Final Reflections...

This course has been quite the learning journey.  I have learned so much that I’m amazed that I was even able to get it all down in my blog.  Before this course I didn’t even know what a MARC record was and had never heard of a CIP record…now I can do a basic MARC in a matter of minutes!  As mentioned in assignment 3 I have been looking into getting a new library computer program.  When talking to the sales representatives I was able to ask pertinent questions and understood everything they were talking about….this would not have been the case before this course!   It was quite a bit of work and I did struggle getting everything done with managing work and family but it was well worth it in the end because I now feel so much more confident in my job. 

I know finishing this assignment during the last week of the course is not ideal but it was good to go over all the lessons again and let this information sink in one more time.  Looking through all my posts I’m quite happy with the amount of information that stuck with me and I’ve already started to implement a lot of new things in my library. 

My participation in this course was quite good.  Somehow I managed to read all the posts in the discussion board…there were a lot in this course!  I found them to be very useful and insightful.  It’s always a big help to hear what others are doing in their library and the struggles they face.  I wasn’t always able to contribute very much to the discussions because it was hard enough keeping up with the lessons and assignments but I thoroughly enjoyed the online experience.  Online courses are wonderful in generating discussions and sharing among colleagues. 

I now feel armed and almost ready to fully embrace my job as a teacher-librarian.  This course covered some of the most important topics that help make the library a true functioning learning environment.   Now on to the next course and learning journey…

Lesson no. 13 Organization

As suggested in this lesson I started small in making changes to my library.  I moved the easy French fiction books into low shelving that the primary students can access and moved some tables and furniture around to create a teaching and study area.  I’ve added fiction books in baskets grouped by series or alphabetically and I eliminated a carrousel rack that was full of old books that no one ever took out.  I also added some posters around to decorate the walls and a big bright carpet.  I think the overall feel of the library is cosier and warmer. 

Even with these added changes I still think that the library is below standards.  As I mentioned on the discussion board the location is one of the biggest problems.  The list of a well-designed library just reminded of many other areas that are lacking!  I’m trying to stay optimistic and make the space that I have the best possible learning environment. 

Signage is something that I plan on working on in the near future.  This takes little effort and will make a big impact on how students look and find books.  We have no signs at all in the library.  It is a very small library but I still need to have clear and colourful signs. As mentioned in the Wilkelstein article it’s important not to put too many signs. 

When reading the section about inventory I was relieved to see that it’s not very complicated, just time consuming.  However the task of weeding seems very daunting.  I have read the B.C. Ministry of Education’s guide to weeding and find it useful and helpful.  However it’s easier said than done. I will have to catch myself in a particular mood otherwise I’ll want to keep everything! I have been trying to weed a pretty big pile of books that I took off the carrousel rack.  I have some library monitors and I asked them to go through the books and to separate the ones that they would read from the ones they wouldn’t. When I have a chance, I plan on going through it myself and hopefully getting rid of quite a few of the books.  What to do with the weeded books is a tough question.  I think I will still need to think about it but I’ll probably offer up the books to the teachers and then recycle the remaining books.

Lesson no. 12 Organizing Online Resources

I found this lesson to be quite enjoyable.  I love looking at library websites!  I’m itching to make my own and as soon as I get my library more organized then I will dive into developing a library website.  My school encourages parents to use the school site by having a calendar of events, all teachers post homework on a daily basis and there is lots of other information for parents as well.  I think that having a library webpage is very important and as Joyce Valenza says “Your library Web page is your second front door. It meets your students where they live, and play, and work, with 24/7, just-in-time, just-for-me support and intervention. It creates online signage for students and staff. It projects the image of the librarian as a 21st century teacher and information professional. The effective library Web page pulls together, in one unified interface, all of a library's resources--print and electronic.”

