Library report 2021(Mrs Earnshaw)

.

In 2021 we said goodbye to Mr Eldridge as Mrs Earnshaw returned from Auckland. He had a wonderful year at the CGHS library with the library team, especially Bookweek with his favourite genre of sci-fi.

Through the year the library has been busy with staff and students coming to study, socialise, read and research. We hosted kahoots, University presentations, celebrations, a Polling Station and of course, Bookweek.

The library staff, Mrs Earnshaw and Miss Rattray, are very ably assisted by the huge team of students who volunteer their time regularly to help out. This year there were 89 on the team, helping with shelving, sorting, covering, displays, issuing laptops and making the library the appealing and dynamic place that is appreciated by all.

The student team, led by Jazmin Garvey, Rebekah Gray and the Committee also put together a dazzling entry for Lipsync and came up with some wonderful ideas for our Bookweek.

Lockdown arrived just as we were putting up the 150 hand-made spiders and bats for the Bookweek ‘Horror’ theme. The slightly delayed (and abbreviated) version of Bookweek saw the library become a ‘horrible’ place and we were amazed the number of ‘horrible’ books the students found to fill the displays.

Another favourite display was the Time Magazine “Best YA of all time”. Some of these books were written and read generations before our current students but are still being borrowed e.g: Catcher in the Rye and Lord of the Flies.

Our top five titles for 2021 were: One of us is lying, The Selection, Red Queen, The fault in our stars and One of us is next. The popularity of murder-mystery has soared this year and I’d love to know why! Our most-borrowed NZ fiction was The quiet people by Paul Cleeve, from Senior Fiction. That’s a sure sign that the staff have found a moment to read too.

We look forward to a more settled 2022 with much of the same. The formula here changes with time but essentially stays the same, and it must be favourable to the students as our library is never empty.