Reflection: Evaluation of a Library Reference Collection

This was a tough assignment for me to begin. I found myself overwhelmed at the prospect of evaluating the entire reference section, but also a bit confused of which individual section to select. After visiting the elementary library and actually seeing how small the reference section was, I was again dismayed. The entire section needed an overhaul. However, I recognized this would be impossible to do financially for any TL in a year's time, not to mention that the TL at this school places a lot of emphasis on electronic reference resources.

I decided to narrow my focus on encyclopedias - specialized encyclopedias to be more precise. The rationale and process is described in greater detail in my assignment so I won't repeat myself again here as this is merely a reflection of my experience.

I was quite proud of what I accomplished. I enjoyed looking through Tittlewave's catalogue and selecting encyclopedias that correlated with the provincial learning outcomes. I am a visual learner so I decided to incorporate the book covers in my annotated bibliography. It is an attractive document that would grab a teacher's attention and pull her in to read more, which is great as teacher input is what I would want to achieve.

I appreciated Anne's suggestion of adding a set of Eyewitness Books to the collection as well. I will look into it for sure. I too agree that most of the books I selected tend to be ones that kids enjoy and "drool over". This is the biggest reason why I made the contingency in my plan to purchase duplicates of the most popular resources to add to circulation.

Overall the experience was eye opening and rewarding. It has helped me to be less weary of the reference collection, as well as, motivate and prepare myself to advocate strongly for the printed section.

How are we managing to stay afloat?: A.I.L. Standards

I must say I was pretty disheartened when I read the Canadian Association of School Libraries' Achieving Information Literacy standards. From reading the postings of my fellow classmates I gather I am not alone in my dismay. While I am a TOC and not affiliated with any one library, I draw my comparison from the two schools I have spent a great deal of time at, in particular the libraries.

 While the library's collection size is acceptable, with an average of 30 items per student, the ratio of fiction to non-fiction including reference does not align with the A.I.L. recommendations. They state "for both primary and high school grades, the ratio of fiction to nonfiction including reference should range from 15-30% fiction and 70-85% nonfiction/reference" (p. 28). I would say the ratio of these particular libraries is 50-50. Some of the rationales I came to for this difference are: these are elementary schools, so the picture book section alone is a large contributor to the fiction percentage; the schools have turned to electronic reference sources, so the demand for print nonfiction by students and teachers is less; and more likely, the budget is only $13.50 per student/per year. When taking into consideration that the average price of a hardcover nonfiction book is around $30.00, soft cover fiction books are considerably cheaper. More bang for the buck?

 On the topic of budget, it did surprise me to see the acceptable funding standard for school libraries is $26.00-$35.00 per student/per year and below standard is anything below $25.00. Well that being said, $13.50 per student/per year seems disgraceful and almost unmanageable. I was than surprised again when Joanne mentioned she "got $1000 for 130 kids this year - that's less than $10 per kid" (June 11, 2011). How does a library and its collection flourish with such a low level of funds? 


When it comes to weeding resources, the TL uses the California Department of Education's Weeding the School Library pamphlet for her guidelines.

Dewey Classifications
000      2-10 years         500      5-10 years
100      10 years            600      5-10 years
200      2-10 years         700      5-15 years
300      5-10 years         800      flexible
400      10 years            900      15 years

Biographies                  flexible
Fiction                          10 years
Encyclopedia                5-7 years
Reference:                    evaluate on individual basis
Periodicals                    5 years
Almanacs/Yearbooks    3 years in reference, 3 additional years in circulation

While the A.I.L. explicitly states encyclopedias should be no older than 5 years. This has of course become a lot easier to maintain with the online versions being continuously updated. But what about the printed versions? My TL stated she would never consider spending "half her budget" on a set of printed encyclopedias.With a budget such as hers, I really don't blame her.

 I think Hilary made an interesting point when she said "I also think that many of the standards in AIL are rather high. I’m wondering if it needs to be updated to reflect some of the changes that have occurred in libraries since its last printing in 2006" (June 4, 2011). With district budgets being cut, teacher-librarians' FTE being lessened as well, and print resources being replaced with electronic resources are these numbers actually realistic and obtainable anymore?


Works Cited:

California Department of Education. "Weeding the School Library." California Department of 
                          Education Library. 27 Apr. 2009. Web. 11 June 2011. <http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr
                          /lb/documents/schoollibweedng.pdf>.

Canadian Association for School Libraries. Achieving Information Literacy Standards for School 
                          Library Programs in Canada. Ottawa: Canadian Association for School Libraries,
                          2003.

