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.

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.