Assessment Item 1: The Role of the Teacher Librarian in Practice with Regard to Principal Support

What a Teacher Librarian does and his/her impact within a school community is fundamentally linked to the level of support from the Principal. Potentially, with Principal support a Teacher Librarian can be a collaborative teaching partner, a technology driver, a school leader, an innovator and a strategist that is a valued team member of the whole school community (Harvey II, 2009). Without such support, the role of the practicing Teacher Librarian can be little more than a baby sitting service (Martin, 2010) or a role relegated to providing relief from face to face for other teachers (Scheffers, 2009), both duties that limit opportunities for collaborative teaching and for being professionally valued and respected.

Gaining Principal support when it does not currently exist is challenging but not unattainable. It is common knowledge that many school budgets are limited. Developing the respect of the Principal is essential if the Teacher Librarian is going to successfully "compete"for program and resource funding that allow the Teacher Librarian to be valued as an asset to the school community, rather than a cost (Spence, 2006).  Evidence based practice is one effective way to build such respect. Dr. Ross Todd, an advocate for Teacher Librarians actively proving their value to teaching and learning within a school, states that to do so involves being outcomes focussed. Focussing on providing evidence of what students achieve and will achieve through engagement with innovative, collaborative and critically reflective Teacher Librarians and their embedded programs will help establish why they matter (Todd, 2008).

Further, building connections with influential people within a school community can facilitate Principal support through positive feedback. In a response posted on the School Libraries 21C blog, Ian Maclean (an experienced and influential Teacher Librarian at Penrith Public School) explained, that for him,  it is the support from across the executive leadership of the school that is crucial to embedding the Teacher Librarian into the curriculum through collaborative teaching with time for collaborative planning and programming (Maclean, 2009). Principals are extremely busy, working long hours (Riley, 2011) and may be removed from the classroom environment. Collaboration in the classroom with influential teachers thus, can provide models for good teaching in practice and in doing so, highlight the value of an effective Teacher Librarian to the Principal. 

As professional credibility within the school environment develops, Principals are more likely to give support for programs that enable Teacher Librarians to work collaboratively across the curriculum and develop school wide shared visions of information literacy, management of digital footprints, cybersafety, resource selection, scholarly principles and practice, ethical use of information and much more (Oberg, 2006).

In conclusion, with support from the Principal and his/her executive leadership team, the role of the Teacher Librarian  is one where the Teacher Librarian is teacher, collaborator, resource locator and streamliner, innovator, professional development provider, technology leader and role model, team player, negotiator and strategist (Harvey II, 2009)... an amazingly diverse, exhilarating and respected role that is a positive and integral part of a whole school community.

References

Harvey II, C. (2009). What should an administrator expect a school library media specialist to be?  

    Retrieved from http://hoorayforbooks.pbworks.com/f/lms+evaluation+ideas.pdf

I Maclean (2009, Jul 30). School libraries 21C:  (3b) Identify strategies / initiatives / support at the
    school level[weblog comment]. Retrieved from  
    http://schoollibraries21c.edublogs.org/group-3-questions/question3b/

Martin, J. (2010). Inquiry into school libraries and teacher librarians in Australian schools. 
     [Submission]. Retrieved from
     http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House_of_Representatives_Committees?url=ee/schoollibraries/subs/sub38.pdf

Oberg, D. (2006). Developing the respect and support of school administrators. Teacher Librarian, 
    33(3), 13.

Riley, P. (2011). Principal health and well being survey: 2011 Interim report. Retrieved from
     http://www.principalhealth.org/2011_Principal_HWB_Interim%20Report.pdf

Scheffers, J. (2009). Collaborative leadership - a primary perspective, Scan, 28(4), 8-11.

Spence, S. (2006). Invest in school libraries to create 21st century learning communities. Access, 20(3), 17-20.

Todd, Dr. R. (2008). The Evidence-Based Manifesto for School Librarian.  Retrieved from
     http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6545434.html 

ETL401 Topic 1:UsIng Learning Tools

Introduction
As I work at another university, I decided to investigate search results across both universities so as to gain a better idea as the databases and print collections etc. that impact each Library's search results and how differing results are impacted by the parameters set behind the scenes.

I think it salient to remember/to understand that searching and the search results are limited by what a particular university library holds or subscribes to. While that sounds obvious, it highlights a limitation in many people's understanding of their search results. For example, when possibly trying to do a literature review, like one students may need to do for their IB or when myself, as a Librarian, may do one for work or study purposes.

Primo Search

I never start out with a simple search so I went straight to the advanced search option and typed in teacher librarian and collaboration (as I believe it the most important roles for TLs within their whole school community)...

Results - CSU: 4249 and UNSW:3579 

However, when I delved further into the results, I noticed that while I had used advanced search and had teacher librarian in one of the search boxes, I found that my results were based not on AND (as I had presumed) but were using the boolean operator OR (infuriating!). So I "" teacher librarian and...

