Typical Mass Borrowing Outreach

This particular outreach was at Poi Ching School in July. The teacher had scheduled a two-days Mass Borrowing session for all levels (P1-P6).

So I would first notify the vendor staff two weeks in advance so they would have time to select and pack the books into boxes (all labelled accordingly; J/JS/JP - Fic/NFic). At the same time, I would need to arrange for transport as well to bring the boxes to-and-fro.

We would discuss beforehand the logistics required. As Poi Ching had done mass borrowing with us before, there wasn't a need to recce the area. For first-timers, usually the librarian would go down personally to choose the best spot (wide area for tables, lan point etc).

This Mass Borrowing session started at 8.30am so we (myself and two other Library Officers) were there at 8am for set-up. We opened the boxes and displayed some books in order for the students to browse.



While some did the unpacking, the other would set-up the Outreach laptops, along with the scanner and dongles to connect to the Internet. We also brought along a portable printer to print the loan receipt.



Let the browsing/borrowing begin!




The students were a delightful bunch! We had a double loan promotion going on and they were so excited, grabbing books left and right. Avid readers :)

Some who had borrowed their books sat down immediately to read. While others who could not borrow (had fines, didn't bring card etc) also picked up a book and read on the spot.

See the row of readers? Awesome picture, isn't it?


We'll have to remind the students repeatedly NOT to return the books at the school library. But it's inevitable to receive such cases. All in all, it was a good and fruitful outreach.

We had almost 80% of the books borrowed (brought 2000).

Tome Keeper ♥