ETL 503 assignment 2 reflection

As the blog is a reflective process and tool, i thought i'd share an abridged version of PART C.

This exercise has proved a great focal tool for assessing and examining collecting practices and the way in which these can purposely or inadvertently affect the collection, its development and ability to adequately support teaching and learning in a specific school context.

My understanding of resource management and its facets has been widely extended and the interrelationship between the collection and a comprehensive policy that inherently links to the needs of the school was both developed and reinforced. Developing the purpose and goals of the collection forced me to consider the role, aims and priorities of the collection, and if, or how, these priorities aligned with the needs and expectations of the School and library users. This consolidated concepts raised in assessment 1 and Hughes-Hassell and Mancall (2005) and Bishop’s (2007, 2007a) approach and focusing on understanding the user and their needs.

The importance of gaining a thorough understanding the collection and its strengths and weaknesses was reinforced as essential to assessing what the collection priorities need to be. This is linked to an increased understanding of the relationship between evaluation, priorities for the collection and learning and teaching outcomes and the way in which knowledge of these are imperative to writing effective policy, without which the policy simply reflects the current status rather than providing a framework for the future.

Perhaps the most profound outcome of undertaking the assessment of the School collection and policy (or lack thereof) was the absolute necessity to weed the collection and the importance of having this as a key element of collection management (Baumbach and Miller, 2006) which again highlighted the need to evaluate the collection, an area of collection management that until completing this task I had neither adequately considered nor assigned the central role in collection management it deserves.

REFERENCES

Baumbach,D & Miller, L. (2006). Less is More: A Practical Guide to Weeding School Library Collections. Chicago: ALA Editions.

Bishop, K. (2007). Community analysis and needs assessment. In The collection program in schools : concepts, practices and information sources (4th ed.) (pp. 19-24). Westport, Conn.: Libraries Unlimited.

Bishop, K. (2007a). Evaluation of the collection. In The collection program in schools :

concepts, practices and information sources (4th ed.) (pp. 141-159). Westport, Conn. : Libraries Unlimited.

Hughes-Hassell, S., & Mancall, J. (2005). Collection Management for Youth: Responding to the needs of Learners. Chicago, IL: American Library Association.

musings

so ... my aim to continue regularly blogging has failed. But as i like to procrastinate, i thought I'd add some now instead of working on my assignment.

I am well into the ETL503 resourcing the curriculum.

One of the things that captured me was this notion of being in a post-literate society. What! No way! I hear you mutter

well actually i think i agree. Not in the purest sense of the word, that is, as that writing and reading are no longer necessary or common. But in the sense that the written word is not always now the first point for information.

I've come rather late to the "i" revolution, but i have to say that since getting my ipad i have changed the way i view and use technology and information. I now often find myself watching TV while surfing the Internet or writing emails and often now my first response for information is from the Internet not print (though i am of course choosing reliable sources!) and that often i am using visual images, video, photo podcast etc rather than reading. And one must also consider social media and the way in which it is being used to convey information in new ways.

Do i think the book is dead. No way! although i can read a book on my ipad - its not as comfortable as holding a book while lying down in bed - and lets face it there's nothing nicer than opening a book and snuggling down with a friend (a novel that is!)