Evaluating Access

This week we were looking at evaluating our reference services.  One part of the lesson focused on the access to the resources by staff and students.  We read parts of Evaluating, Selecting, and Managing Learning Resources – A Guide. This guide named three types of access: intellectual, physical and digital.

In terms of intellectual access, our school allows access to the library throughout the week.  Junior school students have a library period once a week and students may also exchange books before or after school every day.  Our school also does not have many restrictions on the number or type of resources that students or teachers may borrow.  Students are able to take out as many books as they’d like and they are usually due back one week later.  There is no penalty if a book is late.  The only penalty is if books are not returned at the end of the year.  Then a bill is sent home for the cost of the book.  The one exception to this rule is that some of the dictionaries and encyclopedias in the reference section may not be borrowed.  These are labelled as reference only and may be looked at during library hours (8am-5pm).  For the most part, I support this system because it allows keen readers to take out many books when they come to the library once a week for their library time.  A potential problem that I could see is that when the students get older and are taking out books for a research project, one student could take out many books which may not leave many for the other students.   As encyclopedias and dictionaries are usually used as “ready reference” materials, I don’t think it is a problem that they cannot be borrowed from the library.

I believe that the physical access to materials in our school is quite good for what we have in the collection.  There is an online automated library system which can be accessed at any computer in the school.  The library is open most days from 8am until 5pm.  I think the largest problem is that our collection is quite small.  Because we are an independent school, we do not have a district resource center to turn to.  I find that as a homeroom teacher, I spend quite a bit of time at the public library trying to find the resources I need as many of them are not available at our school. 

I think the weakest category for our school is digital access and the one which needs to be most improved.  We do have a computer lab with over 20 computers which all have access to the internet and library system.  Unfortunately, we only have 2 computers in our library.  Students are allowed to access these computers before and after school with teacher supervision.  Although our school is using many resources in digital format, other than an online encyclopedia, I don’t think it is the library which is supporting or promoting these resources.  We have been asked for our suggestions on future Pro-D day topics and I am going to submit “digital resources” as one of the topics for next year.

Searching, Grey Literature, and the Deep Web

This week we read about grey literature, searching the world wide web and about the deep (or invisible) web.  When I read the section on searching, my interest was piqued by the term “controlled vocabulary”.  For instance, is it an apartment, a condominium, or perhaps a flat?  I searched for controlled vocabulary and was interested to find that there are websites which will provide you with a controlled vocabulary.  For instance, http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/, will provide subscribers with a list of controlled vocabulary to tag their images with.  This obviously makes it easier for others to search for their images.  I would think that this list of controlled vocabulary would also make it easier for subscribers to search for relevant images.  It makes me wonder how long it will be before these lists are more widely used. 

Grey literature includes any documentary material which is not published.  While searching, I discovered Google Scholar which is “thought to provide increased access to gray literature, as it retrieves more than journal articles and includes preprint archives, conference proceedings, and institutional repositories” (Schultz).  I tried using Google Scholar for the first time and was amazed by how many articles it found.  Many of them were not full-text, but you could read the abstract and find what journal they were published in.  This would then allow you to use a periodical index to find the specific article.  I had never tried using Google Scholar and think that in certain situations it could be a valuable tool.

I also looked at an entry in Zillman’s blog, http://zillman.blogspot.com/2009/01/llrx-december-2008-issue-deep-web.html to read about the deep web.  I was amazed to read that we can usually only search 20 billion of the 1 trillion pages on the world wide web.  Overall, I think that this week has emphasized that we need to teach students that there is more than one way to search.   They need to learn that just using “Google” is often not enough.  It is important to use a variety of tools including databases in order to find the information we seek. 

Schultz, Mary . "Comparing Test Searches In PubMed and Google Scholar." Journal of the Medical Library Association 95.4 (2007): 442-445. National Center for Biotechnology Information. Web. 10 July 2011.

Indexes and Databases

This week we learned the importance of having periodical indexes and databases available in the library.  I had used many databases during university, but had never seen them in use in elementary or high school.  The databases made my research so much easier because I was able to quickly and easily search for an article on a topic I was researching or even search for a specific article.  Once located, many of these articles were available as full-text and I could read them immediately.

