The All-New Pudong Secondary Library

SAS Eagle- September 16, 2011

By Tim Boyer, Secondary Librarian, Pudong Campus with assistance from Liam Singleton (Eagle Managing Editor) and Steven Lane (Eagle Executive Editor)

Change is in the air at the secondary library at SAS Pudong campus.  For one thing, this will be my first year as a librarian, after many years of teaching biology and science.  I am very pleased to finally join the fraternity of librarians, after 16 years of being a librarian-by marriage.  My wife Barbara manages the elementary school library at SAS Pudong.

I am luckly to have two capable full-time librarian assistants, Lana Fajardo and Genda Tsou, in addition to the services of Ben Regan, who is also acting as a library assistant in between his other responsibilities, which include teaching in the middle school and coordinating CISSA activities.

There have been many other changes at the library from the start of this year.  These include the addition of many new books and DVDs to support research, pleasure reading, and teaching activities.  The secondary library now serves more than 1000 students from grades 6-12 as well as the middle and high school faculty and staff.  We are home to nearly 20.000 books and resources alongside our modern appliances and facilities.

The library has undertaken a number of structural changes.  A new teaching space has been created in the nonfiction study area, to add to the library’s two quiet reading rooms, two lecture rooms, three sound booth rooms, and a computer lab/green room (shared with high school and middle school tech departments).

Working in concert with the three other SAS libraries and their staff, the SAS Pudong Secondary Library hopes to create a vibrant, but support educational environment for its patrons.

Contrary to popular belief, the library is a happening place!  Music from the newly installed sound system makes the place hum in the mornings.  We play host to many classes and student tours.  Nearly all middle school students have either come to the library for orientation or have visited the library for book check-out time.  In addition, the library has hosted nearly all the grade 9 and 10 classes.  IB groups 4 project uses the library as one of its home bases.  A number of teachers routinely bring their students to the library for research or for actual class time.  After school the library provides a quiet working space for students and clubs.  This year the library will also serve as one of the home bases for SAS’s Model United Nations.

SAS library materials can also be accessed through the SAS Moodle.  By entering the Moodle students and faculty can log into “Destiny”.  The library portal, which is now housed on the Moodle, acts as the main access for library catalog searches as well as the main entry point for the SAS online databases.  Students and parents are encouraged to log in.

For more information about this process, please take the time to visit the SAS Pudong Secondary Library blog.  Its link can be found at the high school and middle school main blog pages or through the library portal on the Moodle.  The SAS Pudong Secondary Library is waiting to help you.  Please visit often; as was written above the door at the famous library of Thebes, you will be entering the “medicine chest of the soul.