Resources vs Reality

Reality vs Resources

In the big picture of Education we are selecting and evaluating reference materials to support the information literacy development in our students.  Ultimately our collections should “answer the questions” and provide a balance of direct information and referrals to other sources as Riedling (2005) outlines in chapter 2. 

What I found optimistic was the suggested weeding process and the appropriate timelines given for the accuracy of materials.  I agree that after 5 years the information may be outdated in a Science text, however I know that new texts are rarely purchased with school budgets. Staffing changes, tracks, and curriculum changes are also going to impact usage of certain collections.

I also thought the comment made about taking the books to the dumpster highly controversial. Why can’t students use the pictures in the book and at what point is something better than nothing? Is having a set of encyclopedias and doing a compare and contrast activity to World Book online appropriate, or learning about headings, sub headings, chapter summaries, pictures, bolded words being in the glossary not valuable lessons that can be taught with these outdates resources if there is nothing current available?

There are also so many subjective factors that go into how the resources are used. I think if the TL accesses student and teachers’ emotional domains and relationships are built; the library has more of a chance of being well used.  It is a subjective comment to make but I know in various schools I have worked in my library use was directly dependent on my relationship with the TL and the students relationship with the TL.

Linking one’s individual teaching style to reference sources is also a factor. Why purchase a magazine subscription if students aren’t accessing it and the TL isn’t promoting or engaging the students in it. Having said that perhaps time constraints don’t permit for extensive use of new resources, or integrating them into the existing program.

With regards to arrangement and presentation, I think that a library that is presented in an interesting engaging way to students is going to motivate them to access and use the library. Also library programs need to mirror resources. Battle of the books was an extremely successful program in one school I worked in. This was partly because the books were excellent but most importantly they were presented in such an interesting fun format. As districts employ professionals to purchase materials for all of the schools to create consistency they lost the vision that each school is unique in it's needs and teachers need a process to interact with the new materials or resources. 

I think collection organization and maintenance is important, I am just walking through the personal biases I have about school libraries and thinking about how I will set up my own school library one day.

 Of course I would like it to answer everyone’s questions, have interesting displays and inviting opportunities with a healthy budget to weed as often as is recommended…