Theme 3 Blog

A Reflection on Selected Items from Modules 8-12

Module 8: Ephemera

Ephemera is a fun word. Not only does it sound nice, but it sounds the way it means. It sounds like the puff of air dispersing seeds from a dandelion. In the context of the SLLC, ephemera means those pamphlets, flyers and booklets that are renewed frequently, and taken—not borrowed—by users.

My favourite ephemera are the Wellness Modules and brochures from Here to Help BC. I made a series of mini-lessons based on these for my Learning Strategies 8-9 courses, and I’ve slipped them into other courses as well, including Resource Humanities and Planning. One ephemeral aspect of these is that the “rack cards” (shorter versions) are no longer available online, so my downloaded PDFs are a little out of date. That is, the information is still good, but students wouldn’t be able to go online and find that exact thing anymore.

Mini-Lesson on Social Support, recto

Mini-Lesson on Social Support, verso

Rack Card - Social Support, recto

Rack Card - Social Support, verso

Module 9: Indexes

I remember learning about Indexes in the library in middle school. I remember the librarian telling my language arts class how to use these big 4-inch binders and to look up something by subject, then find out what journal it’s in, and then how to search the library for that particular journal in print. I remember not understanding this lesson or why I was learning it, despite being really interested in the library itself. I don’t recall there being a lot of space taken by periodicals, but since we were such a young school, having opened just 1 year before I began attending, that there couldn’t have been much of a back-log of periodicals available. Maybe back in the early 90s, libraries could buy collections of back-issues of journals, possibly by a company forerunning the digital indexes?

I didn’t encounter another index until university, and by then they were mostly online. Most of the articles hadn’t been digitized, but one could glean enough from an abstract to add it to the list of works cited, to pad out the number of items in the bibliography.

I admit I still struggle with how to use an index properly. I get lost in the EBSCO and ERIC webs, not finding what I’m looking for and not knowing where I went wrong. It will probably take me teaching it before I myself learn it for real.

Module 10: Bibliographies

I got really excited when I read that there was a bibliography called Books in Print (BIP). I’m not sure what really attracts me to the idea, other than that it’s potentially such a complete list. One of the collections in my personal library that I am slowly building over time are the works of Shel Silverstein. I have all the most popular of his books, from Where the Sidewalk Ends to Runny Babbit, and now I am simply on the hunt for rarities. I’d love to use BIP to find out which books are still in print, and what publisher I could contact to get one, and—as my brain is taking flight here, I’m also realizing that most of them won’t be in print, and I’d be better off keeping an eye on the rare books sections of Powell’s and Abe Books.

Still, a complete list of all books in print would be so cool. It looks like the website offers the information in a subscription format. And that would be better for a librarian who needed the info for processing and cataloguing... but then again, if you have the book in-hand, you can get that information from WorldCat or the Library of Congress.

So why do I still want access???

Module 11: Encyclopedias

I skipped the readings on Wikipedia, since they were more than 15 years old. Kind of a lot’s happened since then. A huge cultural shift began around 2010, and everything from before then—from Blockbuster Video to Third Wave Feminism—is out of date. I wrote at length why I believe Wikipedia is not the enemy teachers think it is in our discussion on Canvas, and I’ll link rather than paste a copy here. Yes, some encyclopedias are more reliable than others, but if you simply want facts, Wikipedia is fine.

Since everything’s going to subscription schemes these days, it’s added some difficulty in deciding whether to buy an encyclopedia for an SLLC. Will you keep the space-hogging multiple-volume set that is already far out of date? Will you keep buying yearbooks to update your 1980’s-era encyclopedia? No one even uses the regular volumes, much less the 30-odd yearbooks. But those costs are already sunk for you—do you really want to buy a space-hogging multiple-volume set that will be out of date soon? What are you going to do with the CD-ROMs your predecessor spent thousands on, now that your school has gone to an all-laptop model with no CD-ROM drives? Yes, the subscription service is expensive, and yes it is an ongoing cost, unlike a purchase model, but I would argue that the evolution of the digital medium better serves user needs than the Boomer Method.

Module 12: Dictionaries

Hi, I’m lisa, and I’m a dictionary snob. I have strong opinions on dictionaries. Whenever I drink socially with my friends, they know and simply accept that at some point between drinks 3 and 4 I’m going to go on a rant about which dictionary is better. I hate Noah Webster, think Samuel Johnson’s dictionary is hilarious but not useful, and I revere the OED above all. I’ve read both Simon Winchester books on the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. I’ve read A.J. Jacobs’ book about having read the entire OED in a year. I’ve cried wet tears on a number of occasions because I was once offered a 21-volume set of my own for free and couldn’t take them with me. That same set is the oldest item on my Amazon Wishlist, dating back to 2006. I used to have a pirated copy of the Second Edition on CD-ROM. Two years ago I finally bought myself a used copy of the Second Edition in Compact version—not concise, mind you, that’s something different. It now graces a place of preference in my home library. And my husband is happy that I've stopped complaining. 

