Databases: An "Ah-ha Moment"

I look back on my University experience with a sigh. I received my BEd from the University of Alberta. Their program is a four year degree - two years of general arts or science courses, and two years of education courses. I remember stumbling through my research for history and earth science papers unaware of the library's databases. At first, most of my research was done through printed resources. I remember one time in particular going home to Kamloops to pull books on JFK for my American history paper from the public library. I was too intimidated by the enormous unknown campus library. Oh geez. Later my research turned more and more towards the web. It was not until my third year of university that I learned about the wonders of databases! During my laws and ethics education course, our professor took us on a "field trip" to the education library. The teacher-librarians walked us through the databases and directly taught us those much needed information literacy skills. My research world was changed. I look back on it now and am grateful the professor took time from lecturing to bring us to the library, but I was a little bitter that I was not equipped with these skills earlier on in my school career.

Now with taking these Library courses, educating myself further, and having this experience of being the lost student, it only motivates me that much more to ensure students have these vital skills before they reach the post secondary level.

It was only during this course did I become aware of the numerous databases our district subscribes to. It makes me wonder how many classroom teachers are also not aware of these, or if they are, how many of them are still not using them.

http://www3.sd73.bc.ca/general/content/district-digital-reference-library 

I am curious to know how much our district spends per year subscribing to these databases. However, like many people mentioned in their postings, this is not something companies make public or district's divulge. While I could understand many people's reactions of this being, as Chris put it "doesn't seem very fair" (July 4, 2011), I could not help but think, that this is a common way things are done in our society. When we go buy a car, we as a consumer have some room to negotiate. One person may walk away with a better deal than the next person on the exact same product. The company is not going to advertise the original deal as it sets a precedent. Later, Lori (July 5, 2011) was able to eloquently place into words what I was thinking.

First, as a former sales person I understand the need to keep prices confidential. While it is not "fair" to everyone concerned, businesses exist to make money. Incentives offered to some customers are often subsidized by others who either cannot reach the same economies of scale (discounts for very large orders), or lack the same skill at negotiating their contracts. No matter the reason, each district/school will make its decisions based on what they are prepared to pay or are able to pay. From the buyer's perspective, a true belief that they have reached the best price available (and every buyer wants to think they have) means that they'll "keep the supplier's price secret" in order to secure their price.

This is one of the reasons why I think it is wonderful that our district negotiates and pays for these subscriptions instead of leaving it up the the individual schools. Firstly, library budgets would not be able to afford it, especially this many databases, and secondly, it makes more financial sense to pool users in able to secure a better deal.

In closing, I think electronic databases are wonderful. When I went back to University for my Special Education Diploma, they helped me out immensely as a lot of research was required for the various assignments and papers and don't know what I would have done without them. Better late than never!


Works Cited:

School District #73. "District Digital Reference Library." Kamloops Thompson School District No. 
                    73. Board of Education of School District No. 73, 2009. Web. 05 July 2011. 
                    <http://www3.sd73.bc.ca/general/content/district-digital-reference-library>.

Encyclopedias

The great debate of:  if, when, how, and where to use Wikipedia has been going on ever since its creation. I remember many of my teachers in high school banned the use of it. They preferred printed resources or electronic encyclopedias. On a similar note, one teacher during my practicum advocated for the use of Wikipedia as she saw it as more authentic and reliable than the traditional encyclopedias. Her thought was traditional encyclopedias are written by a select few, while Wikipedia is continually being edited by millions of users, so it should be more authentic. Much like what Aaron referred to as a "collective human brain" (June 26, 2011). Although I can see the justifications behind both these frames of minds, I do not fully agree with either of them. One thing is for sure though, Wikipedia is widely popular. Yes - even I use it for some things.

Hillary shared a very common experience, one I have encountered myself, one that I have discussed with my TL and one that was mentioned in Chris Harris' (2007) article Can We Make Peace with Wikipedia? Hillary states that she tried to keep her students away from Wikipedia by providing them with alternatives, but she often found them going directly for it anyways (June 19, 2011). My TL does not allow her students to use Wikipedia at all, as she feels the information is unreliable, however she still "catches" her students using it. One day she got frustrated and challenged the student to see if he could find the information using World Book, since he said he tried already and could not. She of course was right, he could; not necessarily the best way to promote the use of World Book to her students though. Harris states that by "continually bad-mouthing Wikipedia to the very people who use it successfully makes us look a bit daft" (p. 2).  So is there a middle ground? Harris also states that "it would be much more productive to teach colleagues, students, and parents how to best use Wikipedia... Librarians can foster educated, high-end users who verify Wikipedia entries using the history and discussion tabs" (p. 2). This is something I need to teach myself how to do first!

I agree with one point that Jennifer says that "Wikipedia offers a great starting point to discuss accuracy and authority as well as the need for several sources" (June 18, 2011). This is an entirely different information literacy lesson, apart from allowing students to begin their research for their projects and assignments using this resource. I do not agree with Chris in using Wikipedia as "a starting point for an inquiry" (June 19, 2011). True, Wikipedia does give a good overview of a topic, but so do many other resources that have authority. I would rather my students start with one of these resources and be assured they are accessing reliable information. They can then go back and use Wikipedia, if they chose. At this point the students will hopefully be better equipped with a general understanding of the topic in order to analyze and critic the validity of the information found on Wikipedia.

That all being said, I agree with Harris that Wikipedia should not be banned, but used as a research tool. I also agree that students need to be taught directly those information literacy skills required to verify Wikipedia sources. Because many of the students that I have encountered do not have these skills, some I have even found cutting and pasting Wikipedia entries into their own work, I would not feel comfortable allowing them to access Wikipedia as their starting point.  While it is still important to continue to teach the older students about verifying information, it may sometimes seem like a loosing battle, especially with less and less library time available to teach them. The TL at one of my schools is trying to battle this problem with teaching these skills early. Although she spends time teaching all grades information literacy, she spent a great deal of time this year with the grade two class. She wants to see if this will make a difference in the student's research skills by the time they are in the intermediate grades. Already she has noted some of them are more effective researchers, or at least make better reference choices, than many of the grade sevens.

In closing, one more thought to ponder...
I my experience with using Wikipedia for research is a lot of the content is directly cut and pasted from other sources; this I have found is usually the case in terms of academic entries. I have found that popular culture or current events entries contain more originality in their prose. The editors are more likely to write the entries themselves and cite their sources instead of cutting and pasting directly.


Works Cited:

Harris, Chris. "Can We Make Peace with Wikipedia?" School Library Journal 53.6 (2007): 26.

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.