book.and.bloom

Introduction   When talking to my own children, I remind them that within my life's memory,  I would drive to the bank to access my money, drive to a store to buy records and CDs, rent movies at a store dedicated solely to that purpose. And I’m only 37 years old! The pace of technological advancement has accelerated and I can only imagine the range of change the students of today will experience in their lifetimes.   The internet has opened the world to possibilities unheard of back in the 1980s. I can now order groceries, liquor, furniture, toys and other items to be delivered directly to my home through my smartphone. I can play cards online with people I’ve never met, I can read books on line which define unfamiliar words for me as I read, I can find my soulmate on a dating site, a house on Kijiji, or a roommate on Facebook market.     According to Statistics Canada, as of 2018, “nearly 84% of Internet users [are] buying goods or services online” (2019)....

I think a major idea for me during theme three was about whether reference materials should be available physically in book form in the library or available digitally and online for student use. As I discussed in my response post to lesson 13, both formats offer distinct advantages to the user. I’ve tried to summarize the advantages and disadvantages of both formats in the chart below using reasons gathered from arguments made in the textbook, articles from theme three additional readings, discussion board comments and blogposts: Print Vs Digital Reference Materials   Print Reference Materials Electronic Reference Materials Advantages Disadvantages Advantages Disadvantages Easy for young readers to access Need frequent replacing to keep up to date Accessible outside of the library  Ad-heavy free reference websites Age-specific resources available  Underused section of the library Accessible outside of the school Expensive   Expensive to replace Ease of information ga...

Each morning the sun travels across our sky trying to chase down the moon, and each night the moon follows the same trajectory and tries close the gap. They are stuck in a cycle of eternal pursuit without conclusion. Somedays, as I learn more about the monumental task of managing and evaluating a reference collection, I feel as though I have entered a similar dichotomy. Teacher librarians will always be chasing relevant resources and those same resources will inevitably need to be replaced.   Theme Two In studying theme two I learnt about the basic requirements and the steps needed to take when evaluating resource materials. By reading the chapters from Riedling's Reference Skills for the School Librarian , I was given concrete examples of what constituted acceptable reference resources. This was complimented by Achieving Informational Literacy which provided examples for what below standard, acceptable and exemplary reference resources would look like. For a first year teacher-li...

I signed up for this course because it was a core course and required for the completion of the Teacher Librarianship Diploma at the University of British Colombia (UBC). The topic seemed interesting, but apart from a vague understanding of reference material that I had gleaned from my summer job as a page at our local community library, I had not given reference material much thought. As the weeks passed, I came to an understanding about the value of reference resources and started looking with interest for my school library’s reference materials. To my dismay, they were out of date, obsolete and all were scattered around the library like paper sheets in a windstorm. Once they were reunited, they formed a very sad and very embarrassing reference collection.   From this very limited reference resource section, I selected the  Dorling Kindersley Ultimate Visual Dictionary  for the purposes of this paper. I was drawn to evaluate this resource because it looks to be in quite...