By Richard Beaudry
Well, I will have to admit that this has been quite a year. We just moved into a new school and I was working in a library learning commons in BC that was spectacular in appearance. There are glass walls on three sides from floor to ceiling. On the first floor, there is the collection based around comfortable seating and study desks with plug-ins for computers and phones, meeting rooms for staff and students as well as a media room with a green screen for video editing and a computer dedicated for sound recordings. One of the main attractions on the first floor in the library learning commons is a baby grand piano that students can use as long as they can actually play the instrument. We have many piano virtuosos in the school so it is an added bonus in the library learning Commons. There is also a second floor that will be our Makerspace area that will encompass three virtual reality computers, two computers attached to 3D printers and one computer dedicated to coding.
To a degree, this is the finished outlook of what the library learning commons was supposed to look like. As a new school, we have had to cope with the process of moving in and setting up. In the library learning commons this including moving 188 boxes of books and other items from our old school to the new one. As a new school, we decided as a staff to move away from desktop computers to portable computers for the whole school. The district purchased enough computers to complement the ones we had and we can now offer over 350 mobile computers to students. This proved to be a fortuitous decision in light of the early end of classroom instruction. We did not receive all of the required shelving that we ordered so we had only enough shelving space to put out the non-fiction collection and the fiction collection from A to O authors. The rest of the collection remained in boxes as we awaited the backordered shelving. We also had to wait for furniture required for the makerspace area and the media room on the first floor. Even if the library learning commons was not completely set up, it is very popular with the students and we often have over 100 students working or studying. On most days, we have students in the library learning commons from 8:00 am until 4:30 pm to 5:00 pm.
Just before spring break in March, we completed cataloguing all the mobile computers and finally made them all available to staff and students. During spring break, we received all of the required shelves, tables and chairs needed for the library learning commons and makerspace area. Our expectation was that the library learning commons would be fully operational by the end of April. However, the proverbial wrench was thrown into our plans with the pandemic spreading across Canada and schools in BC being shut down. When my library tech and I returned when schools reopened after three weeks, we did set up the rest of the shelves and books but students will have to wait until June 1st when schools reopen before they can start borrowing books again. Based on the BC Ministry of Education, that will depend on whether their parents opt to send them back or not.
Resources, Access and Copyright
Since most people in BC were told before spring break to stay home, it became obvious across Canada that for the foreseeable future students would be transitioning to an online delivery system. Many school districts in BC opted for the Microsoft Teams online format for creating groups to meet and classes for teaching.
For teacher librarians, the immediate task was providing additional resources for teachers who would now be teaching online. Based on the amount of resources that were posted during spring break, it was evident that teacher librarians or school librarians that I follow on social media in Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and England had the same objective. Some of the teacher-librarians I shared resources with and who shared resources with me were Carol Koechlin (@infosmarts), Rebeca Rubio (@rebecarubi0), Angela Monk (@SD36Librarian), Andrea Langelaar (@AndreaLangelaar), Leigh Hussief (@libraryliterati), Anita Brooks Kirkland (@AnitaBK), Joyce Valenza (@joycevalenza), and Elizabeth Hutchinson FCLIP BEM (@Elizabethutch). I posted or reposted over 70 online resources during the two weeks of spring break. It was a good start and the number of resources increased as teachers transitioned to online teaching in BC in the second week of April.
Museums and art galleries, who already had an online presence, were quick to promote their resources, many offering free virtual tours. Book publishers also promoted their online resources and offered free access to their catalogues to educators. At first, the timelines for free access varied between companies and teacher-librarians had to keep a scorecard for who gave access until the end of April, May or the end of the school year. By the end of April, many book publishers gave free access to their online resources until the end of the June. One important issue that arose for teacher-librarians in Canada was finding an answer to copyright issues associated with open access. Many of the book publishers giving copyright access to their catalogues where located in the US but that did not equal the same access in Canada. The first librarian to post specific information on access to copyrighted material was Dr. Kay Oddone (@kayOddone), a lecturer with a library and education background in Brisbane, Australia. She sought to clarify the copyright rules for teacher-librarians in Australia who were also seeking information about using some of the resources offered by book publishers. Not long after, the definitive guide for Canadian teachers and teacher librarians was published by the Magazine Quill and Quire (@quillandquire). They published a running list of online events and readings by children’s literature authors and illustrators (https://quillandquire.com/omni/virtual-event-listings-for-the-canadian-kidlit-community-during-the-covid-19-crisis/). Access Copyright published ‘Read Aloud Canadian Book Guidelines of use’ which was very timely for teacher-librarians as we were able to distribute the information to our teachers as online classes started. Access Copyright and the Association of Canadian Publishers (ACP) created the ‘Read Aloud Canadian Books Program’ (https://www.accesscopyright.ca/read-aloud) which regrouped the a current list of participating Canadian publishers and authors and the in-print titles available for use.
The REMSS Library
Once the decision to continue teaching online was made by the province, the first order of business at my school was figuring out access online for students. Being in the Lower Mainland, Internet access is readily available everywhere but not every student has a computer at home so we needed to get organized to distribute computers to families. We had enough portable computers to accommodate all parental requests for home computers, but it required three steps. 1. The district IT department had to come to our school and change the access on all the computers so that students could access the WIFI at home. Up to this point, all the portable computers in the school were hard wired to our school network. 2. Because of social distancing, we had to use the school’s online signup for parent teacher meetings so parents and students could come to the library at 15 minutes intervals to pick up a computer. 3. Each parent had to sign off on the computer going home and as the teacher-librarian, I signed out each computer to the student using our Destiny catalogue.
