Sacred Heart College

About Sacred Heart

Sacred Heart College is a co-educational Kindergarten to Year 10 school in the suburb of New Town, Hobart. Founded in 1888, in 2018 the College celebrated its 130 year anniversary as an important part of the education community in Tasmania.

Sacred Heart is proud of its community environment and focus on exceptional pastoral care. Its 940 students from diverse cultural backgrounds are encouraged to participate in a range of sporting, cultural, leadership and spiritual development opportunities.

Named after Sister Francis McCarthy, one of the founding Sisters of Saint Joseph in Tasmania renowned for her commitment to culture and education, the senior library has an extensive collection of fiction and non-fiction books and resources chosen to complement the curriculum and foster a love of reading for pleasure.

Teacher-Librarian, Dawn Price said the Sister Francis McCarthy Library is a fairly new building (completed in 2009) and offers an open engaging space for students with good line of sight throughout. Games are offered at breaks and the space is particularly popular in the colder winter months

In addition to housing books and faculty collections, the library offers online resources, a few desktop computers, a laptop loan service, and a workspace for students and teachers. A lack of a real reading culture in the secondary school is something on which the whole team is working, in conjunction with the school Literacy Program, grades 4 to 8.

Dawn has worked in the library since 2010, while also teaching classes. In her capacity as Teacher Librarian, she also supports the running of the Primary Campus Library.

Two library technicians in the senior library, together with one library technician and a library assistant in the junior library complete the Sacred Heart College library team. Dawn said each team member works according to their strengths in specific areas, such as display and management of Clickview resources.

The library plays a central role within the school.

“We hold and lend the text book collections and help staff find the resources they need.”

“I take book collections to staff when doing assignments in class and deliver sessions to demonstrate the databases etc. to classes and sometimes to whole school assemblies. We promote TREF materials any way we can,” Dawn said.

Use of Oliver v5 and Softlink Community

The school has used Softlink products to manage their school library for over 10 years and are now using the new Oliver v5 search interface which provides recommended reading suggestions based on the student’s borrowing history, new, popular, highly rated items and more.

The new search interface also makes it easier for students to uncover additional details about a title, find related resources and drag and drop to add multiple items to their basket directly from the search results page.

Dawn also said they have started using self-checkout for their prolific borrowers.

“We gave them some brief training and a little badge to signify their qualification to use self checkout, they like the independence it gives them.”

Another feature of Oliver v5 that they like is the search other sources or Federated Search capability which allows users to search multiple data sources, including the local catalogue, in real time. While Dawn acknowledges that the students only use this if staff are there to encourage them, they are working to build awareness of this functionality.

“Although the students and staff have access to Oliver via School Box from anywhere, we find that they still use the OPAC machines in the library, this awareness is something we are working on.” she said.

The Sacred Heart College library team are also enjoying the free webinars delivered by Softlink’s support team.

“We have done many of the webinars and find them very helpful.”

The blogs, competitions, and the Softlink Newsletter are also considered valuable resources by library staff.

Further Reading

• Jane Burrows, Library Manager at Truganina p-9 College, discusses how Oliver v5 can engage students with their library
• Lou Webb, Library Manager at Rutherglen High School, shares how Oliver has saved her time and engaged students
• Read this blog to find out more about our recent developments that have been designed to engage students with the library