Creating a Brand New Library - Part Two

Chaos reigns in the library. Actually the picture makes it look worse than it really is. As far as processing the books goes it is organised chaos with piles of books in various stages of preparedness. We have a wonderful group of volunteers who are helping to process books. Some of them will have children at Amesbury School but several helpers have no direct link with the school and are generously donating their time.

The main problem we have at present is our internet link. There is all sorts of sophisticated technology being set up in the school, including several large, wall mounted, touch screen computers. You can see one on the library wall in the photo. All of the empty touchscreen boxes and some other boxes of resources ended up in the library today to add to the general chaos.

We need the internet to catalogue the library books but it is soooo slow and several times we've lost the connection altogether. This is a problem for two reasons. First, we are supposed to be a high tech school and we can't even get a decent internet connection which is kind of embarassing. Second, it is causing a big delay in processing the library books. However the tech people are still working on our IT infrastructure so hopefully it will all be sorted before the school opens next Wednesday.

Fortunately I am familiar with AccessIt, the library management software, because my brain is spinning with all the software I'm learning to use this week including My Portfolio, Knowledge Net, QR codes and RFID. However it's all very interesting and the biggest challenge so far was finding the On button on the desktop touchscreen, all in one computer!