Sunday 30 September 2012

Cataloguing Introduction

I thought I would post my lesson post this week since it wasn't required to do so on the Vista site.  I still think the background information that we went over this week is important and should be discussed.  After all without organization especially as teachers where would we be.

After going through this weeks readings and activities like many of my fellow posters I agree that organization is the key to success in a classroom and library. Organization of resources through a common system creates order in a library. I find many of the resources that I use on my class online and have created my own organization system to keep order for easy access. Without order and organization with the amount resources at are fingertips we could be searching for a needle in a haystack and never find what we need to create meaningful lessons and activities for our students.

Saturday 22 September 2012

Metadata? DMOZ? What?

Wow, this weeks reading confused me a bit.  After slugging through the technical mumbo jumbo and figuring out metadata I now see thew importance for my classroom and possible future library.  I discovered that Google is not necessarily the best way to search the internet.  While conducting my polar bear research with Google, Yahoo, and DMOZ all brought up a different rankings of results.  It turns out that DMOZ brought back the best result and is something that I will use in the future.  What I learned this week, Google may be the most prevalently used search engine but is not necessarily the best one out there.

Access for All and Other Things

First I'm going to muse about the other things from this weeks lesson on the organization of resources within the library through acquisitions, cataloging and collection development.  I have been extremely to have had an amazing mentor who has let me over the years be involved in the workings of her library when I was tocing.  I spent five years helping her over long periods of time doing all three of the traditional technical services.  Even though I have only had a small TL contract I feel that I have a good understanding of technical services thanks to an amazing TL!  

This post is going to piggyback a bit on the last post in regards to access.  I believe that all students should have access to library resources and to a qualified TL. I am going to now post part of my reflection that I posted in the discussion for this week as it reflects my thought on the access and the library.



Housed in the library are all of the teaching resources, novel studies, and other class materials.  Teachers have access to these materials at all times and the TL has said that he is readily available to help out.  This school seems rich in access to materials, time, and space.  Cutbacks seem not to have affected this school but that is due to the high population of the school and that the entire school uses the TL and the library as prep.

In my previous school the TL was only a .20 position and it was held by the principal who had to teach library because of the small population (220 students) of the school.  The library was rarely used except for scheduled book checkout time.  Access to the library was limited and underused.  I can see as some of my other classmates has noted that underfunding and lack of training is hurting our libraries.  See inb both sides of the coin makes me grateful that I am now at a have school but sad for my former students and fellow colleagues that are at a have not school.

TL's Role

I found this week to be a reformation to my ideas of the role of the Teacher Librarian and how my district values the teacher and the library itself.  If you are at a larger elementary school like I am there is a 1.0 full time TL and full access to library resources.  Last year I was at a lower enrollment school where there was a .20 equivalent TL who was also the .80 Principal.  That school's library program was just for checking in and out books and a little bit of reading to the lower grades.  All schools regardless of how small they may be deserve qualified TL's that are there to do more than just checking in and out books. Promotion of literacy and a love of books need to be shared!

Wednesday 19 September 2012

Hello UBC LIBE 465

Hello UBC LIBE 465!  I know that the title of this blog states that it's for  LIBE 477, that was the past and this is now.  Why start something new, like a new blog when this one works already.  I look forward to posting and expressing my views on this new course LIBE 465 Organization of Learning Resources.  I feel that this course will give me a better understanding of what some of the main jobs are that a TL may face on a daily basis regarding resources and access to those resources.  On with the show!