- Your School Type
- Solutions
- Resources
- Blog
- Events
- More
- Contact Us
- Book a Demo
- Get a Quote
The New Look search screen has modern aspects, including faceted search using filters, and Orbit allows more hands-on options for students, e.g. personalising their logged in backgrounds, reviews and star ratings.
Jackie Child, Junior School Teacher Librarian
| At a Glance | |
|---|---|
| Chosen Solution | |
| Core Benefits to Users |
|
| Supported Users |
|
| Number of Books |
|
| Library Staff |
|
St Aidan’s is a Prep to Year 12 Anglican day school for girls with a coeducational Kindergarten, located in the Brisbane suburb of Corinda.
With a student population of around 800, St Aidan’s strives to nurture each student’s personal aspirations within a vibrant, learner-centred community that provides the benefits of a small school environment.
The school continues the educational philosophy of its founding Sisters, the Society of the Sacred Advent, by focusing on developing confident, creative and connected young women.
St Aidan’s has two libraries and employs a total of five library staff, including Teacher Librarians Megan Daley and Jackie Child, who work together as energetic teaching partners in the Junior library together with Library Technician, Jasmine Morris. Two staff are present in both the Senior and Junior libraries at all times. Library services at St Aidan’s support the school’s teaching and learning program and contribute to building community in a variety of ways.
Both libraries provide a range of resources, including over 35,000 books, more than 30 periodical subscriptions, and various digital resources, which meet the needs of the school curriculum as well as providing literature and leisure reading opportunities.
Specialist library staff design programs aimed at embracing and promoting a school-wide reading culture, while creating a welcoming and dynamic environment where students explore using technologies to create and are empowered to become independent life-long learners.
Students receive library lessons from Kindergarten, and all classes from Prep to Year 7 have one timetabled lesson a week with a teacher librarian.
St Aidan’s implemented Oliver v5 for both libraries in 2012 and students are taught to use the system from an early age.
Jackie and Megan said students of all ages found Oliver v5 easy to navigate and a favourite feature was its predictive text with autocomplete functionality.
“Students in Junior and Senior libraries are sound in self-navigating the library and rarely require assistance.”
To further improve library services, St Aidan’s have tailored secondary and primary user privileges and user roles in Oliver v5 to suit the different needs of students on each campus.
Jackie and Megan said students enjoyed using the modern Oliver v5 system interface, and younger students particularly liked the personalisation options available in the junior interface, Orbit.
“The New Look search screen has modern aspects, including faceted search using filters, and Orbit allows more hands-on options for students, e.g. personalising their logged in backgrounds, reviews and star ratings.”
St Aidan’s library staff also enjoy the ease of use and time-saving benefits of Oliver v5 for the day-to-day management of the libraries’ extensive collections.
“Importing from SCIS is easy and cataloguing is simple. In addition, weeding is effective and allows for easy collection management.”
Jackie and Megan said they and their colleagues appreciated the range of support services available from Softlink.
“PD is available through Softlink and they also offer manuals, tutorials, basic training days and quick help desk response to any issues.”
As the hub of St Aidan’s Junior school, the Junior library is a place where girls are encouraged to become regular borrowers and develop a life-long passion for reading. Even the youngest students enjoy coding activities in the library and take part annually in the Junior School Hour of Code.
The Senior library offers extended opening hours before and after school, and parents are always welcome in both libraries.
To read about some of the innovative activities developed and delivered by St Aidan’s teacher librarians, visit the Softlink blog for a series of guest posts by Jackie Child.
Jackie and Megan are both passionate bloggers – you can follow their work by clicking on the following links:
Megan: Children's Books Daily and Jackie: TinkeringChild
Oliver Library Software
LearnPath