The Great Debate: Print vs Non-Print Resources

It wasn't until after I finished my blog entitled Another option for "The Way of the Future"? that I started reading through lesson four. I was quite concerned since there seems to be such pressure nowadays to move away from printed reference sources towards electronic sources it was refreshing to read through a list that included the disadvantages of electronic reference sources. Here are some of my thoughts on the two lists:


Problems with Electronic Reference... and my comments/questions


Lack of acceptable authority on many sites

• Do students have the skills required to differentiate between valid, reliable, authoritative sources/websites, and ones that are created by amateurs, which could be unreliable, invalid information and biased?

Overwhelming amounts of material

• Students often get frustrated easily when they cannot find "exactly" what they are looking for.

Lack of consistency in ways in which to search sites

• Each resource is navigated through differently. So students need to be taught and reminded how to search through each of the different resources.

Need for broader band width to access some Internet information

• This may not always be available within your school.
• May not be cost effective.

Advertising on sites

• Trade off for free resources.
• Issue with advertising being kid-friendly
• Kids are exposed to so much media etc already in their day to days lives outside of school, should they be exposed to it in school as well?

Student tendencies to surf through information too quickly

•  In my experience observing students "research" if a page has too much print/information to read through, it is often closed quickly.

Confusing graphical layout on some electronic  encyclopedias and databases

• If the tool is not straight forward and user friendly the students will not want to use it.

Possibility of accessing inappropriate sites

• Hope Masterson-Krum conducted a study on how safe kid-safe search engines are. She concluded that "kid-safe search engines are 99 per cent porn-free; however, because of keyword blocking or failure to recognize part or all of the query, access to information and relevancy [are] greatly compromised" (p. 7). Granted, this article is ten years old now.

Lack of student skills to distinguish best site from among many

•  In my experience, most students typically at the most visit the first two or three search results.

Searches limited to number of computers in school library or lab

• Computer lab time is usually booked up quickly in schools. This puts a restriction on the time students are able to spend researching.

Teacher-librarian time in trouble shooting and monitoring the sites and the search terminals

• Time is of the essence. With FTEs dwindling, do TLs have the time to effectively monitor and troubleshoot electronic resources. Not to mention, what do students and teachers do when their TL is not at the school on a particular day they require assistance?

Ongoing (annual) cost of some commercial data bases

• We are fortunate that our district funds these subscriptions, otherwise they would not be available with such a tight school library budget.
• EBSCO
• Worldbook Online
• Encyclopedia BC
• Passport to the Internet
• Reality Check

Ease of plagiarizing by cutting and pasting

• Unless students are explicitly taught the rules about plagiarism they may naturally believe it is okay to cut and paste information. It is a lot more time consuming and requires more effort to copy word-for-word out of a printed resource.
• Even if explicit instruction has been given, monitoring of this requires time as well.

  
Advantages of Electronic Reference... and my comments/questions

Ability of students to quickly access information with little or no direction

• Quickly maybe, but probably not effectively.
• Ian Brown a wrote an article entitled “Don’t discard the librarians". he defended teacher-librarians by making the argument that “Human knowledge is now thought to double every five years. The need for a guide through that morass, for a knowledge concierge…is critical” (p.1).

Speed of access is increasing

• Yes, but is the school's technology able to keep up? It is not financially viable to upgrade computer labs yearly. So even though access may be increasing, it does not necessarily mean the students can take advantage of that.

Internet access is becoming less expensive

• Yes it is, but again the hardware is still expensive to continually upgrade.

Allows a variety of ways to search for information

• The students still need guidance and direct teaching of information literacy skills in order to be effective researchers.

We are not worried about the organization of the data since it is searchable in a variety of ways

• This is a definite benefit as it increases the probability that  the student will be able to find the information that they require

Information can be kept current

• Since printed encyclopedias have to wait a entire year to be reprinted and only revise a small percentage of their information, electronic encyclopedias have an obvious advantage over them
• If errors are found within the article, it is not a big deal to go in and fix them.

 Students can access information from a variety of places in the school and in their homes

• Huge advantage over printed resources, especially those that are not in circulation. 
• Students can do research in their classroom and at home
• Not limited to waiting for a printed resource to be returned to access the information.