Developing a library website can be an excellent tool in teaching information literacy skills.  Once I develop my site I plan on teaching students how to use the OPAC and having them practice finding books on the shelves.  Then I plan on introducing search engines and how they work.  To help students to not rely so heavily on Google, they need to be introduced to other search engines and to see the value of these sites.  The search engines then need to be included on the library webpage and made known to the parents who are helping their children with their projects.  Students are always telling me how they have to sift through large amount of websites to find something that might be useful to them.  They also need to be introduced to directories and how to search using sub-categories.  Then I would move toward teaching them what makes a good site.  Students need to experience the websites themselves to be convinced.  The best way is to ask the classroom teachers what topics they are studying and then have students find good websites on that topic.  Once they have a base of good websites then comparing them to other sites is much easier.  For the older students, we could even create a type of evaluation rubric with specific questions to help them see if a website is good or not.  With all this information that I give them it’s so important for them to have access to these sites whenever they need it.  This is why having a library webpage is very important in fully developing information literacy skills.

I have never created a detailed website but these are some of the key features that I would want to incorporate in my site:

- age appropriate

 - user-friendly- picture icons and minimal text to avoid confusion

 - colourful and uncluttered

 - pictures of the library, projects and work done by students

 - contact info for TL

 - hours of operation and policies

 - access to the OPAC and online subscriptions

 - educational and fun links

 - links for parents and teachers

 - library calendar

 - lists of new books

 - link to the public library

I really enjoyed looking through Joyce Valenza’s wiki.  There is so much information!  I think I will have a hard time keeping my site simple to begin with after seeing all the great information included on some of the school library websites.  They have totally inspired me!

Lesson no. 11 The Library Catalogue

I feel like this blog is starting to sound a bit like 'Anica's Lamentations'.  There so much work needed to be done in our library to get it up to date that it's a little overwhelming.  As I mentioned in Assignment 3 our OPAC is definitely lacking in many areas.  The former librarian did not feel comfortable with technology and was afraid to change programs.  Now that I'm on the scene, I'm hoping my administrator will support my requests for updates and changes in technology.

Our current OPAC has been doing the most basic of jobs in identifying, locating and collating the resources.  However it is not very user-friendly and is far too basic.  After having done some investigating on different OPAC systems I'm even more convinced that we need to change and the sooner the better.  In our lesson it was said that an OPAC should be a tool to help students master information literacy skills. I can't see myself using our current OPAC system for improving these skills.

I found the information below from our lesson to be quite interesting and plan on sharing it with my administrator.

            Automated library management systems can support resource-based learning and teaching and student information literacy by:

• Providing access to all learning resources in the system.

• Allowing students and staff to use a variety of search strategies to find appropriate resources

• Promoting effective circulation of resources and resource sharing.

• Encouraging staff and students to access a broad range of age/grade appropriate print, non-print, electronic and digital resources from a variety of sources

• Providing an effective option for identifying and booking or reserving learning resources from other parts of the school or from home.

• (Excerpted from: Achieving Information Literacy)

Unfortunately my OPAC meets very few of the criteria listed above.  For me, the main goal of my OPAC is to help students and teachers to feel confident in searching for books themselves.  The previous librarian didn't want anyone messing up her shelves so she took all the non-fiction books out herself and handed them out.  Now I'm running into problems with trying to get the teachers to come to the library themselves to choose books.  There have been some pretty heated moments as some teachers in my school feel that it is my job to pull books from the shelves.  I'm convinced that with proper signage and a proper OPAC system in place, the teachers and students will be willing to learn how to access the appropriate information and to feel comfortable to come themselves to find what they need. 

Lesson no. 10 Cataloguing Options

Once again I learned so much in this lesson!  It was nice to have a list of all the different possibilities out there for obtaining cataloguing records.  After looking into the various options and companies, I can see that in certain circumstances purchasing records might be the best option.  I’m still trying to figure out if this would be the best option for my school.  I feel like I should be able to do all my own cataloguing and not have to purchase the records.  I know it’s silly to think this when I only work 3 days a week and I’m slowly realizing that there is no other option.  What is most important is that the books are on the shelves and not in boxes!

Centralized cataloguing is fantastic and I wish the Catholic School Board had money to do this.  Unfortunately we are all left on our own.  Not only do I not have central cataloguing but I also don't have a mainstream library program so I can't copy catalogue either! I think I will have to invest in having some cataloguing done for me when I order the books. The only problem with that is I’m not sure how my library automated system works. I have an open source program that someone wrote. The good thing about open source is that the person who wrote the program can probably modify the program to allow for downloading of MARC records. This is something I’ll have to look into. I think it might be time for the school to invest in buying a more mainstream program such as Destiny or Horizons.  At least with a mainstream program I could do copy cataloguing which will cut my time in half. With the program I have now, once I get started, I can get through quite a few books in an hour but it’s not enough to keep up. I do copy information such as descriptions or subject headings from other sites. This helps but is still not enough.

