Librarian Talk – Leisa Westerhof – Norwood Morialta High School

What character in a book has influenced you the most?

Anne of Green Gables!

Tell us about your library! What makes it unique?

Our library is unique because we have two libraries across two campuses that have evolved over the last 5 years. The middle campus is an open space that hosts many events and groups, collaborative learning is often undertaken in our space. The library is packed full at lunch times with students playing card games, chess, as well as reading on their laptops, studying or even playing games. Our senior campus library is a place of study. Students are constantly using the space, which has sweeping views of the city of Adelaide and glimpses of the hills. Students love that we have self-loan stations and reserve items using our library catalogue. Teachers often use the spaces for their classes to find that break from the four walls of the classroom and both libraries are used for staff PD and meetings.

What is a challenge that you faced in your library recently?

A challenge for us, as well as the entire world, has been how we transform to online learning when our students were not on site. There were issues with how to manage return of physical items and how to provide more online resources for our staff and students.

How did Accessit Library help you solve this challenge?

With a click of a button we could stop sending our automated overdue emails as these were causing distress to our students.

How has your attitude changed towards the challenge you solved with Accessit Library, now that you’ve worked through it?

I wouldn’t say the attitude has changed; however, Accessit Library has always provided us with simple solutions to our problems. We didn’t need support this time, but I know that if we did Accessit Library is always only one call away to support us.

What do you like the most about Accessit Library?

Ease of use, excellent functionality and ongoing support. Accessit Library provides us with the service we need, the product we need and consequently ensures that we can focus on providing the best support to our staff and students.

How does Accessit Library support the academic outcomes of your school?

Accessit Library provides us with a stable platform to manage our extensive resources. The importance of resource management cannot be underestimated. We use Accessit to easily determine our tracing of usage of resources, plan and understand our stock at any time. The ease of issues, returns, follow up, are in the back end, however the user platform is something that we love for our students. Something that we need to invest more time in – but it is there when we have the time to use it!