Reflections on LIBE 465

Overall, I would say that my participation in LIBE 465 was very good. I learned much from the readings, the activities, the assignments and from my fellow classmates in the Vista discussion forum. I found that I could easily relate the assignments to my current position as 0.40 FTE teacher-librarian in a K-7 French Immersion library. Each week, I completed an in-depth response to the weekly activity and posted it in the forum. I then took the time to respond to, on average, five other classmates’ comments in the Vista forum and then blogged about my learning and these discussions.

The themes that stood out for me in LIBE 465: Organization of Learning Resources were:  cataloguing, organization of online resources and organization of physical space. Access was a common thread in all of these areas.

When I learned how to write MARC records, I became more aware of how cataloguing is carried out in my school district and I learned how other school districts in BC deal with their cataloguing. I was surprised to find out that there were so many differences. In my school district, all cataloguing is done by two cataloguers at the district library. This means that any changes that I would like to make to MARC records would have to be emailed to the cataloguing department. The only tag that we are allowed to change, as teacher-librarians, is the spine label. I found out that in other school districts, it is the teacher-librarian and the library technicians that catalogue all new purchases.

Writing MARC records for a website, part of the requirement for the assignment of building a mini digital library, seemed unnecessary to me. This must be because I do not have the authority to add MARC records to our catalogue and also because of the fact that websites do not stay around forever. I can attest to this fact by the number of dead links that I have come across on websites over the years. I did learn from Keith and from Christal that some library systems do catalogue websites and that this service makes it easier for students to find quality online resources on particular topics. Instead of having to consult both the OPAC and a library website to access print and digital materials, the student just needs to conduct a search on OPAC to find both types of resources.

I enjoyed the lesson on school library websites and the Vista forum discussions that resulted from it. I have personally created a school library website, so I know the amount of time and energy that goes into building and maintaining one. As teacher-librarians, we all wonder if many students, staff or parents access our school library websites. When I look at the stats on my website, I can see that it is used fairly often. This is probably due to the fact that I have links on there for the different classes that I work with, and also due to the fact that I have included some fun websites that students probably access during their free time. I liked the idea that Kathy mentioned in the forum about creating a parent corner on the school library website and this is something that I plan to do in the future.

Kaija came up with a good question when we were discussing school library websites. She wondered if they were worth creating in a school like hers where over 500 students have limited access to 50 computers at school and probably have no access at home. In that situation, it would seem that a school library website would not get used. However, I think that it is still important to create one, in order to showcase what is going on in the library and to provide links to valuable resources for the classes that do come to the library.

Assignment #3, where we had to create a project that would improve access to our library was a wonderful exercise for me, as it pushed me to address a problem area in my library that had been largely ignored these past two years: the teacher resource section. I am in the process of carrying it out right now, and am looking forward to a time when the teachers will be able to more easily find good teacher resources and do so independently.

Through LIBE 465 and its readings, assignments and discussion forums, I have learned just how many different access points there are in a library.  I feel that I put a very good effort into my assignments and the discussions that took place in the Vista forums. I have learned the importance of writing a good MARC record, creating and maintaining a good school library website and organizing the print resources in a very user-friendly way.  Having the opportunity to hear what my classmates thought of certain subjects exposed me to new ideas and enriched my learning experience in this course.

Improving the physical space of my library

This week we were to post what we would change in our own libraries if we could.

I chose for Assignment #3 to improve the teacher resource section of my library. On the surface, this may look like a small change, but the benefits are huge, in my opinion. Due to limited time, I had not spent much energy on the teacher resource section up until this year.

After one year in my library (2 years ago) I embarked on a $6000.00 renovation where we added 20 computers to the library. This meant major weeding, moving bookshelves, building half walls and installing the 20 computers. You can see the results here.

After this major renovation, I felt that the main sections of my library were organized in a way that worked for us. This was true, except for the teacher resource section. This section was crammed full of a mixture of old and new resources (some of them not even in the system) and had poor signage. I found out that teachers also felt that this section was difficult to navigate and did not look through our teacher resources as a result of this. The whole renovation comes to just under $300.00 and is something that I am actually working on right now. You can see the outline of my project here.

It was interesting to see what other ideas my classmates had for their libraries. I really liked the following and can see myself adding these ideas to my "to-do list" for my library:

• improving signage in the non-fiction area
• adding sturdy bean bag chairs to the Easy section (would need a grant for this...)
• going all out with a theme (I liked Tamara's Narnia idea!) 

I'm constantly looking for ways to improve access to print and digital materials in my library and this course had encouraged me to make some positive changes.

The benefits of having a school library website...

This week our lesson was on library websites and the importance of these. I had forgotten about Joyce Valenza's wiki on all of the components you can include in library website. What a gem! I will continue to consult this resource in the future.

In my view, a school library website is very essential. It is a place to house or catalogue the resources that we offer through the school districts, in the form of online encyclopaedias and databases, and it is also a place where we can, as teacher-librarians, organize any excellent websites that we have found to support the students and staff in our schools.

However, my classmate, Kaija, made a good point. Why have a library website in a school of 500 with fewer than 50 computers and when these same students do not have access to computers at home? Good question! I still think that we need to have library websites as a way to organize any online resources we find and as a way to advocate and communicate with others what is going on in our libraries.

This is what I see as being important for an elementary library website:

• easy access to library OPAC and online subscription resources
• tabs for the different classes as a place to organize online resources specific to that class
• tabs for general websites that would be useful or fun for students
• tabs for tutorials to help students with their research on, for example: citing sources, creative commons
• attractive, uncluttered front page
• visible area for current events/activities happening in the library

 In the discussion forum, I learned about these ideas:

• creating a  parents' corner in the library website as a way to bring them into the library via resources they might use.
• adding links to online databases subscribed to by the school district to the Destiny homepage. I want to find out how to do this!

