Professional Placement Reflection

As part of ETL507 I have been required to undertake a 10 day professional placement. I have just completed my 2 weeks in a large regional independent secondary school. I was able to do it here as I am not currently working in a school environment.

Reflection

The placement confirmed my desire to work in a school library and while on placement I was able to put into practice many of the ideas and skills learnt throughout the MEd course. It was exciting to be able to apply ideas, knowledge and skills in a school library setting and to have these affirmed and appreciated by an experienced teacher-librarian. It confirmed many of my ideas about the potential of the teacher-librarian role and the dynamic and friendly disposition required of an effective teacher-librarian. It also highlighted the need to be abreast of any and all technology utilised within the library and the challenges that problems with hardware and software can create and the need for the teacher-librarian to be responsive to these. In this respect it gave me a better understanding of the level of technical knowledge and support that librarians are often expected to be able to provide and the need to ensure that as a librarian you are aware of current trends in technology and hardware and software.

The opportunity to take part in the acquiring and processing of resources lead to not only a greater understanding of these aspects and the opportunity to discuss the impact of these processes and the need to ensure that the users’ needs are always at the forefront. This was a valuable reminder of this aspect of the role which sat well with those experiences gained on the study visit and the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) (IFLA, 1998) approach.

Along with gaining insight into the running of the library, I was able to see the way in which teachers perceive the library and the role of the teacher-librarian and how this impacts on the ability of the teacher-librarian to gain traction to collaborate and or co-develop resources. It was clear that the ability to perform this was reliant of the personalities of the teachers and the area in which they teach. This suggests the need for advocacy and the importance of librarians in providing professional development or ‘how I can help you’ sessions to raise awareness and increase collaborative opportunities.

The placement also highlighted the specialist knowledge that librarians possess in regards to resource and information provision and the management aspects of the library role. Having a non-trained teacher replacing the teacher-librarian demonstrated that this role is perhaps undervalued and misunderstood but again reinforced the need for teacher-librarians to be proactive. This clearly tied in many aspects of the MEd course in terms of being a leader, leading change and using research and policies as a way of being proactive in advocating the importance of the library and appropriately qualified staff.

REFERENCES

      International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) (1998). Functional requirements for bibliographic records: Final report. Munich: K.G. Saur Verla. 2014 

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.