ETL 503 Weeding

I love weeding, both literally and metaphorically. There is nothing so satisfying as seeing clear space between beloved items. But weeding in the library is fraught with problems, the likes of which a garden bed never encounters. For instance people walking past your garden don't rifle through the wheelbarrow and grab a weed and lament its passing, or replant it in a 'just in case it's needed' garden bed. They don't abuse you for pulling weeds, in fact they can see the need for it. Gardeners don't normally sell the weeds or put them in a box to send overseas.
   Weeding the collection makes the shelves more attractive, rids the library of misleading/outdated information and keeps the collection relevant to patrons.
   Our local Primary school library hasn't been weeded in years and it shows. Books overflow from the shelves; many books are bent or pushed behind others, damaging them. Many books are dusty, shabby-looking tomes with fraying spines or torn pages. Lots in the picture story book section are so well worn that the front covers are wrinkled and soiled like soft leather.
   Many of the books date back to the 1960s or beyond. I recently found two published in the 1950s. That means they are approximately 60 years old. Relevant? I doubt it. Cutting edge, up-to-date info? Definately not.
   I have hinted many times that the shelves need weeding. I've even had a go myself and been chastised for it.It's not seen as a priority. 'Getting kids to read' is the priority. As the library stands now it is a cob-webbed old tomb of obsolete knowledge. I wonder how many more kids would explore the library shelves willingly if they were filled with clean, shiny, new books filled with contemporary information.
 

Grappling with Goodreads

I've just spent a week reading Teens, Libraries , and Social Networks: What librarians Need to Know edited by Agosto and Abbas (2011). In it were two seperate chapters on engaging students in Social networking around Young Adult Literature. Over and over the book-sharing social networks Goodreads, Shelfari and LibraryThing were mentioned. I decided to check out Goodreads as it was meant to have added extras for authors.
   Well, what a blast! I've never had so much nerdy fun. It was easy to login through Facebook and to start rating the books I'd read. (Now how often as librarians do we consciously get to go through hundreds of books and rate them, as if anyone cared?) Well this site asks you to do it so that it can generate an idea of what type of books to recommend for you. I really don't think the program has this down pat though. A lot of the books they recommended to me was stuff I'd never go near because it was too trashy for my tastes. This brings me back to the topic of tagging items. How can a computer program plug into the aesthetic whims of the reader and provide similar titles? Neal Wyatt touched on this issue in one of the readings we had to do for Module 4.
   This problem was amplified when I created my own shelf called 'Island books'. The program had obviously never considered sorting books in such a way and it threw all sorts of riciculous options at me when recommending new Island Book titles.
   I joined a few groups so that I could see what sort of threads generate the best discussions. This was quite easy to do, just by clicking on the groups tab and following the prompts. However other aspects of the site weren't so intuitive. For instance it stated that I could follow different authors. OK, so how was I to do this? It took me over an hour of fiddling around to discover that I needed to highlight the author's name, whereby I would be sent to the author's profile page and that's where I could become a fan, or indeed a friend.
   I then decided to sign up for the special tool for authors. It took me a while to find the tab for this in small print at the bottom of the home page. Once there I had to apply to be accepted to the program. I did this and received notification the next morning. I had to then fill out my author profile which is always an irritatingly self-centred activity. Soon I will be able to add widgets to my blog and other helpful links. It's all a matter of continuing to play around with the platform. And guess what? I love it. I think I've found the almost perfect social networking platform for bibliophiles/authors combined.


Burns, E. (2011). Fandom as a form of social networking. Teens, Libraries and Social Networking: What Librarians Need to Know. Libraries Unlimited.

Hilburn, J. (2011). Using social networking sites to connect teens with young adult literature. Teens, Libraries , and Social Networking: What Librarians Need to Know. Libraries Unlimited.

