Librarians Meet at Victorious Kidss Educares on 16/11/2019
“Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one.”― Neil Gaiman
The ‘Liferarian’ group started 3 years ago with the aim to collaborate, showcase, learn and support each other has been growing leaps and bounds. The group members actively collaborate on various platforms on social media and through the ‘Liferarian meet’ that takes place once every year.
The 4th Liferarian meet was organized at Victorious Kidss Educares on 16 Nov. 2019. The meet witnessed the participation of about 27 library professionals from 17 IB schools from Mumbai, Pune, Kolhapur and Aurangabad.
The meet was well planned and organized with sessions on ‘The role of IB librarian’, ATL and Curriculum, Tech-integration in the library, Academic Integrity, Library reports and library space management. PYP Head Ms. Ira Ghosh addressed the meet with words of motivation and also felicitated the mentors of the Liferarian group.
The session on ‘Role of librarian’ had all the participants engaged in pitching up their best practices and challenges in the areas mainly focusing on
ATL, Projects, Curriculum and Collection Development followed by a discussion on strategies to overcome these challenges. Librarians also exchanged ideas on how they could collaborate with ICT and Art faculties to make their teaching and learning more exciting.
The ATL and curriculum session augmented with fun activities that set the tune of developing ATL skills through a variety of activities. The Bus Stop activity helped to bring a common understanding of strands in each ATL cluster across all IB programmes. The facilitators created a drive for all librarians to share a bank of activities for developing ATL skills.
The tech-integration session stressed the need for library professionals to keep pace with time and to adapt and integrate technology in their information literacy lessons. The facilitator shared and discussed many social media tools and web 2.0 tools to integrate technology into developing ATL skills. The session left participants to introspect how library professional could revive their library to the Media Resource Centre.
Academic integrity session focused on the highlights in the new IB publication –Academic integrity. The session sparked discussion on various instances of academic misconduct and ways to curb them. Librarians
exchanged ideas on how academic integrity could be instilled in students as young as the EYP/PYP grades and the need for the parent community to understand and enforce it back home. The session led to clearer insights on expectations of IB in terms of academic integrity and roles of teaching and learning community.
The facilitator of the library space management session shared wonderful ideas and resources to transform library space into an exciting learning environment. 
The highlight of the meet was the enthusiastic participation and collaboration by all -both new and experienced library professionals. The participants were happy they invested their time into fruitful and enriched learning which they could apply in their upcoming professional endeavours.
Overall the Liferarian meet was a day full of insightful and informative sessions leaving all the participants yearning for more.
– Kamini Yeshwante, Victorious Kidss Educare