I often order from ULS, mainly because I'm not very familiar with all the other publishing companies or jobbers, and have never ordered cataloguing. I always seem to think I can do it and I’m just too cheap!  In the end it’s the students who suffer since they don’t have access to all the great books I’ve purchased. After reading the lesson, I’m just going to have to bite the bullet and pay to have this service done. Hopefully it will be done properly!  I plan on purchasing cataloguing from a few companies to see which one I prefer. 

Lesson no. 9 Copy cataloguing

I had no idea that CIP even existed until this course!  I had never noticed that inside most books there was that kind of cataloguing info.  I’m not sure how useful this is to me since many of the CIPs I saw were not complete.  I’m a little frustrated by the lack of uniformity with the CIP records.  Some books have very detailed and accurate CIPs while others have such little information I wonder why they even bothered putting anything.  While doing the activity for this lesson I did find it interesting to compare what was in the CIP and what was in the MARC record after publication.  The books that were more main stream seemed to have better CIP records. 

Copy cataloguing on the other hand is very interesting and will be very useful for me in my current situation.  Not having a decent library computer program has forced me to do copy cataloguing but not in the sense that I import the info into my program.  I need to copy manually the information!  It’s a time-saver in the sense that I don’t need to take a lot of time trying to figure out in what Dewey class to put the book.  If I could just import the information then that would obviously be the ideal situation!

Before the course I was not very familiar with LOC or Amicus.  These two sites are very good reference points for me whenever I’m in doubt about how to catalogue a resource.  I’m happy to see how many French titles Amicus has…finally a website that has some French content! Typically when I’m cataloguing I like to refer to the VSB Webcat or to the VPL site.  The VPL site has very good catalogue and MARC records and Webcat typically has the French titles that I’m looking for since most French Immersion schools in BC order similar material. 

When using any tools to help with cataloguing whether it be the CIP, LOC, Amicus or other sites it is likely that I will have to add some information.  There is always some info that might not be included.  At least when you have a solid base it makes the task of cataloguing much easier.  All this talk about cataloguing has reminded me of all the books I need to start cataloguing!

The Talented Mr. Dewey

Ahhhh the Dewey Decimal system...  It has really been a love-hate relationship with Mr. Dewey.  Most days I think it’s the greatest thing ever invented in the library.  However some days, when I’m cataloguing, I’m not having such happy thoughts about Dewey.  I’m still finding it difficult to work with all the categories and decimals.  Obviously the 9 classes are not difficult to understand but how to assign decimals within each class is confusing for me.  Luckily I have been consulting other libraries to see how they classify books before I do.  I’m not even sure if my library has a DDC manual, if not I definitely need to buy one and soon!

Teaching the DDC is something that can be a fun activity to do in the library.  I really enjoyed reading everyone’s ideas and suggestions on how to teach the DDC.  There is a lot of stuff online so there is no excuse for not making the lessons on DDC interesting and hands-on.  I was really happy to find all the great activities that are made for the Smartboard.  I just got one set-up in my library so hopefully I can start using it soon.

Before I can teach the DDC to all the students, I need to make some improvement s in the library.  As mentioned in the Stauffer article, there needs to be generous signage in the library and even more in the non-fiction section.  I can see how important it is since at my library there is no signage at all! My goal is to increase signage throughout the third term.  I think for my school the best way is with a picture and simple wording.  I think this will make a big difference in helping students find what they are looking for and also to encourage them to browse the non-fiction shelves.  They will surely find books and topics that they didn’t even know we had in the library.

In the readings for this lesson it was suggested that librarians find the subject headings first and that will help with assigning a Dewey number.  I have been doing the opposite.  I can see the value in starting with the subject headings, it will really make it clear to find the right Dewey class.  I also think that putting it in the section where students will notice the book more easily is also important.  I have noticed some books in my library in some sections that I would not have put it in but after looking through the book I can understand the logic of the previous librarian. 

