This has been my favourite assignment so far. I love creating something that I can actually use in my own setting. I guess I am a very practical person! I have chosen to build a website for my library because we currently don’t have one. In fact, there is no option available for our students (or teachers for that matter) to search our catalogue of over 16,000 items.

After “speaking” to so many others who work in different school districts and reading their blogs I now see this as a major problem and not just an inconvenience as I did when I began this course.

Creating a website with catalogue access is something that I have wanted to do for a long time but this course not only gave me the opportunity to work towards this it also gave me the chance to do some research on other library sites and to think much more critically about the notion of access to the collection. I am very excited to get a chance to pitch this idea to my administrator with some sound rationale behind it.

Particularly helpful for me was having to think about who would need to be involved and what challenges might present themselves as I moved forward with this project. It caused me to really slow down and think through who might be helpful, from whom approval would be needed, and how I might be able to head off possible complications. A very valuable assignment for me.

I really enjoyed this activity. I came into it with some of my own perceptions about the future of the teacher-librarian but having had little experience with cataloguing in my libraries I had only a cursory understanding of the current debates raging in the field regarding what might be in store for cataloguing as we now know it. It was obvious to me, from my own readings and from those of my colleagues, that the rise of new technologies is having a major impact in the field. The advent of free online books, a net-saavy generation that conducts independent searches with great skill, and the idea that all of this will lead to a more user-driven system really supports the educational decisions that I have made.

At this time I am currently a graduate student working on my Masters of Educational Technology. I firmly believe that the role of teacher-librarian is increasingly becoming a technology position. My decision to do my Masters in this field and not in Librarianship was a conscious one. The teacher-librarian courses that I have looked into are all scratching the surface of the impact of technology on the position. For me, taking the step into the technology side is a step beyond that. Teacher-librarians will always be necessary. They are one a school’s greatest resources. However, I believe, and my readings for this assignment seem to support this, that becoming a specialist in dealing with technology in an educational setting will be key to successfully supporting the position of teacher-librarian.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ[/youtube]

Sometimes I think my library is still in the Dark Ages….

Enjoy!

So, I spent all of last weekend working on Assignment #2.  It deals with MARC and ISBD.  There was quite a bit of confusion on the part of many of the students but Sandra Lee was kind enough to supply us with an example of what she was looking for.

I pretty much have it done…

I could hand it in right now but I am struggling with a couple of details.  There is the dreaded exercise #128 which no one can seem to find.  What I have done at this point is to make a note on this one that I was unable to find it.  It is a web-page and I am wondering if the inclusion of this difficult to find item with a broken link to the University of Buffalo site is meant to cause us to question whether cataloguing websites makes sense at all.  The nature of the web is that of a transient and ever-changing space.  Personally, I would not catalogue a website in my own library for this reason.

Also, there was an item that was meant to be a request from a teacher to the T-L.  It is called Jiggajump.  That too seems to be a challenge.  I have found a website for a teacher resource of this name and honestly without further details from the teacher requesting it I would not order or create a catalogue record for this item.  As T-Ls we are meant to collaborate with the classroom teachers so  this is exactly what I have put on the assignment as it relates to this item.

I spent this weekend working on Activity #4.  It involved checking out a few different school library websites and evaluating them.  I wanted to include my reflections on these sites here.  I am hoping to create a website for my favourite school library as part of my final project for this course.  I will have to think about this some more and email John and Sandra to see if that is workable.

Anyway, I have a renewed enthusiasm for building a library site so having a look at these was very worthwhile.

Scotch College Library Website

http://library.scotch.vic.edu.au/index.html

I was immediately drawn to this dynamic page.  The blog is an excellent addition.  It contains reviews of various books by teachers and students including cover artwork that really adds visual appeal.  From the library’s blog page users can find links to other blogs about books that are equally appealing. 

The inclusion of the Automatic Harvard Referencing Journal as a link from the main page is an excellent resource for students and teachers.  The act of providing a tool to help with appropriate referencing of sources is a more pro-active approach than simply providing information on how to do this yourself.

What I like most about this site is that it makes for an excellent hub for resources for teachers, students and parents.  It emphasizes the inter-connectedness of all of those parties to the teacher-librarian and creates a sense of excitement about literature.  An excellent site.

North Elementary School Library Media Centre

http://www.nobl.k12.in.us/media/NorthMedia/index.htm

This site is not nearly as appealing as the Scotch College site above.  The method of just listing all of the links on a splash page is not appealing and the absence of graphics makes for an overly textual environment.  The site itself contains many broken links and this is always off-putting to the user.  Once inside the catalogue itself the visual appeal improves and lists of top ten books and new arrivals help to generate interest.  There are also a great number of resources for teachers available on the page but failing to have these separated from resources geared towards the students may serve to turn students off of the site.  A better organization structure on the splash page would help this tremendously.  Overall, a great resource but organization and visual appeal could be improved.

Lord Byng Secondary School Website

http://byng.vsb.bc.ca/library.html

The library page of this school’s website is very plain and lacks the visual appeal of the Scotch College site.  Most likely the school does not have someone paid to design pages for them.  I would suggest getting some of the students to work on this.  The Webcat search function has to be accessed by leaving the library page and this may discourage users from going back to the library’s main page.  The inclusion of a library blog is a positive one and encourages interactivity.  Many broken links however detract from functionality and appeal.

I must be more of a visual learner than I thought.  Once I was able to see how another person approached the DDC and LC assignment I was able to discern what and how this was to be done.  Here is my reflection on this assignment.

Like my colleagues before me I probably took way too long with this assignment. I was completely stumped as to what was required of me and spent most of my day off on Friday reading and re-reading the text and various websites trying to get a feel for this assignment. I know now that I was probably over-thinking this!

I ended up creating an account with Amicus at Library and Archives Canada and also used both the VPL and the Library of Congress. I also found that by the end I was using just Amicus and and the LC as they had the most comprehensive catalogue for my purposes.

It was actually alot of fun using the Dewey book. I can see that more exposure to this would definitely make me a better T-L with greater knowledge of my collection. Having the Resourse Centre in our district do all of our cataloguing removes the elementary T-Ls from the process unfortunately.

Once I got the hang of this it did not take me long at all but the learning curve seemed pretty steep on Friday!

I had great intentions of getting Activity #3 done yesterday as we are in the middle of a four day weekend but I am such a novice at the cataloguing aspect of Teacher-Librarianship that this weekend has been a complete exercise in frustration.

We are supposed to take 10 books from our workbook and find the DDC main heading and subheading and compare the subject headings from the Library of Congress with another library catalogue.  I am very confused about the organization of the fiction as they are often organized alphabetically by the author’s last name.  I am not sure how you know the headings they are placed under in these conditions.  I have emailed the instructors but it is a long weekend….

Oh well…brighter days ahead!

Very excited to get this course as part of my degree in the MET program.  I am looking forward to some real hands-on learning in this class.  I have posted my intro and have read those of my classmates.  It is always interesting in online courses to see the diverse group of individuals you end up working with.  I love this aspect of online learning.  It makes the experience so much richer.

I seem to have several blogs going right now and have some concerns about keeping them all up to date but I have created a weekly checklist sheet for myself to track my posts to all three of my courses this term.  I find it is very easy to get behind if you don’t keep track.