EBS Library is at the beating heart of our school and provides a purposeful and welcoming space for all members of our school community. It is an attractive and engaging hub for inquiry, research, and recreational reading and offers a wide range of services to support the curricular needs and literary interests of students and staff.
The library provides a rich and engaging collection of thousands of resources in print and online formats, carefully selected by the librarian in association with teaching colleagues. These include; books, magazines, Manga, graphic novels and a digital library of e-books and audiobooks. You can discover more about the library collection by logging into our library system here.
I was raised and schooled in Whetstone and High Barnet but have lived and worked outside of the borough for many years, so starting at EBS feels a bit of a homecoming for me!
Before EBS, for almost two decades I was Library Manager at The William Morris Sixth Form, Hammersmith, a brilliant diverse community of approximately 850 students and staff. I have also worked, supplying case and corporate information, to demanding lawyers and paraprofessionals at Barlow Lyde and Gilbert, with LLB and GDL students at the College for Law London, as Assistant Librarian at Graveney School, Tooting, and in various other roles in the public sector, including the RAF Museum, Hendon. My educational path has included a master’s Information Services Management from London Metropolitan University, a PGCert in Digital Education from the University of Edinburgh and a BA in Theology from the University of Leeds.
Professionally, I’m most interested in developing students’ information literacy and research skills (locating, interpreting, synthesising and reflecting on information use). I relish both one-to-one reference interviews, creating engaging online resources or developing and delivering class instruction. The ways that educationalists can develop young people’s reading and wider literacy skills also fascinate me. As a dyslexic, who came relatively late to fluent reading, I was lucky to receive excellent remedial education at Barts London but am also so grateful to teachers and support staff who with patience, enthusiasm and great teaching helped me access the joy of the written word. Those educationalists have inspired my work with young people, and I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to work with students at EBS to achieve similar results.
Outside of work, I enjoy reading (surprise, surprise!), especially theology, history and tales of the supernatural. I’m not embarrassed to write that I also collect Britain’s toy soldiers representing European armies and uniforms just before WWI.
Within 20 minutes of stepping through the doors of EBS for my interview, I realised that the schools’ claims about being student-centred and committed to developing both students’ academic skills and characters were sincere and I am very much looking forward to working with colleagues to contribute to our student’s growth and success.