Information Scotland

The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland

April 2007 Volume 5(2)

Young people

Young people in the picture

Attracting young users is a tricky task for any library, but a digital photography project at Hamilton Town House proved a remarkable success. Liz Patrick describes how they went about the initiative and their plans for future projects.

Last year our Literacy Development Team was given the task of coming up with a project to “get young people into libraries”. We had struggled with this challenge many times as most libraries have. We came up with the idea of combining art and technology to run digital photography courses in our IT training suite.

We put in a bid for funding which unfortunately was not successful. Undeterred, we spoke to colleagues in Integrated Children’s Services who felt it was something they could fund. The project fitted well with the Scottish Executive’s Curriculum for Excellence – creating successful learners and helping pupils to use technology and think creatively in a new situation. We got started by buying 24 digital cameras, CDs, memory cards and paper.

After much discussion on how best to get the young people to take part, we decided to approach a local High School to see if some of their pupils would like to come along. The Art Department at Holy Cross High School were delighted for pupils studying Higher Art to produce a piece of photography for their portfolio – but they wanted to know when we could drop the cameras off at the school. We explained that we would prefer to encourage the young people into our library. They agreed to take the pupils out of school for two one-hour sessions.

Next, we needed to find a partner who had the creative expertise we didn’t. We approached our Arts Development Section, who very helpfully agreed to find us a tutor at their expense.
The tutor-photographer thought it was all a great idea but immediately identified a major problem. We hadn’t allocated enough time for the young people to familiarise themselves with the cameras, take the photographs and produce a final version. The school therefore agreed to the pupils attending for three sessions of one-and-a-half hours.

We offered a digital camera as a prize for the best photograph and book tokens for the runner-up. Once again we had to find someone with the necessary expertise to judge the winning photo. We contacted local photographer Colin Prior, best known for his beautiful Scottish landscapes. Colin agreed straight away to judge the competition for us and present the prize, and he also donated two of his books as prizes for the winner and runner-up

We were to use our Active IT Training suite of 12 PCs for the course. At the first session the tutor concentrated on the basic principles of photography. To get the pupils familiar with the cameras they took some interesting photographs of each other from different angles. Users of the IT centre next door wondered why people were lying on the floor and climbing on tables in the training suite. They were encouraged to think creatively and shown ‘tricks of the trade’. The pupils then went away to take photographs in their own time. At the second session they used the software on our PCs to perfect the pictures. The final session was a frantic rush to get all the pupils’ finished photos printed on one colour printer. The expertise of our IT section was invaluable.

Our prize-giving ceremony in the library included invited guests, such as the Chair of Education committee, who agreed to make a short speech. Colin announced the best two photographs and explained why he had chosen them.

This has been a learning experience for us. The pupils all found the course useful and enjoyable and also something that was helpful for their studies. Now that they know what facilities we have, the young people said they would come back and use the library again. From the evaluation forms they filled in, a recurring answer to when asked what they would like to see in the library was a coffee bar.

The project has helped raise the profile of the library service and provided us with useful links to partners for future collaboration. We plan to do the project again with other schools and colleagues in Arts Development have ideas for future courses, for example, by projecting the pupils work onto the library building.

We would next like to work with primary school pupils on heritage projects, using the cameras to help children learn more about the town in which they live, while providing a resource for the library service for future generations of users.

Liz Patrick is Area Librarian (Development), South Lanarkshire Libraries

Information Scotland Vol. 5(2) April 2007

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Last updated: 19-Jun-2007