By Bernice Williams, Ngaio School librarian
“Do you have any books about uniforms? I really like uniforms.”
“Do you have any books with a cat in them? I’m looking for a book with a cat named Ronald.”
“Look! There’s a wet patch on the carpet where Tom was sitting.”
“Can you help me find the book I was looking at last week? It had a dragon in it.”
“My tooth just came out!”
As a primary school librarian, you need to be prepared for everything, especially the unexpected. And you have to be very patient and flexible. It is difficult to describe a typical day, as no two days are the same, although there are always the staple ingredients of children and books.
Here’s how I spent my six hours of employment on a typical Wednesday before the lockdown.
8:45 a.m. Check pigeonhole and whiteboard for events/activities that may affect the library, e.g. a planned fire drill. The pigeonhole contains a parcel—a book order has arrived.
8:50 a.m. Start computers, check electronic message board and emails. An author visit has been cancelled. Notify the teachers and feel grateful I had not begun the RAMS (Risk Assessment and Management) forms and parent/caregiver permissions for the trip.
9 a.m. Check library software for notification of new pupils or pupils who have left, print new class barcode lists and add these to our master file. Two pupils have left the school with books still on loan: to follow up.
9:10 a.m. Send out the updated Library Monitor job application form—when these come back, I will set up an information and training session for prospective Library Monitors, then compile a timetable for lunchtime duties.
9:20 a.m. Weekly software back-up.
9:30 a.m. Process a batch of new books via our software system and SCIS cataloguing. Scanning a book’s barcode and having all its cataloguing data arrive almost instantly on screen is magic for those of us who used to add books manually to our collections.
10:45 a.m. The children return to their classroom and I go for a cup of coffee. The role of school librarian can be solitary, so I make an effort to get to the staffroom for morning tea break, as I don’t have the opportunity to do so at lunchtime.
12:30 p.m. A fifteen-minute hiatus to shelve as many of the returned books as I can, have a quick bite of lunch, and prepare for the influx.
12:45 p.m. The library fills up with readers, makers, illustrators, paper-plane creators, card traders, club collaborators, and book exchangers. The library at lunchtime is a space for individuals to be themselves, no classroom rules or tasks to complete, no access restrictions; it is everybody’s place. I see a child curled up in an armchair, tucked into a corner, and another lying full length under a table, oblivious to the bustle and noise. This is a safe place for children who find the playground at lunchtime daunting, and the place where children feel comfortable asking questions, revealing concerns, talking about home-based events that are causing worry (a new sibling, a parents’ separation, grandparents coming to stay). No matter the weather there are always customers—children—in the library at lunchtime.
1:30 p.m. After a tidy-up, I return to the batch of new books I began processing in the morning. I print barcodes and spine labels and place them on the thirty newly processed books, then put them aside to be covered, taped and stamped. I also make replacement labels for several books: a damaged barcode, a picture book incorrectly labelled, a non-fiction book that I feel will circulate better if it were classified as fiction.
2:50 p.m. Doing some final shelving, I come across a book that a pupil had been searching for earlier in the day: Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man 7: For Whom the Ball Rolls. Like all of the Dog Man series, this one is hot property. I issue it and deliver it to the classroom for the happy recipient.
Bernice Williams is a library assistant at Ngaio School in Wellington. In 2018, she was the recipient of an Absolutely Positive Wellingtonian Award for her work on community organisations, such as the National Council of Women and the Wellington Playcentre Association, as well as her support of representative-level basketball in New Zealand.