We aim to help pupils:

• Search the Internet effectively
• Find inspiration for projects
• Lose themselves in a good novel
• Discover new books by a favourite author
• Keep up-to-date with current affairs
• Catch up on homework
• Choose a video
• Develop their thinking by integrating their use of resources
• Write that essay
• Discover new angles
• Find a quiet corner
• Dip into a magazine

To support these aims the new Hallam Library was opened in September 2005, providing a modern study space. With 20,000 books, over 60 periodicals, daily newspapers, videos, DVDs and nine networked computers for pupil use, the Hallam Library provides the resources and environment to enable pupils to read widely, study quietly and develop information literacy skills so that they become confident, discerning users of the wide range of information resources available today.

The Library is open between 8.00am and 5.30pm every weekday during term time and is managed by two staff, ably helped by pupil library assistants from different year groups throughout the school.

Of the 20,000 resources on the library catalogue, approximately 5,500 are fiction and 14,500 are non-fiction.

There are also about 17,000 websites aimed at secondary school pupil level on the Library catalogue.

Periodicals

The 60 or so periodicals stocked include:

• Authentik
• BBC History
• BBC Music
• BBC Wildlife
• Biological Sciences Review
• British Railway Modelling
• Catalyst
• Chemistry Review
• Climber
• Crafts
• Dialogue
• eMagazine
• English Review
• Geography Review
• Hindsight
• Hockey Sport
• Investors Chronicle
• Modern History Review
• New Design
• New Scientist
• Okapi
• The Philosophers’ Magazine
• Phosphore
• Physics Review
• Private Eye
• Psychology Review
• Rugby World
• Scientific American
• The Cricketer
• The Economist
• The Week
• Time
• Understanding Global Issues
• Vogue
• White Dwarf
• Wide World

DVDs

The video/DVD collection ranges from Walking with Dinosaurs to Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life, with new titles being added every month.

Various activities run throughout the year to promote the Library aims – author and poet visits, regular meetings of DiscussIt, shadowing the Carnegie prize for children’s literature, themed weeks involving extra activities and a grand quiz at the end of the week, the international Kids Lit Quiz.

The Library stock is continually updated to ensure that its range is both wide and of good quality, from books to web-based resources. Stock selection reflects a balance between three main sources - pupils’ developing interests, curricular resources and items recommended in reviews in the school library literature, periodicals and media. Librarians have ‘antennae’ permanently raised to try to pick up individual pupil’s needs, both expressed and potential.