Now that Google can define a word for me, I use that service a lot. But when I really want to know about the word and it's full history and shades of meaning, I go to Oxford.

 

 

 

Wikipedia is Not the Enemy

As a TTOC supervising grade 6/7 students’ research into the events of their birth years, I was shocked that they were not allowed to even go near Wikipedia. I tried to explain that they could use it as a secondary source, or as a starting point, or just to get ideas, but they were resistant. They were clearly very well indoctrinated against the website. However, they were fully allowed to use Google (and not taught that Google isn’t itself a resource), and in trying to avoid Wikipedia so completely, they ended up on some even more suspicious pages. I wanted to come back the next day and throttle their teacher, or at least leave an irate post-it on their desk (I did neither, of course). The anti-Wikipedia crusade is based on an over-generalization and facile understanding of the actual mechanics of the website.

Wikipedia can be good for students! Students who are looking for information on a personal question, or just looking for general/conceptual information, or who are looking for names and dates, should be encouraged to use the world’s largest crowd-sourced encyclopedia.

I have often heard that “anyone can write anything” on Wiki. That’s an over-generalization. It’s not like Facebook or other social media where everything anyone writes shows up on the page. A person has to register as a user, and their changes have to be approved by the Wiki community. People with throwaway accounts or who haven’t built up enough reliability are not allowed to edit articles directly. People with more reliable information or a better track record are allowed more access, and obvious errors are corrected pretty quickly. By the time you hear about some “hacker” changing something on a Wiki page, it’s already been deleted or reverted to an older, more correct version. Wikipedia will also lock pages that are repeatedly “vandalized” in this way. Wikipedia has checks and balances that maintains accuracy. It’s not just “crowd-sourced,” but also “crowd-reviewed” and edited.

As a learning support teacher, I often encourage students to use Wikipedia because it tends to be written with more accessible language. ELL students can read articles translated into their first language, to help them understand the concepts covered in class. Moreover, even though Simple English Wiki has fewer articles, the ones they do have are much more accessible for my students who do not read at grade level.

The vast majority of Wikipedia articles are written by people who are passionate and knowledgeable about their topics. Furthermore, all of the information within the Wiki requires citation. A student might start at the Wiki page and scroll down to find the “real” sources that they may use for their research.

There are so many advantages of using Wikipedia, at least as a jumping-off point, that I get upset when I hear that other teachers refuse to let students use it. It’s great for quick answers, for starting searches, for filtering and focus of topics, and for meta-cognitive tasks such as evaluating a source and learning how and when to use different resources.

Theme 2 Blog

Lesson 5. The Reference Interview.

In my partner’s Human Service Work study, he had an entire course on ‘motivational interviewing’ which is asking guided questions to work towards someone becoming motivated to enact a change. It seems to me that reference interviewing is similar in that the user might not be aware of what they want or need, but you still have to have to help them figure it out in a way that empowers them to find their own answers.

“Why didn’t your teacher tell ME you were going to have such-and-such an assignment?” seems like a very bad question to ask a student. I can understand how it would be uttered in the moment. But it’s a really self-defeating question, too. By immediately placing yourself in an adversarial role towards the teacher (and placing the student in the middle), you are ensuring that you will continue to be at odds with the teacher in question.

This links back to Riedling’s measure of success being based on efficient & positive interaction rather than the achievement of an answer. A positive interaction will lead to further interactions; a student or teacher user is much more likely to come back with further inquiries if the ‘failed’ interview was pleasant.

All this talk of cooperative teaching reminds me very much of the co-teaching lessons from Tan Huynh that my colleagues and I have been studying in our monthly English Language Learning meetings. ELL teaching—especially in a small district where there aren’t enough ELLs to form their own cohort—is very much reliant on collaboration in much the same way as being a Teacher Librarian.

Lesson 6. Managing the Reference Collection.

Being a Manager is not the same as being a Gatekeeper. You don’t have to figuratively OR literally be at the Library door with a flaming sword to protect the knowledge within.

In this lesson, I was most interested in how different each district’s attitudes and budgets were for their TLs and SLLCs. Of course each local has its own cultural and academic needs, but the constant is that the TL knows these needs, and plans their selection, acquisition, and weeding accordingly.

I found the stages of collection development easy to understand, so I’m going to repeat it here, with actionable phrasing:

1. Analyse existing collection 
2. Identify user needs 
3. Determine available budget 
4. Identify sources for obtaining resources 
5. Select resources 
6. Acquire resources 
7. Hand/process resources 
8. Promote resources to user groups 
9. Maintain the collection on an ongoing basis 
10. Renew and weed collection on an ongoing basis 

Lesson 7. Evaluating Reference Sources.

