In 1931, India’s famous library scientist S.R. Ranganathan put forward the Five Laws of Library Science (also known as Ranganathan’s Five Laws). The fifth law demonstrates “The library is a growing organism.” Our library is perfectly interpreting this law, and it is all because of our students.

Every day during noon breaks, it is our library’s most lively moment. Some students will come into the library carrying a pile of books, greating with the teacher, put all those books into the return box, then just walk straight to the second floor to read shelf by shelf! Some students will walk straight towards the printer to get one A4 sheet of paper, then will talk in a low voice with their friends about what kind of handcrafts they are going to make or what kind of drawing they are going to draw today. And some students will walk straight towards me and said, “Ms. Cathy, I want to be a volunteer today,” and so do the students who follow right after!

I still remember clearly that when I firstly took over this library, I needed to again and again encourage our students to be volunteers and teach them how to do things step by step, because at the very beginning they were strange about the word “volunteer” and the work volunteers do. But now, they always take the initiative to be volunteers and are familiar with the volunteers’ work.

At the beginning the students helped us to process the new books , like unwrapping the packages, stamping the library stamp, taping the books’ barcode, protecting coats, and fixing the book covers. Then the students helped us with checking the AR level of our books, taping the AR labels and protecting coats. They also helped us with upgrading the book management, filtering the re-used barcodes then tapering the books with new barcodes and protecting coats. Thanks to the positive support of our students’ volunteers, our library can build up the collection database in our library system from around 2,000 copies to over 13,000 copies within a year!

Our library is not only growing inside our library system, but also our library’s layouts. Our students’ volunteers will also help with the books display. They will help us to manage the bookshelves, our Non-fiction, Level Readers, and Picture books session grew dramatically with the significant help of our students’ volunteers. And the stairs proctors project in our library is another masterpiece of our students’ volunteers. They completed this project in 4 days’ noon breaks which impressed and amazed us all with their high efficiency. One of the visitors gave high comment to this project, exclaiming that it was indeed the students' work.

In our library, we have regular library lessons and activities, and have seasonal events to promote reading. For instance, we had ‘A Big Mooncake for Little Star’ storytelling in September, we role played this story.

In October we had ‘In the Middle of Fall’ storytelling, we walked into the beautiful campus to seek Fall, and complete the leaves collage artwork.

In November we had ‘Big Pumpkin’ storytelling, we shared the story and completed the pumpkin handcrafts to celebrate the “Sugar holiday”!

And in December, we had ‘The Tiger who Came to Tea’ storytelling, the students brought their cuddly toys to share the story and the special tea together.

There was a special session just for our volunteers to present to them our great appreciation for their support and contribution to the growing of our library.

We would not have come this far without our students’ continuous input of love into our library. Thank you, we will look forward to keep growing together next semester!