Wyatt, N (2009). Large-scale tagging projects outside libraries put users at the center and offer a model for readers' advisory. Library Journal, 10/15/2009

ETL503 Funding the library program

It is sad to see the demise of audio books at the school I work at but as there is no demand for them, they have become an obsolete technology. Where once funds were allocated for them they can be redirected into more DVDs or perhaps into purchasing e-books for the library.
   Every year the TL needs to evaluate the collection and see where there is high demand and high use, and where other items are neglected and dusty. Items need evaluating to see where the collection is over-represented or deficient. If this information can be shown to the funding body it gives clout to the TL's budgetary claims.
   I like the idea Robyn Young (2008) has of using charts and graphs to visually represent the budget and to represent such relationships as the price of an average book versus the amount spent on books per student for the year.  Also the number of resources per topic per student in each curriculum area is an important evaluation tool.
   Clearly, the TL needs to know his/her collection. They need to make funding decisions based on balancing the collection and providing a range of resources for the curriculum. The TL must keep a close eye on incoming items, checking them off against invoices and making sure she is aware of how much of the budget is available at any time of year. It's not easy and there will be mistakes, so keeping a good record system helps and some computing systems are available to manage this. I don't know how it all works at the local secondary school, but the TL assures me she has a generous budget and I often see her ticking things off a list when they come in. Hopefully one day I will be privy to the budgeting process.

Reference:  Young, R.R. (2008). Eight Easy Steps to Maintain and Increase the Library Media Centre Budget. Library Media Connection. Jan

ETL 503 Copyright and other musings

   School has finished for the year but study marches on. One thing I had the pleasure of reading last week was information from Smartcopying: The Official Guide to Copyright Issues for Australian Schools and TAFE. As an author I was already aware of the fact that anything I create is automatically covered by copyright in Australia. However I didn't know the nitty-gritty of viewing films/DVDs with regard to copyright. I was especially interested to see the emphasis on how using a film for the purpose of parody/satire is considered OK. I think there is room to expand on this as a teaching resource.

Source: Beth Montgomery

   One of the other students wrote in the forum that notices can be posted near the photocopiers at school to educate staff regarding copyright. This is a good idea, as is presenting a few PD sessions on copyright issues.
   The whole issue of artistic ownership interests me as I can see it from the creator's side. When you spend hundreds of hours creating a text you don't want people using it for free. You want them to pay for it. Are teachers aware that authors only recieve a small payment of the total price of each book sold? For instance, one of my books sells for $17.95. I receive about $1.60 from each sale. It's easy to see why most authors keep their day jobs. If you sit down and do the maths for how much work the average author puts into a book and the financial reward they receive at the end of it all, it would equate to something as ludicrous as 15 cents an hour. Don't they at least deserve that, over and above nothing, which is what they currently receive when you rip off their work by indiscriminate photocopying.
   Enough of my rant. As I look forward to 2013 I wonder if this will be the year when the school library purchases a few e-books.  Will the school library embrace social networking? Will it find new ways to improve the Internet connection at the school? Change may be slow but change is inevitable. Let's hope our school can be bold and embrace the digital age at last.

An Inkling of Linkedin

Setting up a Linkedin account was the easy part. I typed in my name and a password, then I went on to fill out a professional profile. Editing the profile is simple and the buttons are easy to find and use. OK, I get all that, but there's so much more to this platform that eludes me. For instance it says at the top of the home page that you can "grow" your professional network by using your email information.
   I hate the word grow in an economic context. Don't people understand that it doesn't collocate; only living things grow. (Stuff like bacteria and bananas and people and pimples) But I digress. The email set-up didn't work for me. It seems none of my email contacts are with Linkedin, which is strange because when I look for contacts manually using the search bar, there they are, a handful of my friends. Weird!
   The platform also seems to assume that because I have a science degree in horticulture I may be interested in a lecturing job in astronomy. I don't think so. Or that because I'm a qualified teacher a professorship in Music education is advertised for me to consider. Hey, I'm tone deaf, I have no rythym, I'm a science and ESL major, for heaven's sake!
   It also has this weird quirk of assuming that because I'm an author and teacher that I don't know anyone who is a Sales and Marketing Executive and I can't connect with a certain individual because I am outside of her network. This is even though I say hello to her most days and our kids are best friends. I have to get her email address from her daughter in order to send her a request. Whereas someone I know as a friend who happens to work in Higher education was easy to connect with. I just sent them a request and ticked the friend button. I'm obviously missing some vital instruction somewhere, because I keep going from page to page looking at other people's connections and tripping up when it comes to making my own. I guess I am just a dud to connect with.
   The other issue that really bugged me was the group function. I enthusiastically joined a couple of groups and very soon regretted it. Why? Because I was bombarded with emails everyday from two of these groups, who seemed to delight in clogging my inbox with trivial discussions. Isn't that the function of Facebook, not a profesional site like Linkedin? However I made friends with the help button and succeeded in following the steps to 'leaving a group'.
   Despite the teething problems I quite enjoy coming back to this platform every few days. I don't know what purpose it will serve in the long run, but I am willing to play around with it and experiment.

