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.

Day One Study Visit Canberra

Well he day is over - finally. It was really long and busy and I'm not sure yet if it was interesting.

Like I said before (I think, at least I know I've thought it) one of the problems with this visit and with this unit in general is that it is across a number of library degrees which means it cannot be relevant to everyone all the time.

We spent six hours at the National Library. Six hours! I know there are five floors and over two hundred kilometres of books, but there are also few chairs and many many stairs. I did enjoy seeing what they had and getting the behind the scenes tour, but six hours?!

Then there was a school visit, which I would have enjoyed more had we not got there at three thirty and gone over by half an hour. Their space was interesting and well used. I liked many of the ideas the TL presented but I am now so so tired.

Tomorrow Parliament House, a two hour break and film archives, oh my!

Canberra Study Visit 2012

Well here I am in Canberra.

Tomorrow I begin a four day tour of canberra's libraries and archives. I would have preferred to go on the Sydney visit but I cannot afford it as it is not in the holidays plus my wedding is the Sunday after.

Am I excited? I am not really sure. I'm a bit stressed and a bit worried. I think once I get started I might feel better. I do see the point of visiting other libraries but as part of a masters of teacher-librarianship I think school libraries would be better. I feel the same about the upcoming work experience, that should be in an education setting too.

Will update tomorrow... Maybe things will be good.