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of these is that the “rack cards” (shorter versions) are no longer available online, so my downloaded PDFs are a little out of date.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.