I also created a more involved PowerPoint presentation, in preparation for an ASLA professional development on Saturday at my school. It’s going to be a little strange showing slides of the shoestring makeover of a wall – on the actual wall that was made over!

‘Allo Vera – and her three new offspring. My photo of the day. A little something for peace and renewal.

This plant is the fourth aloe vera to inhabit this pot since the “shoestring renovations” of my school library, but certainly the most successful (the previous occupants have since recovered after a return to less neglectful circumstances). This week Vera showed off her triplets, much to the excitement of my observant, pint-size borrowers at the charging desk.

These metal skirt hangers might be the best $2.49 (per set of three) I’ve spent during the library’s “shoestring renovation”. Previously, posters and displays of class work would be hung in the library from a motley assortment of unmatched clothes pegs and rusting paperclips. I had intended to purchase special hangers before Book Week this year, but I suddenly realised that, with the eventual arrival of our brand new Building the Education Revolution (BER) school library, that I’d be asking our General Assistant to affix many special hooks to the library ceiling twice in a rather short amount of time.

Pondering how to efficiently hang up to eighteen large Book Week displays, I happened upon the sets of skirt hangers and had a brainwave. There were already cords stretched across the top of most of the library’s window blinds. The wall that had been stripped of pinboards and painted green, for the IWB, was no longer available as a display space. Maybe the skirt hangers would look neater, and hang more securely and lower, than attempting to use plastic and wooden clothes pegs?

I’m quite pleased with the result!

You may recall my emergency repair job on the library’s “Auckland” clock, part of our set of “newsroom” clocks in the revamped library? Well, the clock mechanism has failed again. I can’t get it to run longer than a few minutes. I very much doubt I can buy a matching replacement for a clock bought six months ago “on special” – and, rather than put up with a clock that was always giving a totally random time, I decided to go back to an idea I used a few years ago when I was teaching Stage 1 full time.

I’d realised that many students in that had no concept of a longcase grandfather clock, so I created one with corrugated artboard on the classroom wall, utilising the regular schoolroom clock that came with the room. We added a mouse to the clock when we were studying the nursery rhyme, “Hickory Dickory Dock”, and the students were shocked one day when the battery ran out right on the dot of one o’clock!

Anyway, “Auckland” has now been officially replaced by “Storyland” – and that clock’s time is permanently striking one, so to speak:

At least it’ll also be the right time every lunchtime!

I also took the opportunity to make a better version of my laminated “Time 4 Learning” signage, and changed the “Library Rules” chart to match the green colour of our core values signage. Previously, it had been white.

(Click photos to see larger versions)

There’s an annoying drip of condensation that often falls from each air conditioner in the school library, and something important always ends up getting placed right underneath said drips, and being ruined. I’m getting very tired of items becoming water damaged. Thus, this elegant $12 peace lily (Spathiphyllum), in a $13 square pot, now graces one of the drip sites. Problem solved?

I’m reliably informed – via both a teaching colleague and an Internet search – that “growing a peace lily beside a computer or TV will help absorb some of the radiation”.

Again, helping to disguise yet another drip site, and some very ugly conduit, here’s a $29 bamboo ladder, decorated with a $10 artificial vine, and a vase of $5 worth of purple tortured willow. A small amount of dried greenery is yet to be added.

You know what? This has been the hardest blog entry to write – ever!

I completed the paint job on the back wall on Thursday afternoon, hung around after school for the paint to be dry enough to remove the masking tape from all the edges, re-adjust the couch’s purple cover and push all the furniture back into position, and then had to head into the city. Although I was exhausted from Wednesday’s undercoating (mineral turps cleanup, ugh!) and the Thursday’s two coats of semi-gloss (water-based), I did have photos to share, but something was stopping me.

Here it is Sunday afternoon already, and I’m still dragging the chain. Since this is probably the end of the current wave of shoestring makeovers, and normal classes start in the library on Monday, maybe I’ve become too attached to the renovation process? But I must… share!

Why green? Well, I picked an obviously contrasting colour from the beautiful purple-framed Kim Gamble artwork I’d decided to decorate around. And our carpet is already the medium green school carpet. The Taubman’s Living Proof Silk green paint tint is actually called “Coral Fantasy”. The closest match I found to the existing purple frame, in case I need to paint anything purple in the future, is called “Tyrian Purple”.

In any case, the back wall started like this:

and ended up like this:

Some plants, both artificial and natural are still to come, but… I’m sooooooo ready for that IWB to arrive!

NEW YORK, LONDON, PENRITH, AUCKLAND.

