467 Information Services I Theme 1 Blog
The Foundation of Reference Services
Before this course, I rarely gave references or a reference collection much thought, mostly because I have little experience with these kinds of materials. I am in my first teacher librarian position this year in a small school located in a village outside of my city. Up until now I primarily TOCed and had the unique opportunity of working in almost all elementary school libraries in my district. Most of these libraries did not have a reference section at all, and those that did had a few old books that seemed to remain untouched by staff and students. I discovered most elementary teacher librarians were removing these resources due to cost and lack of circulation. This observation is based on my limited definition of reference materials, such as dictionaries, thesauruses, atlases, and encyclopedias. I never fully understood, outside of those materials, what made a reference a reference and I found myself questioning what other resources fell under this definition.
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Just after this course started, I began weeding my non-fiction section. The collection is very outdated and from what I have been told, has not been weeded in decades., if ever. Unfortunately, it was immediately apparent our library collection, specifically the nonfiction and reference section, is below standards according to the CASL’s description for library collection standards as materials are outdated, rarely weeded, and do not meet the needs of the school, nor can they be replaced with the limited budget (2003).
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“It is better to have a small but relevant and up-to-date collection of materials than a large collection that is neither useful nor of good quality” - Riedling & Houston, 2019
I do not think a quote could have better summed up my current situation. The shelves are bursting with outdated non-fiction books and we are running out of room for new materials. There are only a handful of reference materials and all are outdated and rarely circulated. I think this is in part due to the collection being so large and cumbersome for students to search through.
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When considering digital and print sources, it became apparent our library is lacking digital resources. I was not initially surprised by this as my experience is that most elementary schools do not have many digital resources available to students. As Riedling and Houston state, elementary schools tend to have more print references as students are too young to effectively navigate the internet (2019). While I agree with this statement, the readings in this theme motivated me to look for age appropriate quality digital resources. Given the outdated print collection and the limited budget for replacing print materials, the need to tap into digital resources is significant.
As Reidling and Houston point out, it is critical to know the needs of the school community and important to collaborate with teachers during collection development (2019). I admit I had not considered collaborating with teachers on the selection process until now. As there is not enough funding to replace more than a handful of resources at this time, I felt it made sense to approach teachers to determine which areas of the collection I should prioritize. Their feedback helped inform my decision making. In this theme, we discussed various frameworks for research. Most teachers in my school, including myself, refer to The Points of Inquiry framework for guidance. I feel this is important to consider when developing a collection rich in a variety of formats and reading levels, and creating text-sets that lend themselves well to the inquiry process.
Bitmoji (2022). Personal Bitmoji image. Bitmoji.com https://www.bitmoji.com/
Canadian Association for School Libraries (CASL) 2003. Achieving Information Literacy Standards for School Library Programs in Canada. Retrieved from http://accessola2.com/SLIC-Site/slic/ail110217.pdf
Riedling, A. M., & Houston, C. (2019). Reference skills for the school librarian: Tools and tips. Libraries Unlimited.
Shutterstock (2022). Image Item ID: 1524872180. Shutterstock, 2022.https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/closed-picture-blur-oldfashioned-books-no-1524872180
Shutterstock (2022). Image Item ID: 700225975. Shutterstock, 2022. https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/back-view-little-pupil-library-boy-700225975
The Points of Inquiry. BC Teacher-Librarians' Association. (2018, October 23). Retrieved January 31, 2022, from https://bctla.ca/resources/point-of-inquiry/.
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Comments
I have a connection to your experience of reference materials in the elementary school learning commons. As a sub I see many schools and I have noticed it is very common to have a small reference section that includes some outdated dictionaries, maybe atlases, and perhaps one encyclopedia set-perhaps not. Often classes who regularly use these reference materials, such as the dictionaries, will have a set in their classes and not use the learning commons reference section at all.
What I commonly see, is that staff and students are using the non-fiction books as reference materials.The staff and students are comfortable browsing in this section or the teachers will pull a pile of non-fiction books to use in their class on a specific topic they are covering.
This leads me to reflect on the importance of the teacher librarian to communicate what reference materials are available for the school community to to use, but I do agree that it's difficult to maintain a current print reference section, perhaps digital reference materials can help balance this.