Final Reflection

This course has been very interesting for me.  I have had to work extremely hard this semester, and I feel that I have definitely learning a lot.  As I read through my blog posts, I was reminded of the same sense of being an outsider that I have at the beginning of every course I take toward this diploma.  I am not currently working in a school library, and so I do not always feel that my opinions and beliefs are as relevant as those who are working in the library and so are actually practicing what we are learning.  Also, some of the material and discussions can feel very abstract to me at times.  When I read through my blog posts, though, I was really pleased with what I wrote.  I may not be working with this material at the moment, but I am drawing from the knowledge I have gained from my other courses as well as rich conversations that I have had with Teacher-Librarians in my district.

I feel that I have participated in a consistent and respectful manner throughout this course.  I have posted to the discussion forums each week in a timely manner so that my insights and comments were relevant to what the other students in the class were working on.  I have commented on other students’ posts and tried to provide insightful and thought-provoking observations about what they have written.  I have devoted a lot of time toward this course, but I know that there is always more I could have done.  I read each post in the discussion forum, but I only replied to one or two for each week of discussions.  I chose the posts that were the most thought provoking for me, or where I felt that my thoughts would be helpful.  I feel that I could have participated in more discussions each week.

I found that this course had a very steep learning curve.  I came in knowing a bit about library procedures, but my knowledge was not on the technical side of things.  I had not done much with the OPAC system beyond checking out materials to my students or myself.  I had never heard of a MARC record, nor had I thought about how I would communicate the Dewey Decimal System to my students.  I had always had favourite libraries due to their layout and organization, but I had never thought about what in particular it was that made those libraries preferable to me.  This course really made me become a meta-cognitive learner, and I am very happy with the skills that I now have to take with me to my first job in a library.

I thought it was appropriate that this course began with an introduction of the Dewey Decimal System in the first lesson, and then came full circle near the end of the course to revisit this topic.  I think the lesson that will be the most useful for me was when my fellow classmates were posting about their ideas for how to teach the Dewey Decimal System to different ages of students.  The lesson that was the most frustrating for me was when we first had to create MARC records.  I spent so much time on that lesson, and felt like the work that I was producing was substandard, but I think that the process of trying to create a MARC record was extremely important.  I now know how to use a MARC record, how to update one and add to it, and that in my practice I will want to find jobbers that include MARC records in the price of their resources.

I think that the most important concept that I can take away from this course is that a Teacher-Librarian cannot underestimate the importance of access.  The library must be organized in such a way that students can easily find and access the books that they want.  In order to improve access, we must be able to teach them the important skills that any library patron should know.  These skills include, but are not limited to, using the OPAC, navigating the school library website, using the online research tools that are available to them, understanding how library books are organized (DDS) so they can locate books for particular topics, and

As Teacher-Librarians, we must work to provide access to resources for students and teachers.  In order to do this, we must have a welcoming and well-organized library.  The signage needs to be purposeful and informative.  One of the most important tools for access that a Teacher-Librarian can have is a library website that is well organized and up to date.  It is our job to make the library a central hub of the school; a place where staff, students, and parents feel that they can spend time, collaborate, and learn together.

This course has helped to make me feel more prepared to work in a school library.  I learned a lot from the specific lessons, and engaging in discussions with other members of the class enhanced this knowledge.  I feel that I provided insightful and meaningful additions to the discussions that I was a part of, and adding posts to my blog gave me an outlet to work through my own learning and understanding of course material.

OPACs

The OPAC (online public access catalogue) that my school district uses is Destiny.  This is a very widely used cataloguing system, and I have only good things to say about it for the amount of time that I have used it.  The statement below is what I will be basing this week’s reflection on:

The degree to which a library catalogue can be consulted easily by teachers and students is of great significance if teacher-librarians wish to encourage user-independence. A flexible catalogue will allow broader use of the school library.

This statement is hard to disagree with.  I feel that by educating students and staff on how to make good use of the OPAC, the TL is in effect encouraging user-independence.  Students who can navigate the catalogue system are able to find the books that they are looking for, determine which book(s) will be the best for the purpose of the particular search, and are able to either find the books on the shelves, or ask for assistance for specific books rather than a general query.  I do think, however, that some features of an OPAC can help to encourage students and staff to use the system more frequently.

