Year 8 pupil librarians recently experienced the fascinating and extremely educational trip to The Wigan Museum of Life, which proved to be a very informative and exciting day indeed.
Their tour guide, whose own passion for libraries evidently shone through, shared her knowledge about the history of Wigan and the library itself. Our librarians were keen to hear her stories from long ago, even dating back to the 17th Century, with some amazing artefacts on display to help the stories come to life. From bookbinding, cataloguing, processing, the archives, microfilm storage and even an added touch of genealogy, pupils were whisked away to another era. From the Stone Age through to present day, pupils soon became hooked into a wealth of history, through talks, artefacts and videos.
The tour also included a visit to The Galleries, where pupils had the chance to see the new art installations created by young budding local artists from the Wigan School of Art, with some extremely intriguing exhibitions representing; Isaac Newton, Arthur C. Clarke, Alan Turning’s computer language of binary code and Wigan coal mines. The work they saw was truly inspirational, it was pleasing to see The Galleries making good use of the space to display the outstanding artwork.
The highlight of the trip had to be the visit to the old reference library and local studies area. The library is still in daily use, and well-used. Our pupils soon found themselves lost in books, deep in history and captivated in a time warp of knowledge. At the end of the trip all pupils were given a collection of the Past Forward magazine, Wigan Museum’s own publication, with the school library also receiving copies of the magazine.
As our librarians draw nearer to the end of their training, this was a very special trip. Librarians will receive book prizes and certificates for completing their training during a reading celebration at the end of term, when the pupil librarian of the year will be announced.
Our librarians have acquired many new skills from their time spent in the school library this year, and without a doubt, these skills will help them as they move up through school and beyond. A personal thank you from Mrs Dewhurst goes out to the wonderful team of pupil librarians; for all their dedicated lunchtime contributions`, innovative ideas, sharing their passion of books with their peers, and for being involved in the plethora of activities and events the library has hosted this year.
More details about this trip and all of our other library events can be found here:
https://www.facebook.com/QegsLibraryBlackburn/
Our Pupil Librarians for 2018/19 are:
Muhammad Ali
Christopher Chen
Paige Feast
Zac Jones
Mohammed Patel
Freya Scott