Practical Experienced!!

So I have had no holiday but I am now two thirds of the way through my last ever subject for this course!
I am so excited.

The prac report has been sent but I thought I might share my perosnal reflection here...

Being placed in a public library could not have provided a more alien experience to my own work as a teacher-librarian. While many of the processes and core work are the same, the scale cannot be compared. Undertaking my placement at the end of my teacher-librarian studies has had both its positive and negative aspects. On the down side I have already been working as a teacher-librarian for over a year and have come into my own habits and understanding of what it is to be a librarian. So I was quite apprehensive about undertaking the placement. What I have come to realise is the value of the placement experience lies in its ability to offer a teacher-librarian in training the opportunity to partake in new and different experiences. Personally, it also meant working with fully qualified and often very experienced librarians who were able to share their depth of library knowledge with me. This reminded me that I am not alone in the library world. Working in a school library can be an isolating experience as the teacher-librarian is often the only librarian. And while many of the librarians I met on placement did have specific roles within the library linked to cataloguing or collection management what was satisfying to see is that all librarians are linked by the core role of providing access to information for their patrons.

The value of the placement experience also lies in its ability to allow one to put theoretical knowledge into practice. Until now organisational theory had been just that – theory. In a school the library is not really an organisation in itself, but rather one component of the larger school organisation. Thus as a teacher-librarian, while I manage some staff and make some decisions, the strategic plans and goals stem from the school organisation rather than the library. This is completely different I feel to how most libraries, and how Penrith library in particular, see themselves. The placement experience has allowed me to see that a similar relationship exists between a public library and its governing body, the council. However, a public library seems to act more autonomously and this is something I think has value, and would add value to my own library. It highlights the idea of the librarian as leader – another concept which until now I had only seen in theory. While I had understood that the teacher-librarian should be a leader, until the placement experience I had not seen how this was possible. The placement experience has reinforced one aspect of the role of the teacher-librarian and that is that all librarians, including teacher-librarians, need to be advocates for their libraries and their users.

I think the greatest value of this placement experience for me is that it has also led me to consider what I believe the core role of a teacher-librarian to be. It has made me realise that I want to be, a teacher-librarian, not just a librarian.

Imagine me sobbing...

I have just had a look at some other Professional Portfolios and I think I am going to be sick.

For example  http://abarbakoff.wordpress.com/


Am I supposed to create mine as if I am actually going to use it, or do I follow the assessment criteria, in which case it is not really a professional portfolio??

A work in progress...

I feel like everything I am writing at the moment, that perhaps even my life, should have an ellipsis after it...

In two days I begin my prac at Penrith library. I am excited to be introduced to a new kind of library environment, but at the same time I am feeling stressed about it because it means that I am not really getting a holiday. And after the term I have had I feel like I need one...

I am also working on the Professional Portfolio. I have managed to procrastinate a lot, fiddling over how it looks and how it is layed out. I have no idea what I am actually going to include, the readings I need or the supporting documents that should be attached...

I feel very argh...

...

Professional Portfolio – Take Two

So after writing that post and getting all my ideas together, I sent off an email to the supervising lecturer as per the subject outline.

And in my attempts to appear clever, and alliterate, I did not get my ideas across as clearly perhaps as they should have been.

As a result there has been some tweaking. 

Therefore I no longer alliterate (though give me time, I might be able to find another word for it before the portfolio has to be submitted), but I do now seem to have a clearer focus.

I will be exploring ‘What is the role of the TL?’ a question that I think encompasses all that I have studied over the past year and a half. Within the broad, and perhaps unanswerable, sphere of that question I will be looking at Literature, Collaboration and Information Literacy.

Wish me luck…

The Final Frontier – otherwise known as the Professional Portfolio

With the new semester about to begin, and the end of this degree fast approaching, I thought it might be about time I got started on the major assignment.

In a fortnight I will be beginning my prac and I need to have it done before I go on holidays to Europe, so I have decided to shore up my ideas and get them off to Roy in order to be able to begin.

I thought it would be easy to choose the topics about which to write. But because I want to be clever this is proving a little more troublesome than expected. 

Here are my musings…

My head hurts but at least I think I know what I am doing.

Day Three Study Visit Canberra

Today I am tired and am looking forward to going home. That being said, today was also the best day we have had so far in my opinion.

My elective today was the University of Canberra library and the Lu Rees Australian Children's literature library housed there.

The Lu Rees library is like the best book shop you will never be able to buy anything from, and if I could work anywhere or set up my own library it would be exactly like Lu Rees. And the most amazing thing is that they do it on no budget at all. I am in awe!!!!!

The other great thing about this morning's session was learning about how UC deliver their information literacy program. As a TL in a high school I feel like my role is to prepare students for higher education and in many ways I would like to model my library on university rather than school ones.

Some things I saw that I would like to implement are librarians being 'on call' for faculties and having a research assistance desk.

We also went to the War Memorial today - who knew they had a library?! Heard some beautiful stories about donations of private records. If I worked there I think I would be crying every day.

Last day tomorrow, yay!

Day Two Study Visit Canberra

What have I learned?

Today gave me some time to reflect, mostly because we got a decent break and I wasn't so tired from walking up and down endless stacks.

So what do I think so far? Well here are a couple of thoughts...

There are many ways to get into 'library'. You don't need to know how to catalogue or index or check out books. You can just have a special interest in a subject or be good at mixing and using glue.

Some things are 'born digital'. How on earth do you store these things forever? Also does that mean any document made in word is born digital?

In Canberra libraries seem to only take the form of giant storage containers. Collecting for collections sake rather than to support the needs of users or for collections to ever be seen and used. What is the point of this? I feel like an aberration as I am happy to throw things away - shock horror!

And finally I can never be anything but a teacher-librarian because I hate cataloging. And that is all that other librarians do it seems.