Competency 5: Tagging/Cataloging

Helping Teachers Teach: a School Library Media Specialist's Role by Philip Turner

TAGS:

information literacy(1) instructional design(1) Leaning Styles; Instructional design; library Media specialist; education(1) lms(1) Loc:SERC(1) Media Program(1) office(1) professional(1) school library(1) School Media Center(1) student achievement(1) Teacher-librarianship; Teaching(1) Teaching(1) UWG Textbook

When I searched Librarything for a resource related to my topic, I did a broad search for "school library." Many books in the list of 485 hits were directly or indirectly related to my topic, "the role of the school librarian." However, the book, Helping Teachers Teach: a School Library Media Specialist's Role by Philip Turner seemed the most relevant. Since I have not read the book, I am relying on the tags of members who, presumably, have some knowledge of the book. If the tags are indeed relevant to the content of the book, I believe this would be a good resource for the school librarian. One tag in particular, "teacher-librarianship; teaching," reflects what I believe is a key role of the school librarian - teacher. According to Google Book Search, this book "describes the many roles of the school library media specialist." One review describes the book as: "an organized and comprehensive treatment of one of the roles of a school library media specialist-instructional consultant." (Reed Business Information (c) 20040). The reviewer, Beth Jones, further states that this book could possibly be used as a textbook for a library-science course. One tag, UWG textbook, indicates it is or has been used as a college textbook. I think it would be worth checking into!

Turner, Phillip. Helping Teachers Teach: a School Library Media Specialist's Role http://www.librarything.com/work/564638

Competency 4: RSS Feed

This week’s competency requires me to select and add an RSS feed to my blog. The step-by-step instructions included in Course Documents were very clear and user-friendly. I followed the instructor’s suggestion to go to the ALA homepage and select the RSS feed and add it to my blog. After completing the process, I decided to explore other available RSS feeds related to my chosen blog topic. I went to Google and typed in “rss feeds school libraries” and chose the first link listed “RSS Feeds on School Library Journal” http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/learnRss. There I discovered a plethora of school library RSS news feeds. I scrolled through the list and ultimately decided to include “School Library Journal Technology News” http://feeds.feedburner.com/SchoolLibraryJournal-TechnologyNews . I chose this one over “School Library Journal Education Technology News” and “School Library Journal Education News” because some of the topics listed have a direct correlation to the technologies, such as “Social Bookmarking” and “Microblogging”, which I believe have the potential to impact our school libraries and the ever-changing role of the school librarian.

In the course of my search, I also came across a very informative blog created by Helene Blowers, a school librarian in the California School Library Association. In her blog, she explains RSS and outlines an RSS project for her students. In it she outlines steps for her students to set up their own RSS feed reader. She includes some very helpful links on the topic including:

Using Bloglines Tutorial

YouTube on how to add feeds.

Google Reader Tour, video tutorial#1 or #2.
Her final instruction to her student was to create and post a blog about their experience. She tells them, “[If you don’t know what to blog about] think about these questions: What do you like about RSS and newsreaders? How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your school or personal life? How can libraries use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?”

I know I’ll be thinking about how my school libraries can utilize this new technology!

http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/learnRss (accessed 2/15/09, 1:20 a.m.)

http://feeds.feedburner.com/SchoolLibraryJournal-TechnologyNews (accessed 2/15/09, 1:30 a.m.)

http://schoollibrarylearning2.blogspot.com/2007/02/8-week-4-learn-about-rss-feeds-and-set.html(accessed 2/15/09 1:35 a.m.)

Competency 3: Podcast

Competency three requires me to post a link to a podcast related to my blog topic. I tried all the podcast search links listed in the course documents and tried numerous keyword searches and never really found a serious academic podcast that I felt was relevant to my topic. I ultimately decided to include two podcasts I came across during my search on YouTube. The first link is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smrrZpbvI20&feature=related

This podcast is a clip from a 1946 U.S. Government career training film which, according to the podcast description, was most likely shown to high school students. This podcast was presented by "travelinlibrarian" Nov. 22, 2006. Although the film was made over sixty years ago, assuming it is legitimately a 1946 training film, much of the stereotypical descriptions of librarians and the roles they play in academic and public libraries is still relevant. They even use the term "teacher librarian" to describe the school librarian. They include references to the reference, circulation, and cataloging librarians in the public and academic libraries. The jobs they describe are very much still jobs performed by modern day librarians.

What I found to be most obviously missing is the use of modern technology in the role of the librarians and services they offer. Also missing are reading programs, such as Accelerated Reader, which have taken over many elementary and middle school libraries. There is no mention of AR stores or Book Fairs which often consume the time and energy of the school librarian. I am in the process of holding my fifth book fair this year, and we're only in the fourth six weeks of school! I have also had three AR stores and am in the planning stages of three more stores for the spring. This leaves very little time for collection development, cataloging, and most disturbing to me, no time for collaboration with faculty or library classes for students.

In sharp contrast to the 1946 film represented in the previous podcast, this next 2006 podcast entitled "A Librarian's 2.0 Manifesto" produced by a Danish group, takes librarianship into the 21st century and beyond with expressions such as "I will recognize that the universe of information culture is changing fast and that libraries need to respond positively to these changes to provide resources and services that users need and want." I'm not sure AR stores and book fairs are included in the services, but I believe we, as school librarians must recognize the changes, continue to educate ourselves, and not resist the changes necessary to meet the information needs of future library generations. (I must warn you, one slide contains brief nudity.) Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZblrRs3fkSU&feature=related

Comptetency 2: Related Blog

In order to find a blog related to my chosen topic, I explored several blog search engines and ultimately used GoogleBlog: http://blogsearch.google.com/. After much time spent searching for “the perfect match,” I realized I would need to refine my topic and focus more specifically on how technology is changing the role of the public school librarian.

Although the blog I chose for this post was written two years ago, I immediately recognized its relevance to the topic of my own blog.

http://schoollibraryblogs.blogspot.com/

School Library Blogs: What's the Scoop?

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Lessons Learned: Implementing a blog in a classroom

The blog article was written by a school librarian who stepped into the “driver’s seat” while implementing a classroom blog for a teacher who had tried and failed at her own attempts. The following is an excerpt from her blog.

Do a short "How to Blog" workshop for all staff
Be sure to have coffee, tea and cookies (as always) and invite staff to watch blogging in action. After a short presentation on the basics, give them a chance to try it. I wish I'd made time at the start of the year to do a Blogging workshop for all staff. After the busy start of school and parent-teacher conferences, the holidays were upon us. I plan on returning to the school to do a workshop in January, but it would have been much more effective to introduce Blogging to staff, and let projects grow organically, stemming from their interest. Doing a workshop for everyone gives staff a common base knowledge. Then they can learn from each other's blogging experiences. This is a way to get you, the librarian, out of the drivers seat and into the role of consultant.