New Beginnings: A Practical Guide to Taking Charge of a Secondary School Library Synopsis
Taking charge of a secondary school library should be a pleasure, but can be a challenge to those who are unprepared. Here, experienced practitioner, trainer and consultant, Laura Taylor, who has worked in school libraries here and abroad, takes us through the process of taking ownership of your new library and post. She holds your hand from the first day and first week.
Full of excellent advice and common sense, Laura guides you skillfully past the pitfalls, tells both fresh beginners and new appointees the questions to ask, the strategies to adopt and the planning to do to bring success both to you and to your school library.
Laura Taylor has worked in schools and school library services throughout her 40-year career after a brief introduction to working with children and young people in public libraries as a children’s librarian. Having graduated from the University of Wales College of Librarianship at Aberystwyth in 1977, she completed a Distance Learning Masters Degree there in the Management of Libraries and Information Services in 1999. She worked in schools’ library services for ten years where she visited numerous schools giving advice and support to library staff. As librarian she set up and developed several libraries in inner London comprehensive schools before a two-year stint overseas as an international school librarian.
Latterly she has established her own company www.taylormadelibraries.co.uk where she works as a freelance library advisor offering advice and support to those developing libraries in both primary and secondary schools. She was delighted to be asked to put together this Guideline as an opportunity to pass on some of the wealth of experience she has gained over the years to those new to the school library world.
