Blog 2: Position and role of Reference material services in a school library

Retrieved from Google

The Role of a Teacher Librarian has been evolving over the past two decades, as I have mentioned in my blog post How Teacher Librarians Share Their Knowledge;

       “A librarian’s area of expertise is information management; in the twenty first century Librarians are information providers, consultants, curriculum activist, instructional designers, instructional leaders, production specialist and most importantly teachers. That is a very long list of the roles and responsibility of a Teacher Librarian to accomplish on their own” (Martin, 2017).

So how can one Teacher Librarian accomplish all those roles in a 5-hour workday? Well with all the discussion with other Teacher Librarians and school districts it is nearly impossible. The school community needs to work together to teach students how to successfully utilize the Learning Commons and resources that are available to them.

The collection is the foundation to a Learning Commons. First of all an Educated Librarian importance to a reference collection needs skills, the skills of “collection development of building, managing, maintaining, and evaluating” these skills will make a space a functional learning environment (Loertscher). How does a Teacher Library start to develop a successful reference collection? Through “Communication between the school library media specialist and the student” is an important aspect to a successful proficient Learning Commons (pg. 102).

Reference interviews are a great starting pointing to opening up the communication between the TL and student body in figuring out what reference materials are needed. There are three forms of reference interviews: research projects, readers’ advisory and read-reference, each one of these interview can be very helpful depending on the age of students you are interviewing or for what purpose you are interviewing. For instance read-reference is short factual information mostly coming from dictionaries, encyclopedias, which I feel, are guided for middle age to higher-level students. Research project interviews contain in-depth coverage of a topic; this form I feel would be guided towards higher-level learners. While readers’ advisory is a form of recommending pleasure reading which can be for all ages. I mean yes you could use all three forms for any age and that is where your creativity will become present on conducting successful interviews. I think it would be very beneficial for a new Teacher Librarian to conduct a reference interview at the start of the school year and each consecutive year after that to stay current and to date.

There are all different forms of references and the validity for various ages: open access resources as well as print resources. When it comes to open access to resources I am in favor of this position if I were to picture my own Learning Commons. I believe that it is important to have availability of resources for all students to access at anytime. I understand that many libraries, such as my current schools, do not allow students to check out resources and can only access them within the library facility. When you have created an open space, I think it would be ok for printed resources to be open within the school itself, so in other words not allow students to take the resources home, but they can take them to their classroom for in-school checkout loans. As for electronic resources I think this is even more important for open access. This gives students the opportunity to log into a schools database or log into school subscriptions beyond the school walls. Many research projects or curiosity can taken place outside of the classroom constraints and with having access to open electronic resources allows students to grow and evaluate at their own pace.

 

Retrieved from Google

The Library Association of Alberta states the role of a “teacher-librarian's day can involve instruction in reading and research as well as maintaining, and updating the school collection.” In other words they are a teacher first and then librarian second who work closely with all teaching staff. All the different types of references materials have a special place in a Learning Commons, establishing policies and procedures and physical access only enhances the support students in their exploration.  

Works Cited

Library Association of Alberta. LAA Position on School Libraries. Retrieved Jan 25 2018 from: http://www.laa.ca/page/news/ezlist_item_4adfd346-c40e-4a3a-99f0-77973bb32d1d.aspx?_s=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.laa.ca%2Fpage%2Fnews%2Fezlist_item_4adfd346-c40e-4a3a-99f0-77973bb32d1d.aspx%3F_s%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.laa.ca%2Fpage%2Fnews%2Fezlist_item_4adfd346-c40e-4a3a-99f0-77973bb32d1d.aspx%3F_s%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.laa.ca%2Fpage%2Fnews%2Fezlist_item_4adfd346-c40e-4a3a-99f0-77973bb32d1d.aspx%3F_s%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.laa.ca%2Fpage%2Fnews%2Fezlist_item_4adfd346-c40e-4a3a-99f0-77973bb32d1d.aspx%3F_s%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.laa.ca%2Fpage%2Fnews%2Fezlist_item_4adfd346-c40e-4a3a-99f0-77973bb32d1d.aspx#.WmqJ9pM-dPM

Loerstscher. Electronic Materials for children and Young Adults. Collection Development. Retrieved Jan 25, from: http://eduscapes.com/electronic/17.htm

Martin, A. “How Teacher Librarians Share Their Knowledge.” Web Blog Post. Teacher Librarian. Blogger, Oct 2017. Web. 2 Feb. 2018.

Riedling, Ann, Reference skills for the school library media specialist: Tools and tips, (Third Edition). Linworth.