Toolkit A: Professional Connections
Online Interactions
For this portion of the Toolkit, I joined the LM_NET listserve in early September. After a little research, I chose the digest version of the list because I didn’t want to receive 70-80 individual list emails per day. This helped me manage the considerable number of messages that made their way to my inbox. However, even with the digest feature activated, there were a number of special issues that increased the number of emails from the list from one to seven or eight each day. I found myself opening the emails and skimming them for content that interested me and then deleting them unless there was something I wanted to save or if I had something to add.
Typically I replied to requests for book suggestions for elementary readers. I am an enthusiastic reader of picture books and novels for children and young adults so it was fun for me to offer suggestions and to see what other librarians were reading. One example of my participation was an answer to a request for narratives and family stories for children. I sent a message to the librarian with two titles I really enjoyed from that genre, How I Learned Geography by Yuri Shulevitz and All the Way to America by Dan Yaccarino. I received a nice thank-you reply for my suggestions.
Another common request I found among the librarians of the list was full-text scholarly articles. I’m not sure why this happens so often when many articles are available through databases purchased by public libraries and academic institutions. I also wonder about the potential problem of passing on articles to people that aren’t paying for a subscription to the service. Also, the death of hard copy reference came up more than once and librarians would share their practices and experiences with their reference sections or lack thereof. Those discussions were thought provoking as I considered our own reference section and how it has shrunk.
Finally one of the most important and oft discussed subjects of the list was tech. Often, the librarians reach out to each other when they encounter new tech, be it for personal or professional use. I’ve read topics ranging from how to use the latest I-Phone to resources available on e-books. They also discuss how to implement tech in the media center or in classrooms. This is a really important topic, or topic really, given the vast amount of tech being used in schools.
All in all, the best part of LM_Net was the sharing of knowledge that happens every day between librarians that would otherwise not be able to interact with each other due to the constraints of geography. My experiences were positive and I found the librarians I interacted with to be polite and grateful. That being said, even in digest mode, there is a lot of information to sift through on a daily basis and I found that reading it, or even skimming it took a lot of time. I will remain on the list, but I’m not sure if I will spend as much time reading it each day as I have for this assignment. The demands of work and classwork will definitely take precedence over the list. Still, I feel like it is a worthwhile resource and a good way to stay connected with other librarians.
Virtual Presence
In order to judge a school library media center’s website as one of the best, first I will establish my criteria for “best”. The best websites should be:
1. Clean: This means easy to read in terms of fonts, graphics and placement of links. It should be judicious in its use of fonts, video and changing or scrolling images.
2. Easy to Use: The site shouldn’t require excess clicking through links to reach the information or the catalog. The links should be up-to-date and functioning.
3. Rich in Content: The site should contain a variety of content types or links to a diverse selection of content that is appropriate for the age range of the students who will be using it.
There are so many school media center websites that in order to narrow down the selection pool, I chose from only elementary school media centers. I am more familiar with elementary media so I felt that my evaluations of those sites in terms of richness of content would be the most credible.
Carmel Elementary School: Carmel Clay Schools, Indiana
This local school’s media center website is slick. It’s not crowded with images or flash elements and the fonts are clear, consistent, and sized appropriately for the page. The links are easily found on the left hand side of the home page and they work. There is a wide variety of content for parents and educators as well as links for students that support classroom learning including links to educational games, a citation creator and even a link to the city’s website.
Moharimet Library Media Center: Moharimet School, Madbury, New Hampshire
While Moharimet’s website has a scrolling show of pictures of the media center and patrons as well as images of book titles on the front page, the images add to the site’s look and utility rather than detracting or distracting from it. The links are easy to find in tabs along the top of the page under the header and the dropdown menus aren’t too twitchy. The linked resources are separated for staff and students though the tabs and the student links even include an EBSCO database for younger students called Searchasaurus.
New Augusta Public Academy South: MSD Pike Township, Indianapolis
Created with Microsoft Sharepoint
Another local website star, the media center at New Augusta Public Academy South in Pike Township won the AASL National School Library Program of the Year award in 2013. The website itself features contact information for the media specialist and assistant right on the front page as well as a link to the Destiny catalog. It uses only one image on the front page and has a concise but informative description of the media center program. Like the other two websites I’ve featured, it has easy to read links to important media center content. The research link provided while not my favorite color scheme (it’s a bit jarring) has a plethora of links that are grouped by topics including science and math.