Allows for multi-media within the reference source including video and graphics

• Media is a great motivator for students as it is visually appealing. The majority of them would rather watch a video clip than read through an article

Information retrieved is printable

• Somewhat defeats the purpose of electronic information. I find that when I am assigned an article to read, or am searching for an article to review, I have not been able to train myself to comfortably read and analyze the article on the computer screen; I have to print it out. It is something to do with being able to make notes in the margins and the tactile feeling of the paper as I flip through the pages. Also, the ability to take it with me, whereas a computer is not always available.

Students are still required to read the information

• As they should be, it is part of the research and learning process. However, author Nicolas Carr (2010) makes an interesting point. He states "the shift from paper to screen doesn’t just change the way we navigate a piece of writing. It also influences the degree of attention we devote to it and the depth of our immersion in it” (p. 90). There is something about printed material that carries more authority.

Students can access many reference sources from one computer terminal

•  Ian Brown also interviewed a librarian, Carole Moore. She said "we know a lot these days; we just don't know where we learned it. The source of information you're using, the evaluation of that source, how you use it, how you respect it and cite it – that's all what we call informational literacy. It has been more of a problem in the information age then ever, because there's so much information out there, and it's hard to know where it comes from. On the Internet it all looks the same.” (p.1-2).  Students also need good information literacy skills to work through the sources and a guide, like a TL, to keep them on track.
• For a well rounded research experience I believe it is important that students know how to and use both electronic and print resources. Susie Allen quotes Andrew Abbott in her article as saying “the key thing to understand is that good researchers use more of both" (p.1).

It's more fun than traditional print references and therefore it motivates students to search more deeply

• Kids are naturally drawn to technology. However, if the assignment they are given to research for is dull and uninteresting, it doesn't matter what they use to find the information, it is not going to be a valuable learning experience and they will not be motivated to "search more deeply". 

Conclusion

Again, like in my previous blog, I think a balance of both printed and electronic reference sources is important in the library. They both have their advantages and disadvantages.  But like in the real world, students will be exposed to both and need to be equipped with the tool necessary to access the information they require.

Something fun I stumbled across...

Works Cited:

Allen, Susie. "Mansueto Library Celebrates Books in Digital Era." The University of Chicago 
                     Library News. 16 May 2011. Web. 01 June 2011. <http://news.lib.uchicago.edu
                     /blog/2011/05/16/mansueto-library-celebrates-books-in-digital-era/>.

Brown, Ian. "Don't Discard the Librarians." Globe and Mail. 20 May 2011. Web. 28 May 2011.
                     <http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/dont-discard-the-librarians
                     /article2030514/>.

Carr, Nicholas G. The shallows: what the Internet is doing to our brains. New York: W.W. Norton,
                     2010. Print.

Masterson-Krum, Hope. "SEARCH ENGINES: How Safe Are Kid-Safe Search Engines?." Teacher 
                     Librarian 29.1 (2001): 20. Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts.
                     EBSCO. Web. 10 June 2011.

Riedling's Approach to Evaluating Reference Sources

Initially I agreed with what Ben's critic of Reidling's Approach, that the first step should be to "define or describe the context in which the resource will be used. Who are the patrons? How old are they? What is the curriculum or areas of interest that are most in need to be addressed or supported? Once this is established then the other evaluation criteria can be more productively applied" (May 23, 2011). But once reading Reidling's Evaluation Process through a second time, I questioned this, as she states  "the scope should reflect the purpose of the source and its intended audience" (p. 19) under the heading content scope. She also touches specifically on appropriateness for the audience in her evaluation criteria of:

• biographical sources under cost: "always take into account the needs of the school and student population" (p. 48)
•  encyclopedias under scope: "the scope should be appropriate for the age group it claims to serve" (p. 68)
• geographical sources under scale: "the scale should be clearly defined and appropriate for the intended audience" (p. 76).

On another note, I would hope as educators we are already putting the needs of our students first and making decisions around what would benefit them the most unconsciously; we should be hot wired for this, or at the very least make a definite effort to train ourselves to be. However, an additional step at the beginning of the processes that reminders the TL of who the audience is, what areas of the curriculum will be addressed and supported, reading levels, etc. would only positively focus the search/evaluation not harm it in any way.

I examined the BC Ministry of Education document Evaluating, Selecting, and Managing Learning Resources (ERAC) upon Joanne's suggestion (May 27, 2011). It includes much of the desired attention to the student's needs that was discussed at great length as lacking in Reidling's Approach on the  "Riedling's Approach" discussion board. The ERAC includes easy to use checklists to use when evaluating, however they are not tailored to the different types of reference sources as Riedling's Approach is. There are only two types of checklists: a general  Learning Resource Evaluation and one for videos. I still think these checklists are valuable to help focus your search on your students' needs, especially since it takes into consideration the curriculum, students with special needs, aboriginal students and multiculturalism. However, because of its generic nature and lack of specificity to the different sources within the library, I would use it in conjunction with a more comprehensive and source specific guidelines, such as, Riedling's Approach. 