It took 10 days to get all the computers home and it can be considered a success that only one computer out of the 140 that went home has had any technical issue and had to be replaced.
In view of the success with the computers, we are repeating the process with the graduating class picking up their grad gowns the week of May 18th.
Access to Databases
The week before spring break, working on behalf of the staff, I had contacted JSTOR and we had subscribed to their databases. In view of how their circumstances changed after the break, it proved beneficial to students to have access to these scientific databases as well as the other district databases available to all the students.
I contacted the Fraser Valley Regional Library System and was pleased to hear that they created an online subscription for a library card so our students could access their databases for their projects.
Access to Books
Since Langley students could not borrow books from their library learning commons, the district arranged with Overdrive (the school version is Sora) to have access to 400 free eBooks for K-12 until the end of June. Their software permits simultaneous use of titles so as many students who want to read the same book can. Students will have access to the books for free until the end of June.
Teachers who want to borrow materials from the library still can. They email the LLC and I sign out the items and drop them off in the school mailbox of the teacher.
Technology
As part of our work as teacher librarians in the district, I work with one of our VPs to troubleshoot on issues with network access. We continue to troubleshoot for staff and students except that it is done through email and phone calls rather that in school. Most of the issues deal with access to the school network from home.
Because our new school opted for portable computers rather than desktops, we managed to handle the needs of our own students, but other schools in Langley did not have sufficient numbers of portable computers to lend to their students so we were able to accommodate all their requests as well.
For the last few weeks, a small group of students have been coming into the school and working with some teachers and SEAs. Students who request it can borrow a portable computer for the day and return it before they go home. Once the computers are returned, I disinfect the computers before putting them back.
We did put our 3D printers to good work. In a joint project with the graphic design teacher, we lent our 3D computers to a student who joined other schools in the district in creating ear-savers for COVID-19 masks and sending to local hospitals.
Conferences
Before schools closed and moved to an online delivery, I had been invited to co-present at the Surrey Teachers Association (STA) Pro-D Conference on May 1st with Leigh Hussief, the teacher-librarian at Clayton Heights in Surrey SD 36. Our presentation ‘K-12 Up for the Challenge’ was a review of the types of censorship challenges in library learning commons and how teacher librarians can identify and deal with the different them. When school buildings were closed, we weren’t sure that the Pro-D conference would go forward but it did and was a success. Renamed the ‘2020 Virtual STA Convention’, we were given access to a Zoom account and prepared our presentation. On the day of the convention we signed on in Zoom and started our presentation. Since all the teacher librarian attendees muted their microphones as well as shutting off their cameras, it definitely felt like there were only two of us at the presentation. We ended our session and offered time for the attendees to ask questions. We spent the better part of 40 minutes answering questions. We were pleased that our presentation had generated such interest from teacher librarians looking for answers to challenges.
The rest of the virtual conference was a huge success with over 2000 teachers viewing a virtual keynote speaker. It proved that virtual conferences could be run effectively and be well attended. I was not surprised a few weeks later when I was contacted by the BCTLA (BC teacher Librarians Association) and told that all BCTF Provincial Specialist Associations (PSA) would be transitioned to a virtual delivery and that the provincial teacher-librarians’ conference that we had expected to host at RE Mountain next October was now cancelled. I had also signed up for some presentations and I will still get a chance to participate but the objective of showcasing the newest library learning commons in BC won’t happen.
A Final Word
If you ask any teacher these days, they will tell you that they miss the students. All the teacher-librarians I talk to or meet online at our weekly meetings struggle with being in an empty library learning commons. But they are all dedicated to offering as many services as they can to their staff and students and I am pleased to see that dedication online every day.
There are some issues that are coming up that have yet to be resolved and the one that is on all of our minds is how do we get our library and textbooks back at the end of the year. When the online classes started, I did receive a lot of emails from parents or students concerned about returning an item late and to relieve their stress we renewed all the library books until June. The return of the books and textbooks in June is not a priority at the moment and may be alleviated with BC schools opening in June but it is hard to predict how many students will return.
In the meantime, we are preparing to open up our library learning commons to staff and students on June 1st and we are working on rules for keeping everything clean and keeping the students separated by appropriate social distance norms in the age of COVID-19. Whatever happens, we will adjust to meet the needs of staff and students.
Richard Beaudry is an Information Specialist and Librarian. He has worked as a teacher-librarian in K-12 schools and taught classes in the diploma and master’s programs in Teacher-Librarianship at the University of British Columbia. Richard is an ALA Certified Librarian and a Fellow of the Library Association of Ireland. Richard is particularly known for his activities to promote human rights and freedom of information, particularly as they relate to the censorship of materials in school libraries. Richard was the recipient of the 2016 Canadian Library Association Award for the Advancement of Intellectual Freedom in Canada. Richard chairs the Canadian Federation of Library Associations / Fédération canadienne des associations de bibliothèques (CFLA-FCAB) Intellectual Freedom Committee, representing Canadian School Libraries.