I developed a library website for my school last year. I went with the Blogger platform, because I wanted to post on a regular basis on what was happening in the library. Unfortunately, I have not posted regularly enough, but I plan on changing this. It is my goal to post once a week on my library website/blog. I felt that it was a very worthwhile endeavour to create the library website because it is a place that students can find the resources we are using for specific projects. I have also found some fun websites for the students and I know that they access these sites through the library website. Here is my library website.

My library's OPAC

In my school district we use Follett Destiny as our OPAC. I teach the students, as young as Grade 2, how to navigate the catalogue and where to find the books in the library. Some catch on very quickly and others require a lot of practice, but on the whole, they are pretty independent when it comes to finding books in the library.

As far as teachers go, they fall on the whole spectrum of independence. Some are very capable of finding their own books and others always request that I pull books for them on specific topics. I really should offer an orientation to OPAC to the teachers in order to get them all on the same page. What holds me back is the fact that I know some are very competent at using the system and I don’t want to bore them with this type of workshop. I know, though, that most would be surprised to see that they can access our school’s OPAC from home and that if I set them up with a username and password, they would be able to search our whole school district for materials that they need.

Giving one of these workshops is definitely something that I want to do in the near future. I plan on doing so on the day I show off the new organization of the teacher resource section of our library. You can see my plans here.

Last year, for about a month, we had access to a trial period of Follett Destiny’s Titlepeek. I happened to be teaching my “Battle of the Books” students Destiny Quest and we loved Titlepeek’s features. I was sorry to see it go. As a school district, we decided not to purchase a subscription; we are spending our money elsewhere, notably on encyclopedia and database subscriptions.

As a teacher-librarian, I find Follett Destiny’s interface for administrators to be difficult to use. Nothing about it is intuitive and I don’t find the “help” section very helpful. My library aide and I often shake our head at how things are organized in their system and we find that printing the simplest report can be quite time consuming. On the whole though, especially for our patrons, I find Follett Destiny, and Destiny Quest to be easy for students and teachers to use.

Improving the teacher resource section of L'École South Sahali

This presentation outlines the changes that I am putting in place to improve the teacher resource section at L'École South Sahali.


Although these changes may seem minor, this section was in desperate need of reinvention and reorganization. Because these improvements come in at limited costs, they can be carried out relatively quickly, making the teacher resource section more useful and accessible to teachers in a timely manner.

Other sources of cataloguing...

It is interesting to see, in this course, how different libraries can be even within the same province. You would think that the way they operate would be somewhat more uniform. In my district we have a central library that takes care of cataloguing services. This means that neither I, as TL, nor my library assistant need to spend time cataloguing new resources. This frees up my time to teach and my library assistant's time to carry out other administrative jobs.

It looks like Follett and ULS offer excellent cataloguing services at reasonable prices. Follett offers this service at 69 cents per book including: electronic catalog record, bar code label with protector, spine label, and mylar choice. It is only 11 cents per book if you are just looking for the electronic catalog record. ULS offers a basic MARC record for 49 cents per book.

It's good to know about these services even though I do not need them at this point in my library. It would definitely be worthwhile to buy a MARC record for less than a dollar. From my experience, creating MARC records takes time, and I know that my MARC records were not as accurate as they should have been.

From the discussion forum, I have learned that many of my classmates take advantage of these services in their districts. I know that before we amalgamated our library systems into one, with Follett Destiny in 2006, the teacher-librarians in our district were responsible for cataloguing. They would buy MARC records from jobbers in order to cut down on the time they spent on administrative duties.

Teaching the Dewey Decimal System

This week, it was all about learning about Dewey Decimal Classification. It's the way most of our elementary school libraries are organized, so it's important to know how it works. That's why we need to teach it to our students and sometimes even give a refresher course to a few teachers.

For our weekly assignment, we were to share an idea of how to teach the DDC. I've been teaching it to the students at my school for two years now, in my capacity as teacher-librarian, so I shared my process in the discussion forum. My approach focused mainly on giving a tour of the "information section", getting the students to find books on certain subjects and then having them look up and find books on subjects of their choice. Pretty straightforward, but with practice they learn how to navigate the library. The students always seem really excited when they have found the book they are looking for!

When they are able to do that, I might talk more about the different classifications. It's at this point that I like to show this cheesy rap video on Melvil Dewey.

My classmates came up with some really good ideas and shared them in the discussion forum. I liked Niki's idea of the "Big Race". She devised a game where students, working in small groups, are given 10 pictures of different items representing the different classes. Then within a certain allotted time, they must place these pictures in the right area of the library. They can browse the books as they go, and are allowed to go back and change the placement of their cards if there is still time remaining at the end. I really like this hands-on activity and I am going to try it out with my classes in the near future. I think that I'll need to make 10 different sets of picture cards so that the students don't just copy the other teams... ;)

Something that I like to point out when talking about DDC is that if a student knows the Dewey Decimal number of his/her favourite subject, then he/she can find a book on that subject in nearly every library in the world. To go along with this idea, I like to ask the students what their favourite Dewey Decimal number is and then I make them personalized name tags similar to this.

I get the students to write in their own name and their favourite Dewey Decimal number. You can make these personalized tags here.

It's been fun reading about all of my classmates ideas on how to teach DDC. I've been saving a lot of them in a file for future use!