Although my current school is K-12, we do not have any periodical indexes (print or online) or any databases.  This means that students in elementary and high school are not using magazines or journals to conduct their research.  An electronic database would be a powerful research tool for many grades in the school, but would be particularly useful to the high school students.  It could provide them with the opportunity to learn two additional information literacy skills: using periodicals when researching and the ability to use an database properly.  These skills will become increasingly important as they move towards university.

I tried to do some research into how much it would cost for our school to purchase one or two databases.  It was difficult to find any information to even give a ballpark estimate.  I even emailed a rep for one of the companies explaining the situation and asking for an estimate.  I got no response.  Other students taking this course explained that in the public system, usually the district purchases the databases for the district.  Each district negotiates its price with the publisher, so each district may be paying a different price.  One person said that he thought that they paid about $1 per student.  I would guess at a small independent school, we would have to pay a lot more because we would not have nearly as many students using it.  Even if we double it though, it would come to about $1000 for our school.  This seems like something that should be a priority and could be prioritized for the next school budget.  Unfortunately, I don’t think that this is in the school’s short-term or long-term plan yet. 

Encyclopedias

This year I am teaching grade 1 at a new school and hadn’t had the opportunity to look at what encylopedias (online or in print) my school library has purchased.  I went to look more closely at our library reference selection this week and was happily surprised.  Our school has a print set of World Book Encyclopdia’s from 2005 (not the newest, but not totally out of date).  It also subscribes to World Book online.  In addition to these general encyclopedias, our school has many subject encyclopedias including art, dinosaurs, plants, the solar system, World War I and II etc. 

The question posed in the reading this week was whether or not Wikipedia should be used by students.  Before this week’s readings, my automatic answer would have been no.  After reading through the articles in this week’s readings and discussion postings, though, I don’t think I’d be as definite about never using Wikipedia. I was interested to read about the research that has been done on Wikipedia and that often Wikipedia does give accurate and reliable information.  One student in our class, Hilary, posted a Wikipedia article about the 2011 Vancouver riots.  It was a great example of how quickly information can be posted and updated on Wikipedia. It also allowed me to easily see how the sources are included in a WP article. I believe this article would spark a great discussion about Wikipedia and its uses in a high school class.

In the end, I agree with Berinstein, that Wikipedia is a great starting point. It can give a broad overview of the topic and allow students to see how their topic is connected to other information. I don’t think that using Wikipedia in school or at home should be banned. In addition, I think that it is a great starting point for some information literacy lessons about authority and reliability. I believe that it is important that students are taught when it is appropriate to use Wikipedia and how they can check the information they find there.

Although it is convenient, Wikipedia shouldn’t be the only encyclopedia that students have access to. I think that school libraries should definitely have other encyclopedia formats available to students in order to answer ready-reference questions as well as begin their research on a variety of topics. As Riedling states, these encyclopedias should be carefully evaluated by the teacher-librarian for their accuracy, authority, scope, currency, objectivity and format. Students won’t use them though, if they are not specifically shown how to access them, trained in how to use them properly (including indexing) and taught when they should be used. These are all information literacy skills that can be taught by the teacher-librarian or in collaboration with the homeroom or subject teachers.

Alberta ORC

Earlier in the week, I had the opportunity to access Alberta’s Online Resource Centre which provides teachers with free access to many online resources.   As I am not a TL yet, and have only worked at small independent schools, I am very ignorant as to what online reference materials are available.  I believe that this resource gave me some insight to some of the scope of materials that are available.  As a primary teacher, I was surprised (happily) to see all of the reference materials available for primary-aged students.  I was also excited to see all of the Canadian resources that were available.

It seemed that most people in the class liked the site and thought it would be a great idea for the BC government to start a similar initiative.  Some of the reasons that my classmates had for having a similar site in BC were things I hadn’t thought about.  For instance, if all districts could access it, it would create equality between districts in respect to their online resources and it would mean that districts wouldn’t have to individually evaluate, select and purchase subscriptions for resources. 