Additionally, to make Riedling’s approach easier to read and more accessible to refer back to as I move through the course, I created a matrix of the evaluation steps and criteria. So instead of having the information spread over several chapters, it is all on two pages.


Work's Cited:

"Evaluating, Selecting and Acquiring Learning Resources: A Guide." Educational Resource    
               Acquisition Consortium - ERAC. Educational Resource Acquisition Consortium - ERAC,
               2008. Web. 04 June 2011. <http://www.bcerac.ca/proLearning/documents/ERAC_WB.pdf>.

Riedling, Ann. Reference Skills for the School Library Media Specialist: Tools and Tips. Worthington, 
               OH: Linworth, 2005.

Another option for "The Way of the Future"?

Wow, pretty amazing. The University of Chicago have spent a fortune investing in preserving their printed resources. This library is thus proof that libraries are not obsolete in terms of the printed resource and is not conceding completely to the digital world. Susie Allen's article on the new library entitled "Mansueto Library celebrates books in digital era" (2011), makes an interesting argument for this:

In spite of the abundance of resources online, most researchers have not turned away from printed works. Indeed, when sociologist Andrew Abbott began a study of library use at UChicago, he discovered a strong correlation between the use of print and digital resources. “The model that people have in their minds is that the world is made up of conservatives who don’t use electronic stuff and radicals who do, but that’s not true at all,” says Abbott, the Gustavus F. & Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in Sociology and the College. “The key thing to understand is that good researchers use more of both" (p.1).

This idea resonated with me because after reading many of the discussions about Reference Materials, I found many posts were either pondering the economic value of purchasing print reference materials vs. online materials or outright saying "why would we bother spending money on print reference materials?" (Jennifer P., May 28, 2011). For myself, I would feel that a library without a print reference section to be incomplete. Sure, I agree that accessing information from electronic sources, such as online dictionaries, has its benefits like ease of use, storage, continual updates, accessibility outside the library and multiple users at a time, but I still think it is important to have a current set of printed dictionaries as well. We should also take into consideration, that if we do not have a printed reference section we are not able to teach our students how to access information from any source other than electronic. This would be a disservice as locating information from print is a skill they will require later on in life. Some examples I can think of right now would be, finding something in a phone book, locating somewhere on a map, reading through a contract, accessing information from university textbooks, finding information about your car in its manual etc. Sure many of these examples are available in electronic form as well, but for the majority of the time they are still used primarily in print form , so students need to know how to access and use the information.

We also have to take into consideration if books are to go the way of the dinosaurs, what is the next thing to concede to technology? Librarians? One School district in Ontario seems to think so. Ian Brown speaks of this in his article entitled "Don't discard the librarians" (2011). According to Windsor-Essex Catholic School District in Ontario, teacher-librarians are dispensable. They announced their decision to “shut its school libraries and dump all but four of its library technicians” (p. 1). As for the books and resources – they will be relocated into the classrooms. The reasoning behind the cuts were the budget and the belief that libraries are obsolete in a digital age. Brown goes on to defend libraries stating “Human knowledge is now thought to double every five years. The need for a guide through that morass, for a knowledge concierge…is critical” (p.1). May seem ludicrous to image a library without a librarian, but twenty years ago the same could be said about a library without printed materials. This makes a person ponder if printed materials are so easily rationalized away and replaced, how easy would it be to do so with TLs throughout all the schools?

In closing, back to the Mansueto Library, the architects and designers of it have found a way to minimize the need for space by incorporating the newest technology, but have not limited the access to printed materials. Not something we could ever hope to obtain, on this scale, within our school libraries but none the less a very futuristic look and design of a library.


Works Cited:

Allen, Susie. "Mansueto Library Celebrates Books in Digital Era." The University of Chicago 
                     Library News. 16 May 2011. Web. 01 June 2011. <http://news.lib.uchicago.edu
                     /blog/2011/05/16/mansueto-library-celebrates-books-in-digital-era/>.
Brown, Ian. "Don't Discard the Librarians." Globe and Mail. 20 May 2011. Web. 28 May 2011.
                    <http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/dont-discard-the-librarians
                     /article2030514/>.