INF 506 Implementing Library 2.0

Implementing Library 2.0

The school I sometimes work at is a split campus. Unlike the junior campus, the senior school has a reliable Internet connection and all students have a laptop. The library at the senior campus is therefore better positioned to attempt library 2.0.

Meredith Farkas’ keynote speech on Building Academic Library 2.0 mentioned the dangers of ‘technolust’. This is when librarians take on a new technology whether patrons need it, want it or will ever use it. The library must examine which Web 2.0 platform connects best with the students: a blog, a fiki, a webpage or a facebook page?

Students currently get told off for accessing facebook in the library. The TL sees it as a distraction or worse still, a foray into cyberbullying. The library needs to develop a risk-tolerant culture where social networking and information sharing are encouraged. Obviously a policy needs to be developed to cater for this.

Adopting a library 2.0 ethos would be done in small steps. If the library collaborates with IT staff and other interested teachers useful partnerships are created. Pathfinders can be established on wikis, which staff can add to over time. Students could use Web 2.0 platforms to comment on issues, compare experiment results, share photographs for assignments and so on. Having some staff members on board builds support and slowly changes the school culture.

Another simple step would be the marketing approach where the TL can use the Web 2.0 platform to highlight collections. This doesn’t just refer to new print resources. Often students are unaware of digital resources in the library. For example our school has ECHO online, an online database of newspaper articles. Most students don’t know what it is, let alone how to use it.

Maintaining the Web 2.0 platform must be made a priority. If we make it a rule that two hours each week are devoted to Web 2.0 maintenance then surely benefits will begin to appear. If not, then we need to adapt to the next technology that is capturing our student’s time and attention.

 

 

ETL 503 Acquisitions

Our school library is a long way from the nearest quality bookshop. If we wanted to access a Collins Bookstore for instance, we'd need to travel for an hour and a quarter to get there. Selection and acquisiton for us will never be an exercise in browsing vendor's shelves. There is however a small independant bookshop that now operates 40 minutes drive away. It specialises in a range of cheap non-fiction titles and a smattering of local history. For the Social Science curriculum this kind of material is golden.
   What about satisfying the rest of the curriculum? There is always the ubiquitous Big W which stocks celebrity best sellers, pulp fiction, memoirs and fad cookbooks. As a fan of Young Adult Fiction I am always disappointed in this store. Vampire romances bore me and I have had enough of the Wimpy Kid and Rangers Apprentice. Where is all that brilliant top grade teen fiction?
   Well some of it magically appears each motnth when the standing orders come through from Lamont Books. Otherwise we have to search for it, peruse Magpies and Viewpoint and order more titles (usually from Lamont) or occassionally we are gifted with a suitable tome.
   As for electronic acquisitions, much of it is still new to us and the library staff are scratching their heads over what to do about ebooks. No doubt it will all become clearer once our TL quizes more TLs in the region about what they are doing. So far the policy appears to be 'wait and see', but the major obstacle to e-resources is making sure we have reliable internet access. Over the recent five week block that I worked at the school the internet was down for two weeks out of the five. Why buy resources that you can't access, is the TL's view. She's sticking with print for now.
   The TL has a policy of supporting the local independant bookstore as much as she can, picking up super cheap copies of popular titles at big W and acquiring the rest of the collection via Lamont. Of course I haven't touched on the Audio visual content of the library. I'm afraid I don't know what the system is to do with these items.