Our instructor, Anne, though, brought up a point on why having it at the provincial level is not always as good as it seems.  She said that some teacher-librarian positions may have been lost because the bureaucrats thought that if they can provide this resource to teachers than why is a TL necessary.  I wouldn’t have ever thought that jobs would be lost because of this resource.  I believe that schools would need a TL to spearhead using this website.  Many teachers do not have the expertise to just be given this website and then be able to use it efficiently in their classroom.  They would need to collaborate with a teacher-librarian in order to have their class use it effectively and for many to have their class use it at all.  For instance, my mom taught in elementary school for many years and only retired last year.  She would never have used this resource with her class without help from her TL.  She simply would not have had the skills to use it. 

Print Vs. Electronic Resources

Are print reference resources going to be obsolete?  I certainly hope not!  I definitely think there is a need to still have print resources.  As this lesson pointed out, they can be very helpful to students as they begin their research process.  A print encyclopedia allows students to find background information on their topic quickly without having to filter through other information or get distracted by what else may come up on their screen. 

I am also a primary teacher (currently grade 1) and so I definitely have some bias towards print resources.  The younger students find it very difficult to filter through all of the information, ads, and different links to find information they need on the internet.  It is important for them to learn how to find the information they need within the library.  They also do not always need the large scope of information that can be found on the internet.  Looking up “helicopter” in a dictionary, encyclopedia and a two books will probably give them enough information.  I still think it is important for them to become familiar with searching online and as a class we have used Google to search for information, but they are not yet able to independently find the information they are looking for.  After some lessons, however, they are able to independently find information in a print encyclopedia. 

If we look at the majority of the school body, though, the internet has become an extremely important reference tool for students.  At my school, I see most high school students using the web as their first source for information, both for personal and school use.  Unfortunately, our school has only two computers in our library and the computer lab is located on a different floor.  In addition, the computer lab and library are both used by kindergarten to grade 12 students and so are almost fully booked all week.  This means that the teacher-librarian does not have the ability to teach many internet-based information literacy skills.  It is up to the IT teacher or other specialist teachers to teach these skills.  As a result, I’m not sure that our students are getting taught all of the skills they need to efficiently navigate the internet.  Our school is currently going through an expansion and I hope that this will allow for the teacher-librarian to have more of an opportunity to teach students the information literacy skills they need and make the library the first place they go to find information instead of the computer lab. 

Internet Skills Framework

This week’s lesson focused on literacy goals and the research model.  We looked at four different research models and needed to think about which one would we would be most likely to use.  I posted that I would most likely use the BCTLA’s Research Quest.  First of all, I like that it is local.  I also like that there are 5 steps in the research process and all of them have student-friendly language.  Although many of the stages are similar to the Big6 model, I liked the language of “Communicate” rather than “Synthesis” for presenting the information.  I also preferred “Reflection” to “Evaluation” for the last stage of the process.  I think that students reflecting on their process and product is a better term than evaluating.  Students need to think about what they learned and what they could do differently next time.  I’m afraid that “Evaluation” would just have them thinking about judging the final product. 

Others posted about how poorly they’ve seen a research project used.  They’ve seen students just given a topic and sent to the computer lab to research it.  Of course they just type the topic into Google and then try to filter the results.  I agreed with them that this is not how student should be taught to research and they need to to be explicitly taught how to research and that it doesn't just involve typing the topic or subtopic into Google.  I liked one of my classmate’s ideas of requiring the students to use a minimum of six reference materials for their project.  Students must be taught, though, how to use each of these reference materials and then how to synthesize the information in order for it to be effective.

At my school, I believe that there is a need to promote an “Information Skills Framework” .  In the upper grades (Grade 6-12), there is an IT teacher who teaches some of these skills, alongside the other subject-based teachers.  In the lower grades (K-5), it is up to each individual homeroom teacher to teach the skills and nothing has been formally mandated by the school.

In order to accomplish this, we would have to change how our library and TL is used.  Currently each class from K-5 goes to library once a week, while their homeroom teacher has a prep.  There is little collaboration between the homeroom teacher and the TL and so library becomes a time for book exchange and story time.

I believe that the TL and the library would be better used if homeroom teachers collaborated with the TL to come up with and teach information literacy lessons together.  This means that teachers would come to the library with their class and that these classes would be coordinated with what was happening in the classroom.  In order for this to happen though, the library would have to upgrade its technology as well.  There are currently only two computers in the library, but we have a MAC cart with many laptops which could be brought in for some of these lessons.