In the beginning of 2016, PNC’s library was underused by students and staff for many reasons: its design needed a refreshment, many books were old or outdated and there was no information system to manage it.
The project has been carried out by PNC’s Education team & Students’ Association in three main phases between June and September 2016. The first step was to brainstorm and manage a new design for the room to make it more welcoming and cozy.
The second step was about managing the book collections. At first, it was composed of approximately 1,300 books divided into twelve categories such as WEP programming, Science or English books.
Books have been sorted according to relevance. Those that were deemed unsuitable to keep will be donated elsewhere. For the remaining books, to ease access and categorization, books were divided in two groups between library books and storage books.
The new library collection is divided into 24 categories following the collection development policy (e.g. Social sciences, Comic book, Computer science – System and network administration…). This policy targets collections that enable PNC students to:
- Improve their English
- Develop their personal and critical thinking skills
- Entertain themselves
- Strengthen their knowledge and skills in line with PNC academic and educational curricula
The library now has around 1,450 books: 600 in the library itself and the rest need to be added or given away.
PNC’s library renewal was implemented thanks to the generous help of Mrs. Aude De Rotalier and Mr. Ferdinand De Bakker, both based in Singapore.
Now, only six months after the inauguration, positive impact of the library is pretty clear:
“I have seen the library’s impact growing reflected in the number of students that visit it regularly. Whereas when I arrived I rarely saw students using the library, now it is a regular sight to see students coming and going to spend a few minutes to read and occasionally to borrow a book”
Austin MooreThe management of the library is a continuous process, that’s why the Education team & students continue to work on the library upgrade & management in PNC with the Library Club.
3 questions to Lem Soprom, Coordinator of the Library Club (PNC2017 WEP class B):
- Why did you decide to join the Library Club? “My main purpose was to help people understand the organization of the library and I believe that PNC students need to read, to improve their skills, be more critical and open their minds”
- What did you learn by joining that Club? “I learned how to organize and borrow books, I also learned how to configure new softwares for Ebooks and how to build group discussions. Finally, as a leader, I learned how to do reports and how to train discussions.”
- What are next Library Club’s projects? “We will try to adapt library regarding skills we develop in PNC classes and propose new activities to involve more persons.”