The Brother Liguori Resources Centre.

One of the busiest places at St Joseph’s College, is the Br Liguori Resources Centre. A hive of activity throughout the day, and well into the evening. Each term the Resources Centre staff work on a number of wonderful activities with the boys. Here are just a few of the latest initiatives.

Write a Book in a Day Competition
On Friday 24 July, 46 boys from Years 7 to 11 once again participated in the Kids Cancer Project Write a Book in a Day Competition. Write a Book in a Day is a creative and challenging team competition in which teams of up to ten students have just twelve hours to write, illustrate and publish a children’s book of 4000 words. To add to the challenge, a unique set of parameters are provided to each team, which must be included in the story.

The teams worked collaboratively on the day to create five children’s books titled A Golden Tail, Bubbly against the world, Phantom Brett, Career Heist and Instrumental Decisions, which will all be donated to The Children’s Hospital and will be judged in the National Write A Book In A Day Competition. We wish the boys luck with their stories and look forward to reading them. Copies of each of the books are currently on display in the Resources Centre.

Body in the library
… a body sprawled on the floor of the library … a blood-soaked dagger, red herrings, dishonest witnesses, forensic evidence …

The Library was once again the scene of a heinous crime and our expert Year 8 detectives were recruited to help the Resources Centre staff solve this years’ murder mystery. Year 8 students were asked to draw on knowledge learned about forensics in Science and their crime-fiction unit in English to help discover who stabbed and murdered Mr. Fitzgerald. 

Students were required to analyze a range of evidence including fingerprint and DNA analysis, CCTV footage, video and audio recordings and witness statements. Students thoroughly enjoyed rotating around various evidence stations set up in the Resources Centre and most teams successfully deducted the murderer, who has been arrested and is now incarcerated.

Thanks to Ms. MacDougal for her creativity and the many hours spent planning yet another successful Body in the Library and to the Resources Centre team for assistance in planning and running this event.

Dewey Decimal Scavenger Hunt – Maths in action
Did you know Melville Dewey developed the Dewey Decimal classification system in 1873 while working as a student in his College library? Up until this time, there was no standard system for organising books in libraries. Dewey developed a system of numerical notation to indicate location of books which was simple, logical and easy to use for both librarians and users alike.

Within a few years, most libraries around the world adopted Dewey’s system of classification. During Term 2, we invited the Year 7 Math’s classes to the Resources Centre to introduce them to Dewey and the Dewey Decimal Classification System. The boys learned to sing the Dewey Decimal Rap song then worked through a series of real-world decimal problems in small groups that took them on a tour of discovery through the different sections of the collection.