A good OPAC will be easy to access from the school and library homepages.  This way, users can search from the library, their classrooms, or from home.  Another feature that contributes to an effective OPAC is the ability to place requests and holds.  When a user finds a particular book that will be of use or interest, it is important that they are able to access the resource in a timely manner.  In the best-case scenario, users would even be able to request a book to be borrowed from another library if their home library does not have this book.  I know that TLs can do inter-library loans, but I do not believe that this feature is available to other users.  Finally, I think that creating project lists would help students and staff make effective use of the OPAC.  Many teachers will assign major projects each year, and when the TL notices a common theme each year (e.g. Ancient Greece, Northern Communities, Bears, etc.) it would be handy if there were a link with a list of suggested resources.  I am not sure if Destiny has this feature, but when I read about it in this week’s readings it is something that stuck with me as a brilliant idea.  This could save time for users who are searching, and though it is an investment of time for the TL initially, it would save time in subsequent years when the same questions come up again and again.

Cataloguing

After rushing to finish my second assignment before flying off to Mexico for a very good friend's wedding, I have a lot of catching up to do for this course...

This week's module was all about cataloguing.  This was a very useful lesson for me, as I know that everything I read about will one day be something I will need to make use of.  This lesson also was the first to cross-over material that I learned from my other courses toward this diploma.  Since this is only my third course toward becoming a Teacher-Librarian, I'm sure that I will find this happening quite a bit more over the next year or two.  One of the readings in particular, about ERAC, was one that had been assigned to me before, so I am reminded how important this organization will be for me when I am faced with the task of selecting and acquiring new resources.

During this lesson on cataloguing, it is beginning to make sense to me why we were learning in such detail about MARC records, CIP, and other mundane cataloguing procedures.  It seems to me that I will rarely need to create a MARC record from scratch, but just attempting to do so not only gives me a better understanding of how to read and use them, but also it shows me the value of finding a vendor or jobber that includes MARC records in their sale price.

One thing that I am still finding difficult for this course is not being able to work with what I am learning.  I am envious of the students in this course who can apply their new knowledge right away or use their experience to create more meaningful assignments.  I also fear that by the time I end up working in a library, what I have learned in these courses will not be fresh in my mind.  I do take comfort, however, in the knowledge that my district offers a mentorship program, and I believe that it is available to teachers in their first year or teachers who are in a position that is brand new to them.  I hope that I will qualify when the time comes!

Dewey, Dewey, Dewey...

The past few weeks I have been focusing on the Dewey Decimal System.  This is the system that is used for organizing books in my school library, as it is in all school libraries across Canada.  Our class lessons have been focussing on this subject, and I was thinking a lot about this classification system while working on the second assignment that I will be submitting for this course.

What I have really come away with, is that students do not need to memorize the different sections of the Dewey Decimal System in order to find books on their topic of interest.  Rather, we need to teach the students how the DDS works, and that there are sections, and a reason for why the books are organized the way they are.  Then it is the responsibility of the Teacher-Librarian to have reference tools readily available, such as an illustrated poster or signage on the shelves so students can know where to refer to before beginning to look for their books.

If students understand the general concept of the DDS, and we make the information readily accessible for what the common and popular sections are, then we have done our job!

Folksonomy

This week my assignment for my online class was to create a Delicious account and play around with this system.  Before I ventured too far into this new territory, I looked at a few of my classmates' posts.  The first one I saw was one student voicing her frustration with creating so many different usernames and passwords for this class.  My first reaction was "part of our job as Teacher-Librarians in the school will to be technology and media specialists so we should be open to experimenting with technology."  So I went on to create a Delicious account and fiddle around with the tagging and searching.  Then I came to the part of the lesson to write my reflection here, in my blog.  I now sympathize with my classmate who feels like we have a lot of different accounts to create for this class.  It took me 20 minutes to get logged on here.  I forgot my username - I tried as many as I could think of; in the process I was reminded that this is not the first blogspot.com blog that I have created... I found one from 2008 that was attached to a different username (I really did try all the usernames I thought I would ever have used).  It brought back many memories - the entire two posts that I did almost 5 years ago now!  Finally I figured it out - thanks to recovery email addresses.

