Library

After a water pipe burst in the early hours of an arctic freeze in February 2019, the Hall Library was reimagined as a 21st-century teaching and learning space through a complete renovation/transformation. Designed for flexible use by our JK-12 community, the new Library opened in September 2019 featuring a dedicated lower school area with a theatre-in-the-round; a middle and upper school learning suite; two huddle rooms for small-group work; a collaborative zone with modular seating; and a tiered Agora connecting the Library with the Conant Science Center.

The Library also houses the Live+Serve Laboratory, a manifestation of the school’s motto “Live and Serve.” This is a place for active, hands-on, student-centered learning and creating, with a focus on active service and global citizenship. 

The Hall Library is professionally staffed by a full-time lower school librarian and a full-time middle and upper school librarian. Our librarians work as a team to curate library resources and deliver high-quality information literacy instruction that prepares students for success both in school and in life. Partnerships with students, faculty and staff help cultivate a school-wide reading culture that is the cornerstone of this important work.

The Hall Library features a 10,000-item print collection and a robust digital commons of nearly 20 electronic resources, including subscription databases, an e-book and e-audiobook platform, and curated lists of high-quality websites.  In addition, our Library’s Google site, the 24/7 online portal to research and discovery, is available to NSCD students, faculty and staff via password-protected link.

In the spirit of scholar Rudine Sims Bishop, the Library staff members strive to create culturally authentic, socially just collections that constantly evolve as mirrors, windows and sliding glass doors for North Shore Country Day’s JK-12 community.

Our full-time professional librarians value authenticity, agency, agility and assessment in a relationship-based approach to our Library programs and services.

We strive for authenticity in:
Ourselves as people and professionals; 
Our values as educators and librarians; 
Our motivation as teachers and learners; and 
Our expression as thought leaders and creative questioners.

We honor agency when working:
1:1 with students;
In the classroom as instructors;
As partners with faculty and staff; and
In the JK-12 community as members.

We model agility as:
Mentors to individual students;
Guides in the classroom;
Innovators for curriculum; and
Compasses for new directions.

We conduct ongoing assessment through:
Self-reflective on pedagogy;
Thoughtfulness with student work; 
Mindfulness of barriers to learning; and
Honesty with ourselves and others.

In 1981, Headmaster Dick Hall launched a long-range plan and an ambitious fundraising drive to raise $3.5 million. Included in the plan was building a new central library and resource center to serve all students, JK-12. Ground was broken on May 22, 1986. Shortly thereafter, anonymous donors made a $1 million gift in honor of Dick Hall and earmarked the gift for a faculty-salary endowment, and required a community match that would also finance the completion of the library. 

The library opened on October 17, 1987, and was named for Richard Hall, the headmaster to had led the school into the modern era. It became a hub through which the entire community engaged, and continues to do so with the most recent renovation in 2019.