There are so many things to take into consideration when cataloguing a book, it’s a little overwhelming!  I’m glad that there is a clear system such as the DDC that keeps things simple and organized…once you’ve figured out the DDC of course!

Lesson no. 7 Folksonomy and Delicious

Once again I’ve discovered something new and exciting.  I had never heard of Delicious but the new discovery has come at just the right time.  Recently I have been frustrated with all the bookmarks that I was creating on my computer.  Since starting the Library Diploma program in September I have so many new bookmarks.  I have been harassing my husband to make sure that everything on the computer is properly backed up especially my bookmarks.  I would be quite upset if I lost all the great bookmarks that I have.  With the new discovery of Delicious I don’t need to stress so much about losing my data.  I also like how the site helps you organize all your bookmarks with tags.  After reading the article by Noruzi I can see how it’s important to find and use the appropriate tags.  This will ensure that the process of sharing your bookmarks with others is successful and is used properly.  However I think that the average person doesn’t really care about this.  As long as your bookmarks are organized in such a way that you can navigate through them with ease then people are happy.  I do think that the websites should try to ensure that the proper tags are recommended so that at least people can choose to use them or not.  I do like the feature on Delicious that recommends tags so it shouldn’t be too complicated for the site to also recommended tags that have the proper descriptive word. 

This lesson has also had me think about how my students do searches at the library.  If they don’t know how to do a proper keyword search they will be quite frustrated.  I think that the teacher-librarians should do a lesson on this so that students can be more successful and increase their chances of finding exactly what they are looking for.  I think this would tie in nicely with lessons on how to do web searches using search engines such as Google and also how to use a directory properly by knowing the sub categories.

Subject headings are so important when cataloguing books and should not be taken lightly.  There needs to be some uniform system such as the Sears subject heading document to be used to make sure that anyone entering your library would be able to do a proper subject search. So many of my students do subject searches and need direction in which keywords to use.   

All too often I assume that students know how to do research online and know how to find books.  The truth is that they don’t and I know at my school this has been overlooked.  Once we get our new computers to access our OPAC I will be doing a few lessons on how to do an effective search.

Lesson no. 6 MARC records

MARC records

Phew!  What a lesson!  This was an interesting lesson and a long and tiring lesson.  Before this lesson I had never even heard of MARC records.  I had never noticed the link to them on library sites.  I honestly never thought that teacher-librarians would need to know something like this.  Boy was I wrong!  There is so much value in knowing how a MARC record works.  First of all it’s important when wanting to create proper display records and also for understanding how to create a proper search. 

To complete part A of my assignment for this lesson I referred to the VPL website.  I analyzed the MARC records and could get a sense of what kind of information was provided and the order.  However when completing part B of the assignment I was left with far more questions than when I started.  There are still many lines that I don’t know what they mean or how to find that information.  The information from the readings was definitely helpful but not all the sections were included.  These are some of the questions and observations I was left with at the end of the assignment. 

The book I chose to write a MARC record for is Anna Kerenina by Leo Tolstoy.  This book has a section on the inside of the book titled: ‘The Library of Congress has catalogued the American hardcover edition as follows: ‘ then they have written all the necessary information for cataloguing.  This will be helpful in doing the MARC record especially in doing the subject category since I know very little about this.  I wish all books had the information so well laid out!

Some of the areas that I missed: 

040 Cataloguing Source- I’m not sure how I find this information.  The VPL MARC record indicates that it’s DLC (Depository Library Council).  I don’t see anything in the book that would indicate this.

041 Language Code

050 Library of Congress call number- I saw the numbers but didn’t know what they referred to.

100- The VPL site has put in ‘graf’. I don’t know what that means. 

240- Uniform title.  I don’t know what is the difference between title and uniform title.

246- Varying form of title

250 and 260 were off but I found this to be quite confusing.  In the book there are the publications for Great Britain and for the US.  I chose the Great Britain publication but I guess I was supposed to choose the American publication.  I’m not sure how you would decide. 

I do feel a little better after having done this activity but I’m quite worried about Assignment #2 in which we have to complete 20 MARC records for different types of ressources.