International school library standards

[Alan Jacques]

Hi all

I’m about to start my first international school library job. I have a few questions about the unique difficulties of working in the international scene, particularly in SE Asia.
- What standards are people following to develop their facilities, collections and services?
- What associations have people found useful to join and what have they done for you?
- Where do international librarians buy their books from?
- How do you go about finding good foreign language books that have appropriate content?
- how have different people responded to the curriculum needs and learner profile of the IB? There seems to be very little official policy available.

That all I can think of for now but I’m sure there’s more. Please muck in and write anything important that comes to mind.

Cheers – Alan Jacques

[Elfin]

Hi, I am Elfin from Hong Kong, now in the UK.

About your enquiries, I am sorry to tell you that the standards are not really standards... it depends on the school administration and the local education guidelines. It's just the guidelines no exact standards, even no information literacy standards set.

In fact, i suggest you can join the ALESS, Association of Librarians from English Speaking Schools. They are a librarian society for internation schools, even some of the librarians from international schools in China also join that group. I am also their member too and they are really helpful and resourceful.

ALESS mostly follows Australia and USA ALA guidelines in the schools.

ALESS provides profesional training workshop and bi-monthely meeting for idea sharing. It's a very good chance to refresh the professionalism.

As for the booksellers, I can't tell as I dont know which S.E Asia countries you are going to work at. If you will work in HK or Singapore, you can use the service from Fields Associate or Scholastic. They can provide a wide variety of books from the US, UK, Australia... with consultation advice provideded, esp for the school education setting.

As for the resourcing materials for IB curriculum, I guess you had better contact ALESS colleagues who work for IB programme to give you some suggestions.

Hope it can answer some of your enquiries.

Best Regards,
Elfin