But I digress... onto my reflection of delicious.com:

This website reminds me of a more sophisticated Pinterest - useful for information and research, rather than just hobbies, interests, and ideas.  It allows users to navigate the web and then bookmark websites to their own personal account on Delicious.  When you save a website, it prompts you to "tag" the website.  It seems that users will tag websites with whatever terms are most meaningful to them, but there are some more common, or universally used, tags.  I began by googling "technology in the classroom."  I came up with a few good blogs and teacher's websites.  I narrowed my search by adding "grade 1" in the search field.  When I found some websites that I would like to come back to sometime in the future, I added them to my Delicious account.  I started tagging them as "classroom technology."  Then I moved to looking up "websites for kids," and "websites for grade 1."  When I wanted to save these websites to my Delicious account, many of them had suggested tags.  This must mean that other people have already tagged them and these were some of the common terms used.  When I went back into my Delicious account, and I tried to search for other websites that had the same tags as mine, I found out that I was tagging wrong.  It wasn't best to tag "classroom technology" but rather to have one word tags, but multiple tags.  So I switched them to "classroom," "technology," and "blog."  Then I added more specific tags to the websites for kids I had saved, such as "spelling," "math," and "education."

The problems that Noruzi mentioned about using folksonomy (a non-standardized categorical system - commonly known as "tagging") such as the tags not being a standard set of terms such as can be found in the Sears List of Subject Headings were not such an issue for me.  As a patron of the library for many years, both public and school libraries, I never knew the "correct" subjects to be searching for.  I always just used my best guess, and if that didn't yield the results I was hoping for, I tried a different term for my subject search.  This does not seem all that dissimilar from the way that I would search for tagged websites in Delicious.  This is the way that I would find the more common tags for the same topic that I am saving to my account.  I can easily change a tag if I find a term that I prefer to the one that I created for myself.

As for the content that is on Delicious, well that is the same for me as it is with any internet search - beware of the author, creator, and do not take any content as fact without confirming it using further research.  It is always interesting seeing what other people find who are searching for similar things as I am.

Overall, I really enjoyed this lesson, and may even continue to use my Delicious account - that is, if I can remember my username and password ;)

MARC records - not so scary!

The first time I looked at the MARC tab in the cataloguing database, I was really worried about completing the assignment that requires me to create MARC records.  I have never worked with any sort of encoding system for computers.  Any website or blog that I have created is user-friendly and allows me to just type what I want and it "magically" transforms into something readable on the internet.

Machine-Readable Cataloging is tricky, in fact it is very time consuming to look at the information on the title pages of the book, then cross-reference it with the fields and what subsections are needed.  Phew!  I was very worried when I did the readings.  I actually did all the readings, read the posts in the discussion forums, re-read some of the sections and then went to bed.  I didn't even try to create my own MARC record until the next day.  It was much easier to understand when I was actively doing it.  Here is the first MARC record that I tried to create based on Imagine a Day (a fabulous book, by the way).

020     ##       $a 0689852I93

100     1#       $a Thompson, Sarah L.

240     10       $a Imagine a Day.

$l English.

$f 2005

245     ##       $c Gonslaves, Robert.

250     ##       $a 1^st ed.

260     ##       $a New York :

                        $bByron Preiss Visual Publications Inc.,

                        $c 2005.

300     ##       $a 34 p. :

                        $b Ill.;

                        $c 30 cm.

520     ##       $a Whimsical thoughts bring colorful and happy images to the reader.

Then I looked at the Library of Congress catalogue, and here is a link for what the actual MARC record should look like:

0

LOC - MARC record for Imagine a Day

Not perfect, but not too shabby for a first try!

Back to Blogging

Wow, well it has been a long time since my last blog post, and that is certainly not because I haven't been reflecting on my learning - I have just been extremely busy!

I have been really enjoying the readings for the last few weeks.  I have especially enjoyed learning about cataloguing and metadata.  I have known how to search for a resource in a library for a very long time, and can do that quiet well, but It is fascinating to me to know how that information is created and stored in the system.  I find it most interesting/concerning that though there is a fairly strict 'standard' for cataloguing resources, there is still room for individual choice and deviation from the established system.  For example, should the Dr. Suess books be kept on the easy fiction shelf, alphabetical by author or in a basket that is easily accessible for students to find and sign out such popular books?

I have been having many of these discussions with the Teacher Librarian at my school, and she keeps stressing to me that the system has to make sense to not only the TL, but also to the teachers and students at the school.  It is a delicate balance, but it is quite neat that each school library ends up with it's own personality!

Lesson 1

As I read the posts of my fellow students in LIBE 465, I breathed a sigh of relief.  I thought I would be in a class with the majority of the students being practicing teacher-librarians.  I am happy to know that there are many others who are beginning this journey like me.

During this first lesson, I focussed mostly on learning more about the Dewey Decimal system.  The teacher-tube rap was really funny, and surprisingly helpful for me!  I think this system will take some time to learn, but I'm sure it will make sense to me the more I use it!