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.
"Drool" is good!
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