LIBE 465 End of Course

Reflection: 
Overall I would have to say my participation was ok.  I fulfilled all the required discussion postings, but I wasn’t able to be active in the discussions.  I was slow with posting my responses and replying to classmates posts.  I had difficulties completing my discussion postings and blog on a regular basis.  It was poor time management on my part.

Although I was slacking in the discussion portion, I learned much through the course.  The course content was a bit confusing and difficult to conceptualize at time, but the activities and assignments greatly enhanced my understanding of organizing information.  The mini resource collection assignment gave me an immense appreciation of our OPAC system.  The improvement plan assignment was an opportunity to apply what we learned to a real life situation.  

I feel that this course was a brief overview of a complex and information dense subject area. 

LIBE 465: Assignment 3

http://libe465assignmentthree.weebly.com

LIBE 465 Lesson 13: Organizing and Maintaining the Collection

Activity: 
I don’t have any library signage since I don’t have a library, but I thought a TL was very clever in her subject signage in the non-fiction section of her library that I visited.  The school library was at the elementary level and the TL placed objects on the empty top shelves.  Each object corresponded to a popular subject in the shelves directly beneath it.  For the sports section, she had placed a basketball.  For the animal section, she places a plush dog.  The students were able to locate popular topics by looking up at the top shelves.  Moreover, some of the younger children were unable to read; therefore the traditional sign with words might not very effective.

LIBE 465 Lesson 12: Organizing Online Resources

Reflection: 
I do agree that it will be a challenge to get students to access better sites for sources information.  I think that the first step is teaching students the skills to evaluate the informational source and to think critically about the information that being present.  Students need to be educated on the reasons why a website is considered ‘bad’.  By teaching evaluation and critical thinking skills students will be able to compare websites and identify the better quality resources.  Hopefully this will be enough to steer them towards the ‘right’ direction.

LIBE 465 Lesson 11: The Library Catalogue

Activity: 
For this activity I will be examining Follet Destiny, which is used in my district’s OPAC system.

I found the student search page was straightforward, logical and easy to use.  The font is large enough to be seen clearly.  There are icons for the different search headings, such as, title, author and subject.  The advance search function can set limits and filters to focus search.  In addition, Boolean operators can be used to search word combinations.  All these advance functions can be accessed by clicking the tabs above the search box.

The administrative applications of Destiny took some time to figure out, but they were simple to use.  The “How do I…” was helpful with the basic functions.  I think a person could get by with some simple instructions.  Overall I think the Destiny system is effective and flexible.  It is accommodating to changes and straight forward to use.

Reflection:

I agree with the statement that, “the degree to which a library catalogue can be consulted easily by teachers and students is of great significance if teacher-librarians wish to encourage user-independence”.  In general, the library catalogue needs to be straightforward to use, navigate and understand.  If it is not the case, user will not use the catalogue and will resort to other means to use in their search, which means requesting TL assistance.  The greater the ease of use, the less TL assistance; hence increase user independence. 

I interpreted the statement, “a flexible catalogue will allow broader use of the school library”, as the flexibility of the catalogue to search through various data maximizes more meaningful searches in the school library’s collection.  This also related to the catalogue’s ease of use.  Having the ability to set parameters or filters for catalogue searches will produce more useful results, which in turn will increase likelihood of students or teachers using the catalogue search again and will lead to increased school library use.

LIBE 465 Lesson 10: Other Sources of Cataloguing and Processing and Preparing

Thoughts:

Cataloguing and processing new items is seems like an arduous responsibility.  Some TL are lucky enough to have a librarian technician assisting them with the process.  From my experience, most libraries don't have a full time librarian technician and if they do, cataloguing and processing are one of many from their lists of tasks.  Our district has a centralized location to catalogue and process new acquisitions, but it requires several weeks for the books to return to the school library for final post cataloguing.  The district librarian suggests to get new books more quickly on shelves, the TL can do his/her own cataloguing and processing him/herself.  This can be done by either copying from an existing record from another school or creating the record from scratch using the CIP.  Therefore, our district employs a combination of cataloguing and processing methods: the district-based centralized cataloguing and processing, copied catalouging, and CIP.