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.