Refined results - CSU:1074 and UNSW:976 - what a difference.

What is also of interest (to me anyway), is that the Refine by Resource Type option on the left navigation bar is different - CSU sorts alphabetically, UNSW sorts by number of results. Does it matter? I think so and knowing how many users won't go past a page or two in Google, same concept applies here...if you can't see it listed, you could miss some relevant results. I prefer the alphabetical list as it applies some common sense to searching. 

UNSW Refine My Results by Resource Type 

CSU Refine My Results by Resource Type

The ability to limit my search results further by options down the left navigation bar make it easy to refine the search to a more usable result set. What is also of note, is that with Primo Search being an overarching search tool across many ubiquitous database sets, some of the search results are duplicates. And even if you turn deduping off, book chapters will pop up in the results possibly as well as the whole book. Fine for me who understands but I am know it is confusing to students trying to search usually with limited time frames.

Managing my Information Sources
I prefer to set up and link to my sources from Primo Search (one stop shop approach) . I also like to simplicity of exporting into my EndNote Web Account that I have set up. While I know it has limited functionality as compared to the full version of EndNote 6 for Windows or EndNote 4 for Mac, I need to be able to seemlessly link to my source list without needing to go to DropBox. 

Blogging my forum posts for ETL401

After typing away madly in my ETL401 Topic 1 Forum, I've decided that I am going to also add my posts to this blog for ease of access (after I finish the subject) and so that I can use for other professional development purposes. Thinking I might use some of my discussions from my posts as the impetus to run classes, share knowledge and stimulate further discussion with colleagues. I also think having all my posts in one spot will be a great way for me to remember all that I have learnt in this course and to reflect on my thoughts and perspectives at the time.

I am also going to bookmark any sites, other social media streams and freely accesible journal articles over at my Diigo Library at http://www.diigo.com/user/skiinglibrarian, just like I said I would a few blog posts back.

These are all my attempts at managing my digital footprint and streamlining my scholarly (and not so scholarly) communications.

ETL401:Thinking About the Broader LIS Profession

Viewing the slideshow by Pew titled Libraries 2020 got me to comparing some of the statistics that they highlighted about Internet Usage in 2000 in the USA and what I was doing then. 0% used social media but I can remember at the time I was working in a public library as the Online Services Librarian and we were already chatting with our clients and I was using RSS feeds to collate all the information I was already pulling from icons in the industry. We were trying to make conversations with our clients...they just weren't listening or most probably didn't really want to chat/interact with the Library. Anyway, just got on the internet wayback machine here to reminisce a bit about what I used to do then (or in 2002 when the snapshot was taken!)...too funny, I remember getting written up in a SLNSW report for creating illogical navigation names like iBranch....hmmmm, thinking we were a bit before our time really! You can find the wayback machine here if you want to have some fun.

There are so many interesting stats on this slideshow but I found it particularly interesting to see the increase usage of search engine from 35% to 54% daily usage. The slides went on to note that most people believe the info they find through search engines is accurate and reliable.. I think the issue for the LIS profession is that we know this belief could be challenged but do users care? Many times it is the not that the information is not accurate rather, it is incomplete...the search engine gives the user an incomplete picture of what they may be searching for. Unfortunately, for the LIS profession if people don't know what they don't know/don't find does it matter? Yes, if they are academics or researchers but the rest of us...

Anyway, while looking at the Libraries 2020 Slideshare, I discovered a related Slideshare presentation from Petaluma Secondary Librarians about "What we do and why it matters"...great overview of a school library and its benefits to the whole school community.

Search by Image...Am I the Only One Who Doesn't Know About This Tool?

I am in the middle of completing a Power Searching with Google online course and Class 4 has just shocked me....I did not know you could do this with Google Images. Apparently this tool has been around since June 2011...ouch.  Thinking that this image recognition tool might be USA specific, I dragged in a photo I took when I was in Tahoe (skiing of course). Look at the results below

Tahoe Image Results Using Google Images

I was pretty impressed by the results I got. Some fantastic shots around Lake Tahoe, California and Nevada...makes me wish I was skiing!

Also found out that you can search images you may find on the web by right clicking on the image, copying the image url then pasting the url into the search bar. Your results should find you information about original image as well as related images.

From a teaching perspective it gives teachers a greater ability to ensure students find their images from copyright ok'd sources such as Flick CC. The tool will also help find images similar to what a student may have already found. This could be very useful in a subjet such as Visual Arts when looking for inspiration. Or what about wanting to find out about an artist's work? Drag in an image and you should get results that lead you to relevant information about an artist.

I wonder if it might also be useful if you are looking for someone (famous, infamous or not so famous). Drag in their image and see what you find...I'm off to try it with a picture of me...after I pass my Class 4 test.