Consultation
Collection Development
Collection development is traditionally a long and complex process, starting with a user needs analysis, that leads to the authoring of a collection policy, that policy in turn guides selection and acquisition, but more importantly it lays clear selection criteria for quality, relevance, format, cost, value, and cultural appropriateness, and it should also lay down guidelines for weeding.
Many organisations lack the trained staff and budget that are needed to properly manage collection development, but not investing in these key decisions ultimately results in financial loss in other areas, such as staff efficiency. In these cases, it is strategic to outsource collection development to a third party.
We offer collection development services on a sliding scale according to the level of detail and budget that you require. We provide a complete service, starting with bespoke user needs analysis, and ending with door-to-door delivery, and we offer economical options for smaller organisations who require the same careful service on a realistic budget.
We also support government compliance through our collection development service, and we partner with global suppliers that understand your unique local needs and work with us to ensure that the materials you purchase are vetted before they land at your door.
Government compliance & censorship
We believe that all countries have the right to promote their own cultural values and that it’s fair to expect organisations will support those values. In the UAE, libraries are inspected for compliance 2-3 times per year, and those that don’t make an effort to prepare do receive hefty fines.
We offer a rigorous screening service that ensures your resources are appropriate to local culture and values, meeting govt compliance guidelines while also ensuring the access your students need for a rounded education.
Here are a few of the issues you should be considering:
- Compliance checking your libraries
- Editing essential curriculum resources, such as textbooks
- Don’t forget your displays, hallways and classrooms
- Policy writing for compliance and collection development
- Compliance trends change month to month, so you must stay up-to-date
We also have partnerships with specialist book suppliers that understand your unique local needs and work with us to ensure that the materials you purchase are vetted before they land at your door.
School librarian training
Many schools cannot afford a fully trained librarian, but there is no reason your library shouldn’t continue to offer a complete range of services, affecting student achievement and adding value to your school.
We offer a comprehensive range of affordable library trainings, organised into small units so that you do not waste time and money on long trainings that often contain unnecessary content.
Specialist school workshops
If you do not have an experienced librarian, then your students are at a disadvantage. Who is taking leadership to ensure instruction in: research skills, ChatGPT & AI, plagiarism, and of course citation & bibliography. Here’s a sample of our student workshop titles:
How to use AI so it makes you smarter, not the other way around
- The plagiarism trap and how to avoid it
- How to be a Super Googler for schoolwork
- To Wikipedia or not to Wikipedia, that is the question
- Citation and bibliography basics
We offer interactive workshops, for small groups and/or large assemblies, that bring information skills into your school and link them to curriculum, so that they have meaning for students and lead to measurable improvements in work produced. Contact us for a free consultation about your students’ needs.
Staff workshops
Worthwhile investments in PD should develop a cohesive set of meta-skills that reach across departments, skills such as digital literacy, AI ethics, and academic writing. Meta-skills improve consistency by creating a shared language, which in turn opens cognitive space and time for your staff to do more of the 3Cs – critical, creative, and collaborative.
Forming ‘communities of practice’ are an efficient way to improve knowledge retention in your organisation, they are self sustaining and raise morale because everyone supports each other’s learning. For example…
Since the advent of ChatGPT & other AI, the organisational risks have multiplied for copyright breach, accidental plagiarism, and information halucination. These risks have a high cost, and their rate of incidence is increasing. Integrating Information Literacy into your systems, policies, and curricula is a simple low cost way to reduce the rate of incidence and is also a useful life skill. Once a self sustaining culture of academic integrity is established, then accidents are more readily intercepted by anyone in your team, and converted into a learning opportunity.
Another example for schools…upskilling every teacher in the Science of Reading shares the responsibility for literacy across all staff, and empowers any teacher to intervene when a student is struggling. Your school now has a shared vocabulary for this core issue, and more diverse input for solutions through your community of practice. Your students will realise that reading is a meta-skill that increases acheivement across the curriculum, and this will increase their motivation to read. Research clearly indicates that increased strategic reading is the fastest (and cheapest) way to improve both reading and writing scores across all subjects.
