ETL503 - Budgeting

I think that budget management is something well within my capabilities. I think the hard thing about budgets will be lobbying for more money. Obviously the librarian thinks that spending money in the library is important but not everyone will view it that way. The other thing that I think will be hard is justifying the spending. As before it will be easy for the librarian to see the purchases as important but others might not.

            If the process of selection and acquisition is done properly and well, then the budget should justify itself.

            Some of Lamb and Johnson’s ideas are very pertinent for budgeting in my school. Initial expenditure seems to have waned and nobody really wants to go in our library anymore because it and the books look old. The only time that lots of students are in there is when it is raining. The other thing is that at the moment spending in our library is focused on fiction. For non-fiction and teacher texts KLA’s usually purchase their own books with their own budgets. Fiction is the focus as this is what students and teachers have identified as a want.

ETL503 - Acquisition

I think of all the things we have looked at so far Acquisition seems the easiest. And while you have to spend your money wisely by finding the best place to source materials, once you have established those sources as regular and reliable then I guess you would just keep going back to them.

At my school the current TL using a variety of suppliers for different text types. It seems like a quite complicated process on the suppliers side, but for the librarian things like Booko and The Book Depository seem like a nice central starting place for a librarian. However, I don’t see how this is very different from buying your books from a conglomerate bookstore.

ETL503 - Selection

I really identified with the summary of the collection development evaluation techniques provided by Latham and Poe “quality of content, ability to meet the need of the curriculum, relevancy, accuracy, availability in other and/or better sources and price.” And I consider this a good guideline for the selection process.

            So who selects? I think all stakeholders should have a say, especially in schools where different KLA’s have different needs. However, if the budget is in the hands of the librarian then the final decision should also fall with them.

            I think the diminishment of print is a result of the ‘post-literate’ society in which we now apparently live. Personally, I would want a combination of all three areas suggested by Arthur. I need print but realise that today’s learners are more comfortable with digital media.

            Moody discusses the idea of when selection (or non-selection) becomes censorship. Obviously not everything can be selected, but then the question becomes ‘what influences what is selected or not selected?’ And if it is a whisper in the ear, or fear of a community backlash, or a personal distaste for the particular material that influences the choice, then it is censorship. It’s not as if librarians deliberately choose texts that are going to offend or provide points of conflict. It is important that the librarian “defends and promotes intellectual freedom” (IFLA) and gives “unrestricted access to information and ideas” (ALIA). I agree that all issues, and all sides of those issues, need to be represented in libraries. And if an individual or group does not like it then they don’t need to borrow those resources. I think a librarian really needs to be aware of these threats to liberty. It seems very easy to fall into covert or unconscious forms of censorship.

            I guess overall selection needs to be diverse. Diverse materials, from diverse sources, to meet the needs of a diverse community.

The pressure of choosing these resources makes selection a very important part of the librarians job. Despite this immense responsibility, I think it could also be the most fun part too.

EER500 - Reseacrh Questions

Week two

Well I’ve decided on my research topic and completed Part A of the assignment.
I am really interested in NAPLAN and all the whoha and controversy that has surrounded its implementation and especially the reporting of its results.
Personally I cannot see any benefit in comparing the results of schools and so have decided to look into the validity and usefulness of the test.

Hence my questions are –

1.      What do National Testing Programs, like NAPLAN, indicate to educators about student development and learning?

2.      Are National Testing Programs, like NAPLAN, valid and useful forms of assessment?

3.      Is there a more valid and useful alternative form of assessment that could replace NAPLAN?

And my final one –

What do National Testing Programs, like NAPLAN, indicate to educators about student learning and development, and are these National Testing Programs, like NAPLAN, valid and useful forms of assessment?

Week One: Intro to Educational Research

As I read through Chapter 4 of Bryman I felt relieved that I had picked a course I would be able to undertake. To me, the steps to source articles seem very logical. However, I did struggle with the concept of an evidence based research article. Having to look online for sources has been both beneficial and difficult. There is a wealth of knowledge out there,  but finding exactly what I need takes some trial and error.

As for Chapter 3, that was so helpful for the assignment. Figure 3.1 where Bryman explains the steps in selecting research questions was invaluable and helped me order my thinking in a logical manner. Even so, I still took a while to decide exactly what my questions would be.

ETL503 School Collection Managment

Module one

I think the thing that has struck me most from the reading for Module One is that people out there in the field of Teacher Librarianship think it is going the way of the dinosaurs.

For me, I think the variety of resources now available suggests that having someone to navigate the information is needed more than ever.

Even though I am supposedly part of the post-literate generation, I don’t really understand how this works. Personally, if I walked into a library and it didn’t have books I think I would freak out. Teachers and students need a physical place to congregate even if they are going to use digital resources.

I think it is the role of the teacher librarian to develop and maintain a collection that supports all forms of literacy and help students to develop skills in being discerning of all forms of information.

I think there is a place for both collection management and collection development. For me collection management suggests meeting the needs of the library users by acquiring new resources all the time. As part of development, a librarian would need to have a sense of who the library using community was, as suggested by Bishop, and to develop resources that are suitable to that audience. In a high school I see this as an ongoing process as students and teachers are always coming and going and reflecting the social milieu. Collection management is also an important way of describing the process of meeting the needs of library users. However, it feels like a more stagnant term. I think it will be most influenced by Kennedy’s reasons for library demise – that is, lack of funding. Collection management may be the way of the future as librarians seek to maximise what they have as they may be unable to get anything new.

Resources are the library’s main work and thus development and management of them will always be important.

Blog One

This is not the first blog I have ever done.
But a new university degree calls for a new blog - so here goes.

I'm not really sure what I should be doing with this at the moment as I have not started the unit for which a blog is called for.

So I guess in these early stages this will just be a place where I air my thoughts on the units I am doing currently, that is EER500 and ETL 503.

LM