I love that ROLES and GOALS rhyme. I found it quite easy to understand how the role of the TL related to the goals of the SLLC. If the goals change, the role must change, and vice versa.

TLs must prioritize providing open access. ACCESS is the word I keep coming back to. In the last decade or so, the substitution of the word ‘accessible’ for ‘disabled’ or ‘handicapped’ has become much more frequent. This reflects not only a politically correct, person-first awareness of disabilities, but it also is a wide enough word to include persons with invisible disabilities. The word can encompass students who are functioning at grade level, but aren’t experts in their fields. And using the word can change the point of view of the speaker, to open up consideration for all people of differing abilities, not being confined to an able-disabled binary.

ACCESS means being able and powerful enough to self-direct. ACCESS means meeting people where they are, providing the scaffolding or bridging they might require to be able to partake in equitable activities.

I wrote at length on how the branding change from school library to learning commons requires a change in the role of the TL for our discussion in Lesson 7. I’m going to post it on this blog separately, because it’s already been published elsewhere.

Gatekeeper and Keymaster

As the School Library has been rebranded into the Learning Commons, a change in the role of the Teacher-Librarian has become necessary. No longer the Gatekeeper of information in a stuffy, quiet library where users can’t self-select or use the resources, the new TL needs to be a Keymaster. (Apologies to Ghostbusters for the terminology.)

A Gatekeeper is in the business of protection, prescriptivism, and guardianship. A Keymaster is in the business of empowerment, access, and free use. A Gatekeeper deals in scarcity; a Keymaster in abundance. A Gatekeeper decides who, when, and how access will be granted; a Keymaster decides how to make materials more and more accessible. The Gatekeeper allows access on an individual basis; a Keymaster can make a single resource available to multiple users at the same time. A Gatekeeper retains a single point of view; a Keymaster encourages plurality and diversity. A Gatekeeper is akin to a feudal lord, restricting access to his land. A Keymaster is akin to the keeper of the commons from which we get the term learning commons, a plot of land that is designated for community use.

If I pull out the keywords from above, that gives us some direction begin our goal-setting:

• empowerment
• access
• free use
• abundance
• multiplicity of uses/users
• diversity and plurality
• community use

The goals of the SLLC, in order to reflect the 21st-century value of freedom of information (access), should be to empower users to find/use information, to improve access on the information-side rather than user-side, to allow freedom to browse, to employ multiple sources and types of references for broad and overlapping user groups, to employ and encourage multiple points of views and diversities, and to make the library a cornerstone of the community.

Blog 1

Theme 1 Summative Reflection 

I've condensed and simplified the main points that stood out to me from the first four lessons in LIBE 467. Here are my conclusions. 

Lesson 1. 

• The TL is the Information Matchmaker, making matches between students and resources, questions and answers. 
• Information ≠ knowledge 
• TL's job regarding research can be condensed to two steps: 
• provide information 
• provide tools/skills to interpret that information
• All the 21st century literacy skills from AASL’s standards (as quoted by Riedling) are metacognitive in nature. 

Lesson 2. 

• There is somewhat of a hierarchy of information search: 

¯       Quick fact check: “When was the War of 1812?”

¯       Directional request: “Where can I find info on the War of 1812?”

¯       Limited search: “What groups of people were involved in fighting in the War of 1812?”

¯       Research: “I need multiple sources to direct my analysis of whether the War of 1812 was a formative event in the identity of Canada.” 

• A literate citizen is simply one who has learned how to learn. 

Lesson 3. 

I shared this table in the discussion, but I wanted to re-post it here. A comparison of inquiry processes: 

Lesson 4. 

• “Isn’t this all on the internet?” I think I hear this every day. On days I don’t hear it, I’m the one who asks it. 
• WHAT information is no longer as important as HOW it’s APPLIED. Information is inexpensive. Analysis and synthesis are valuable. 

The book. 

My interactions with Riedling’s book Reference Skills for the School Librarian have been mostly antagonistic so far. I don’t like the way it's written or constructed, and I suspect it’s out of date even though it’s on its third edition Most of the content sounds really “Boomer”—that is, it sounds like it’s been written by someone who, despite working in an emerging field, is still stuck with a lot of unexamined biases from a time when homogeneity was prized above all. I’ve made my opinions clear in the discussions, but I really don’t want to just tear it apart. I could ‘dunk’ on this book all day (I do love to trash-talk), but in the end I do realize that it was chosen as a resource that someone I’ve entrusted my education to has chosen, for a reason. I’m trying to see that reason.