Content Plan
In addition to adhering to the criteria with which I judged my three favorite websites of the many I perused, I would strive to update the content on my website often with information about lessons by grade level for parents and other library happenings. I would implement this with a blog possibly embedded, but maybe just linked. I would also publish the library daily schedule and calendar to encourage parent participation and definitely a link to a www.volunteerspot.com volunteer schedule in the hopes that I would receive some parent help as well. My site would have a photo gallery but wouldn’t have more than one image or graphic on the front page. The link to our OPAC would feature prominently on that front page. I would include research and e-book links that can be accessed by students and teachers from home to encourage virtual use of our resources. I would also include a form that families and staff can use to “wish” for new additions to our physical and virtual resources.
This plan isn’t a “one and done” deal. It will require regular attention to ensure that the links work, the requests are recorded and that the calendar, schedule and blog are all current. Once established, I would expect this to take 1-2 hours per week of my precious time which, frankly, would probably be unpaid time at home from my couch. The fact is, that while it may not be something valued by administrators, it would be worth the extra hours needed to maintain a useful, interesting, and engaging site. Of course, the site would have to be promoted in school newsletters and mini-lessons to encourage its use by the patrons, but if it’s kept current and easy to use, I imagine it would become a “go-to” resource for many members of our school community.
Blog Interactions
The blog interactions were edifying. For the archived blog, I read Chris’ Somers’ from November of 2005. I chose it because I wanted to compare the technology discussions from then and now. Chris’ technology observations were of the growing pains for teachers who were experienced, but were new to technology in the classroom. She mentioned training teachers to use computerized gradebooks and the difficulties in getting some teachers to try using a PowerPoint presentation as part of their instruction (Somers, Johnson, & Lamb, 2005).
Fast forward to today where our guest bloggers are also tech mavens in tech heavy school districts where the LMS has to find engaging ways to broadcast security tips for a 1:1 technology school (Brower, Johnson, & Lamb, 2014). I was disturbed by the idea that the administration and troubleshooting of the 1:1 tech was the job of the media specialist. This seems like a job for a dedicated tech person which apparently is in the works at Jenn’s schools, but it’s upsetting that this was an afterthought in their 1:1 planning process. Ah, in a perfect world where money flows from a fountain in the school’s staff workroom…but I digress.
My exchange with Sherry was about division of time between read-alouds, checking out, and teaching library skills, mainly research. In our media center, we teach a research model to the intermediate students which ensures a healthy, consistent process that produces good results for their IB Exhibition projects in 5th grade. The discussion with Sherry included how to best spend our limited time with each class each week and whether or not teachers were using a research model or basically winging it (Gick, Johnson, & Lamb, 2014). Additionally, Sherry’s passion for genrefication has really got me thinking about whether or not that would be good for our media center and if so, whether we even have the time to make it happen.
All in all, I think the blog interactions helped to connect our theoretical learning in regards to teaching, collaboration, schedules, collection development and our true purpose as media specialists with the real world of school finance, making the most of limited time, and getting resources into our students’ hands and brains, as an actual practice. Of course, I have some experience in this already because I work in a media center, but it was enlightening to see that our struggles are very similar to those of media specialists in other school districts. Now when I lament my lack of an open schedule or my shelves that are literally cracking under the weight of the collection, I know that I am, indeed, fortunate to work for a certified media specialist and that we share the same challenges as other teacher-librarians. For all of us, I think that the key is to strive for the ideal while balancing that with the realities impressed upon us by the business of education.
References
Brower, J., Johnson, L., & Lamb, A. (2014, September 25). S671-SLMS Bridging Theory and Practice. Retrieved from Blogspot.com: http://slmsbridge.blogspot.com/2014/09/jennifer-brower-thur-sept-25-to-sat.html#comment-form
Gick, S., Johnson, L., & Lamb, A. (2014, September 29). S671 - SLMS Bridging Theory and Practice. Retrieved from Blogspot.com: 2014
Somers, C., Johnson, L., & Lamb, A. (2005, November 12). SLMS 671- Bridging Theory and Practice. Retrieved from Blogspot: http://slmsbridge.blogspot.com/2005/11/blog-interaction-with-chris-somers.html#comment-form