I loved the “newsroom clocks” idea, from a secondary school renovation in Kevin Hennah’s presentation last year, and I wondered if it was appropriate for a primary school. Or just too confusing? On my visit to Spotlight last year, I bought MDF letters for the signage on the opposite wall. When price-checking my purchases at the nearby rival store, Lincraft, I noticed they had three large white clocks on special for just $9.95 each. I’d already figured I needed four. Then I noticed they had a few of the same model in black – but again, not four. Brainstorm! I realised: even students who can’t read should be able to tell that “Penrith” time is on the black clock! (Well, okay, if they can’t read they probably also can’t tell the time, but you get the idea!)

This was my Friday afternoon very-shoestring solution to a problem. When the school assistant helped me remove all the pinboards that were covering this wall, this last one was not able to be unscrewed, because the school’s burglar alarm system is bolted through the board. I did intend this section to have some MDF letters, perhaps in purple, to spell out our four core values, but I was also concerned I was going overboard with MDF lettering. Could I perhaps try a more economical piece of signage on the laminator, as a placeholder until it’s proven the area needs something more permanent?

On top of this, people kept asking me if Kevin Rudd was giving us a brand new library, and therefore why was I still redecorating the old one? So, anyway, here’s my quick solution: purple cardboard to cover the annoying old pinboard, and some laminated core values. The “TIME 4 learning” at the top is a small version of what I planned to have, as a vinyl-lettering-on-3D-perspex sign, under the four clocks. Until the IWB arrives, I really don’t want to tempt fate. Yet.

Note the white “Library rules” sign, which we made last year on our special library signage template. On Friday I also took down the matching “Closed for stocktake” signs. There are also red, green and purple “Premier’s Reading Challenge” laminated signs in appropriate places.

Oh, and the new coloured-pencil containers on the desks? I figured those old hessian- and/or Contact-covered cat-food tins from the 70s had outlived their usefulness. The new Accent Concepts containers (below right) are $3 each, in both purplish-blue and black, (and a pinkish shade for lead pencils). From Hot Dollar:

And the couch corner goes from this:

to this:

My special thanks to parent helper, Laura, who braved what is now known as Thickening Paint Thursday, – especially when we had to turn off the two nearest air conditioners because condensation was running down the outside of the ugly conduits we were so desperate to disguise the same green colour as the wall to which they were screwed!

I had a steady stream of observers, several of whom wanted to ask if I’d heard the news that “Kevin Rudd is giving out library upgrades” – and therefore was all my shoestring renovating for naught?

“Aha!” I said, several times. “That’s why I secured all my MDF letters on the walls with nails, not glue!” If the collection is moving to a new venue somedaysoon, then my renovations are coming too.

Another colleague asked tonight, on Facebook if spending in education should mean more teachers, not buildings?

Mmmmm. I suggested that if she could see the irreparable leaks in the cramped portable library I work in, and its threadbare green carpet, and rickety shelves (that tremble when I hurry to answer the telephone), maybe she’d vote “new building”, not more teachers?

We do some amazing work in this library, but a purpose-built venue, with modern fittings would be even more amazing. With or without my current renovation enhancements. This type of stuff – ie. earmarking tied government grants – always needs to be considered on a case-by-case basis. Not everyone needs the same things. In any case, if the Federal goverment suddenly gave my school extra teachers, we’d have nowhere to put them, or their classes!

So yes, I’d say “I’ll take the new library!”… If one is ever offered.

Similary, another colleage wondered why many Australian schools don’t have a web page for their library, even when the school itself has an Internet presence.

I created our school’s website in 2002 and 2003, or rather, I headed the committee to decide what needed to be on it, and did the HTML that made the site work. But this was before I was the school’s teacher-librarian. We ended up putting in some images of Book Week displays on a library page, but not much else. The school web site is quite extensive, but desperately in need of updating.

Since moving into the library in 2007, I’ve also created a school library wiki site, where we publish jointly constructed texts created during library sessions, but I simply haven’t had the time to brainstorm an actual library web page.

When I’ve talked to my teacher and student library users over the years, they’ve described access to OASIS Library as the most valued aspect – and, since the end of 2007, all NSW DET OASIS schools can access their library’s catalogue online, via the teacher portal or Kidspace, and can even do so at home.

So there’s still never been much of a burning need to create a dedicated “web page” for the school library. I guess we could add opening hours, etc. When our interactive whiteboard (IWB) arrives in a few weeks I can imagine other urgent uses for one. But this blog site usually has the links I use with students on any given day. Not to mention my shoestring makeover progress reports.

