Social-media 'evangelist' named school librarian of the year

9th October 2017 at 16:29
school librarian of the year, school library association, glenthorne high school, sla, literacy, books, reading
The award goes to a librarian who has brought Lego and open-mic events to his school

Lego competitions and open-mic events are among the library-based initiatives that have led Lucas Maxwell to be named school librarian of the year.

Mr Maxwell, who is librarian at Glenthorne High School, in the South London borough of Sutton, was presented with his award and new title this afternoon by Chris Riddell, children’s author and illustrator and former children’s laureate.  

The School Library Association (SLA), which runs the annual award, praised the sense of fun in Mr Maxwell’s libraries. He has introduced timed Lego competitions, as well as interactive library lessons and open-mic events.

“Lucas adds a playfulness and light touch to the library that the students overwhelmingly respond to,” the SLA said. “The contribution that the library makes to the school is felt well outside of its walls.”

'Evangelical'

The SLA also highlighted the fact that Mr Maxwell is “evangelical about the role of technology in libraries”. He regularly organises virtual author and careers sessions through Twitter and Skype, and his library has a strong social-media following.

And his colleagues described Mr Maxwell as “a wave of energy” and “a brilliant storyteller”.

Other librarians who were given special mention at the award this year included Mairéad Duggan, of Mount Carmel Secondary School in Dublin, and Shelagh Toonen, at Elgin Academy in Moray.

The awards were presented this afternoon, at a ceremony held in Worcester.

Want to keep up with the latest education news and opinion? Follow Tes on Twitter and Instagram, and like Tes on Facebook.

Comments

Related Content

The guide by your side – ensuring you are always up to date with the latest in education.

Get Tes magazine online and delivered to your door. Stay up to date with the latest research, teacher innovation and insight, plus classroom tips and techniques with a Tes magazine subscription.
With a Tes magazine subscription you get exclusive access to our CPD library. Including our New Teachers’ special for NQTS, Ed Tech, How to Get a Job, Trip Planner, Ed Biz Special and all Tes back issues.

Subscribe now
https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/social-media-evangelist-named-school-librarian-year
www.tes.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2017-43
88392
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:3I44OY7K6LKN4YOOFGZKW3JX3WHSVPDM
<urn:uuid:aca0211f-f305-4917-a73c-87554467dbce>
2017-10-20T13:04:04Z
151.101.32.228
text/html
sha1:7OYPYIBM2FPFQAAHASVR2VB3LKEVWOMI
<urn:uuid:ee2f685e-2eaf-4f2a-8fd2-c6b3ef5c1ac9>
https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/social-media-evangelist-named-school-librarian-year
response
<urn:uuid:9a8b682a-8e26-4c43-9968-87cdd55dddb5>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-232-145-162.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-43
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for October 2017
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf