The school janitor has metamorphosed into the senior service support officer and the attendance officer has assumed the label of education welfare officer. It was inevitable that a new title would be found for the librarian, to remove any association with boring books, so the resource centre co-ordinator was born.
Librarians feature prominently in Sweeney anecdotes, as sister-in-law Peggy regales us with tales of her adventures as manager of a city library. Her job has changed out of all recognition, with much talk of security and staff safety. The relentless march of information and communications technology has put extra pressure on public library staff.
Peggy possesses just a little of the fastidiousness and meticulous precision which have characterised librarians from Hollywood to Haddington. The calm and tranquillity of her domain are disrupted by school holidays, when adolescents on the loose have an annoying tendency to take books from the shelves.
Holy Rood is twice blessed in its librarian. Eileen Duvall provides a first class resource to pupils and teachers and plays an active role in the corporate life of the school. When we need flowers or pot plants for a religious celebration or an awards ceremony, we do not go to the florist’s shop but to the library. Eileen will arrange the display which will magically appear in situ on the appointed day.
The library has a superb outlook to Arthur’s Seat and Holyrood Park and visitors are invariably ushered there to view the scenic panorama. The library has also occasionally served as a vantage point for surveillance of the unsuspecting troops below.
Eileen and her son Robin both started at Holy Rood in the same week in 1988, Eileen as librarian and Robin as a first year pupil. They shared the trepidation of a new chapter in their lives.
The library now has 20 computers with Internet access and these are heavily used for project work. The system for issuing books is also electronic, with barcodes replacing dog-eared tickets.
Eileen attributes much of the popularity of the library to Harry Potter and friends. “It is now cool to read,” she says, “whereas a fashion had developed to regard books as boring.” Book fairs and visits by authors have also enhanced the library’s popularity, with pupils signing up enthusiastically for visits to the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Much of Eileen’s work has been in partnership with the English department, of which she is an ex-officio member, and visits to the library are an inherent part of the English curriculum.
Pupils from geography, history, science, home economics and modern languages are also now beating a path to Eileen’s door with increasing regularity. She is slightly disconcerted by the pupils’ view that she must be an expert on technology if there are wall-to-wall computers in the library and is quick to point out that many of the pupils’ skills are far in advance of her own.
On two days a week, the careers library is open at lunch time and the careers adviser works closely with the librarian, helping pupils to negotiate the increasingly complex myriad opportunities on offer.
Eileen collates and edits the school’s newsletter to parents, which appears six times a session. As those who have shouldered this burden are well aware, material does not readily pour in. Copy for each edition has to be cajoled, persuaded and wrenched from busy staff. The headteacher is a major offender in this regard. With patience and perseverance, on Eileen’s part, the newsletter finally appears and is greatly appreciated by parents and staff.
The library offers our pupils access to a vast seam of knowledge through the printed word and information technology.
In our formative years, when my mother would harangue my older brother John about his succession of girlfriends, he would provoke her wrath by replying nonchalantly: “Why buy a book when you can join a library?”
Patrick Sweeney is headteacher of Holy Rood High School, Edinburgh
