Conversations with district colleagues

I had a very practical response (see below) from our district support teacher librarian and want to share it. In the busy world I asked the question asked of us, of a TL how are professionals choosing and selecting resources and what issues are there? It was refreshing to see that new REVIEWED books are coming out, the ministry document has books that are 5 years old plus listed. It makes sense about the Canadian content and our market being smaller hence a smaller selection of books. Perhaps with Worldbook online we will see more reference tools to support the Canadian curriculum. The shame is even if they exist, can our system afford them and afford the technology support to maintain them.


Re selection of Canadian materials.   There are a couple of magazines/journals that specifically focus on Canadian resources - "Resource Links" and "Quill and Quire".  Teacher-librarians would also be checking the catalogs of Canadian publishers to see what new titles are coming out.   The Association of BC Book Publishers puts out a catalog each year of books that are recommended for schools - the titles are reviewed by BC teacher-librarians for quality and appropriateness to support the curriculum.  I have also found it useful to attend publishers' displays (usually at conferences) to look over items in person.  If someone sees or buys something that looks great they will tell others - word of mouth works well!

The main issue would be that as Canadian libraries and, especially, Canadian school libraries are such a small market that publishers can not afford to produce selection tools targetted just for them.  Also, to be realistic, there is less money going to school libraries to even buy resources.  I think most teacher-librarians make an effort to have Canadian titles in the collection.