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  Our school has a print set of World Book Encyclopdia’s from 2005 (not the newest, but not totally out of date).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.