But yes, maybe I do need a “library web page”… But first, I have to stir this can of green paint. At least it’ll match our fraying carpet.

Since many students come to the library to browse, maybe strict Dewey order and “spines out” is not the most user-friendly strategy?

Slant boards seemed to be a great way to maximise the use of shelf ends, for covers-out displays, in the libraries shown in Kevin’s slideshow presentation. But I imagine these slant boards are very expensive, and our school library doesn’t have all that many exposed shelf ends anyway.

I’ve had a picture in my mind of something sturdy enough to withstand students (I’ve seen plenty of fragile, perspex, document holders), and yet it can’t require more painting for my wearing-out wrists. Yesterday, I found a fascinating selection of Japanese homewares:

* plastic (and very strongly magnetic) Magnet Pockets (in the colours of dayglo lime, dayglo orange and brown)

* two sizes of Sukitto white plastic baskets, which can be suspended by plastic hooks.

Each of these pieces: only $3 from Hot Dollar.

The magnetic boxes fitted perfectly on the Premier’s Reading Challenge shelf ends, and the boxes easily take the mass of a paperback book:

After taking this picture, I found one more lime box left in the shop and was able to improve my colour coordination a bit. (Actually, this one was wrongly price-ticketed and I was charged only $2.50.) The orange boxes are now being used in another section of the library, coicidentally this was the colour I’d be using in “Non Fiction”, remember? I’m contemplating spray-painting the brown boxes PRC purple, but the brown does match the shelving frames.

This long white basket hangs from the otherwise-exposed (and completely wasted) back of a huge wire book rack. The basket can supposedly hold ten kilograms of books:

These smaller white baskets fill an otherwise-dead corner of “Junior Fiction”, right near the front door!

So, until there’s money to fritter away on purpose-built wooden slant boards, these nifty Japanese baskets will at least get us thinking more like a shop, and hopefully more browser-conscious than reshelver-conscious.

The other simple “front-on” success was choosing to stock this spinner rack with vibrant “animal books” – I find it’s almost impossible to keep it restocked! The students gravitate towards the rack, and it’s often picked clean! I have several students who love to come in at lunchtime and restock it.

Likewise, this “Hot” spinner rack of “Aussie bites”, “Aussie nibbles” and “Aussie chomps”:

Those tiny books that some young borrowers covet like long-lost treasures! They slip inside other books, fall under shelving, cause whole rows of neatly shelved books to go wonky. How to store them efficiently?

In one of my previous schools, we had a spinner rack that accommodated all small junior fiction books. I hated that spinner, but those books were always hot picks! At least the spinner made them easy to identify, easier to shelve, and put them all on front-on display, in a place where the students were motivated to go.

At the course last term, Kevin Hennah challenged us to investigate ways to make more of our library collections face “front cover out”, rather than “spine out”. One day, I was wandering through a local Asian “two dollar” shop and found a vibrant pink plastic set of tiered baskets. At $16, it was certainly more than other items in the store, but the pink was the same colour the previous teacher-librarian had assigned to shelf signage in the “Easy Fiction” section. Now, I’d been contemplating changing “Easy” to “Junior”, although I wasn’t sure how to tell my clerical assistant that we’d eventually be changing a lot of call number stickers, but the students are very familiar with the pink designation for this section.

It was a tight fit between two shelving units, but no one’s likely to move the tiers, and what a great way to maximise some dead space, put all the tiny books in one convenient location – front on – and add a splash of day-glo colour!

Coincidentally, another colour the shop had in stock was green, the colour of our “Fiction” section. The next day, I raced back to get the last green set left in stock:

This time, the shelving units I’d planned to wedge the baskets between were too close together and unable to me moved apart. So, I dragged a different set out from a wall, wedged the backets beside it, and slide the shelves snugly against the baskets. Charged with success, I went back for an orange set to put in the “Non Fiction” section:

To the left is a papier-mache Chinese dragon from my classroom teacher days, and he’s become a bit of a mascot in the library in recent years. Kevin Henneah would probably say that his time as come; I had to bring him down from his usual high corner, to make room for the wall-preparation renovations anticipating the arrival of our new interactive whiteboard (IWB). We had a stack of unused shelving packed tightly against a wall and, until the dragon gets a better location, he seems quite at home next to the baskets of small books of myths and legends in “Non Fiction”.

Finally, note the “Hot” signs above each basket, which came from a different Asian “two dollar” shop, this time in the Sydney CBD. The packet of ten cardboard showcards was just $4. Also available was a set with “It’s New!” Thanks Hot Dollar – both of your stores! My shoestring is stretched but still intact!