plant life for oxygenation and a scream-into-the-void balcony for finals week! It was a super fun activity, and I’m a little sad that the course is practically over (except a few final submissions and the summer dissertation).

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“In the University of Mars Library, no-one can hear you scream”

As part of my Masters, I also completed a placement in the Music Library at the Edinburgh Central Library, where I was reclassifying their collection to follow Library of Congress subject fields. It was really fun, and I got the opportunity to attend a staff meeting and design a display for International Women’s Day. The reclassification project is very time consuming, and it wasn’t possible for me to do the full collection within my eleven-week placement. But, excitingly, they have agreed to keep me on to continue the project, so I get to continue gaining Music Library experience, which is totally awesome!

It seems a little surreal how many amazing experiences a single year can offer. I am excited to discover what the next year holds!