{"id":20,"date":"2020-02-09T14:32:32","date_gmt":"2020-02-09T21:32:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libe467\/?p=20"},"modified":"2020-02-09T14:32:32","modified_gmt":"2020-02-09T21:32:32","slug":"assignment-1-evaluation-of-a-reference-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libe467\/2020\/02\/09\/assignment-1-evaluation-of-a-reference-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Assignment 1 – Evaluation of a Reference Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Library Reference material, like most good things in life, have a shelf life (pun intended).\u00a0 Library\u2019s and Learning Commons across the country have to make an effort to regularly assess and review the reference materials located on their shelves.\u00a0 It is often good for teacher-librarians to follow the advice of Reidling who suggests that it \u201c\u2026is more important to have a small but relevant and up-to-date collection of materials than a large collection that is neither useful nor of good quality.\u201d (Reidling, 23).\u00a0 The process of evaluating the quality and relevancy of reference materials will be discussed in this blog, will offer examples of what to look for when evaluating dated materials and will offer an example as to how dated reference materials can be easily (and cheaply) replaced.<\/p>\n

What to Look for in Dated Reference Materials<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Guardians of Truthful Knowledge<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, the modern-day teacher-librarian must be constantly monitoring and assessing in-stock materials for relevancy, accuracy and functional use.\u00a0\u00a0 It has been my own personal experience that high school students are quick to favour access to digital sources of information over printed text, and when one looks around a high school library and finds many out-dated materials, it may not be surprising as to why.<\/p>\n

Reidling in her book Reference Skills for the School Librarian (3rd<\/sup> ed.)<\/strong>, suggests some guidelines for the replacement of reference materials that include the replacement of print history books after 10 years (Reidling, pg.24).\u00a0 Aside from age, there are other factors that teacher-librarians may want to consider when evaluating a reference material and the following rubric may be helpful;<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Examples of Out-dated Reference Materials and a Possible Replacement<\/strong><\/p>\n

Starting in 1985, Time-Life Book publisher created a reference series of books that provided a comprehensive and accurate account of a variety of nation-states in their series called the Library of Nations<\/strong>. The Library of Nations<\/strong> series was organized in a more biographical account of nations and their peoples.\u00a0 The text was supplemented with graphs and charts that reflected a variety of then current trends.\u00a0 Climate graphs, charts on consumer preferences as well as industrial and agricultural national output were included.\u00a0 Images of people at work and at play were included with historical maps and images related to a particular nation\u2019s history.\u00a0 By all standards at the time of publication the Library of Nations<\/strong> was an excellent factbook for any student doing a basic research study of a country like the Soviet Union or West Germany.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

However, when assessed using the rubric outlined above, the series would defiantly be assess as \u201cNot Meeting\u201d.\u00a0 The fact that the Soviet Union and West Germany do not even exist in the same geographical form in 2020 suggests that the material is out-dated and in need of review by the teacher-librarian.\u00a0 The information regarding the per capita consumption of foodstuff may have been current in the 1980\u2019s, but diets and access to new foodstuffs have changed since the 20th<\/sup> Century.\u00a0 In addition, population graphs and data have changed dramatically and as a reference material, the Library of Nations<\/strong> can now only offer some historical information, not current data.\u00a0 What is needed instead is a replacement resource that can be utilized by teachers and students to better understand the world as it is today.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The World Factbook<\/strong><\/p>\n

The World Factbook<\/strong> is a free, online resource created and maintained by the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States.\u00a0 The website is designed to provide the user with up-to-date factual information about the world\u2019s nation-states.\u00a0 The website describes itself as;<\/p>\n

The World Factbook provides information on the history, people and society, government, economy, energy, geography, communications, transportation, military and transnational issues for 267 world entities.\u00a0 The Reference tab includes a variety of world, regional, country, ocean and times zone maps, Flags of the World and a Country Comparison function that ranks the country information and data in more than 75 Factbook fields.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.cia.gov\/library\/publications\/the-world-factbook\/<\/a><\/p>\n

When assessed using the same rubric that was used for the Library of Nations<\/strong>, it is easy to see that the World Factbook<\/strong> is exceeding in all criteria.\u00a0 The World Factbook<\/strong> is being constantly updated and has the added benefit of able to compare countries with 75 different fields such as population growth rates, industrial production, GDP, energy products and production, and even data related to climate and natural resources.\u00a0 \u00a0In addition to providing all sorts of factual information about a country, the ability of this digital resource to post the most current of information available is important.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Final Evaluation<\/strong><\/p>\n

When evaluating the functional use of reference materials in a library, printed materials that offer factual information used to be the dominate reference form.\u00a0 Today, factual series such as the Library of Nations<\/strong> can easily be replaced with free online material such as the World Factbook.<\/strong>\u00a0 The role of the teacher-librarian is evolving from a collector of factual information, to guardian of truthful knowledge, someone who can direct requests to current fact based online research sites.\u00a0 By creating a database of reliable and truthful informational links on a school website, teacher-librarians can help students and teachers wade through all the misinformation and \u201crabbit holes\u201d that online search queries often promote.\u00a0 Students do lack that broad-based background knowledge that a teacher-librarian may have (Reidling, pg 13) and they then rely on the teacher-librarian to point them in the right direction.\u00a0 In the past, that direction may have been to reference shelves to a series like the Library of Nations<\/strong>, but today is a link to digital resources like the World Factbook.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n

Riedling, Ann Marlow, Loretta Shake, and Cynthia Houston.\u00a0Reference skills for the school librarian: Tools and tips<\/em>. ABC-CLIO, 2013.<\/p>\n

Teacher-Librarians: Guardians of Truthful Knowledge<\/em>, Blog Post, Trickey, Bill, https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libe467\/2020\/02\/02\/teacher-librarians-guardians-of-truthful-knowledge\/<\/p>\n

Allan, Tony ed. Library of Nations: Germany<\/em>, Time-Life Books Inc., 1986<\/p>\n

Brown, Dale and Martin Mann eds. Library of Nations: The Soviet Union<\/em>, Time-Life Books Inc., 1985<\/p>\n

World Factbook, https:\/\/www.cia.gov\/library\/publications\/resources\/the-world-factbook\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Library Reference material, like most good things in life, have a shelf life (pun intended).\u00a0 Library\u2019s and Learning Commons across the country have to make an effort to regularly assess and review the reference materials located on their shelves.\u00a0 It is often good for teacher-librarians to follow the advice of Reidling who suggests that it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libe467\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libe467\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libe467\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libe467\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libe467\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libe467\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libe467\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions\/29"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libe467\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libe467\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libe467\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}