OPAC – A Reflection

“The degree to which a library catalogue can be consulted easily by teachers and students is of great significance if teacher-librarians wish to encourage user-independence. A flexible catalogue will allow broader use of the school library.”

I definitely agree with the above statement. Students and teachers need the technological aspect of the library catalogue to be user friendly and they need to be able to approach it intuitively in order for it to be effective. Schools are very busy places and students and teachers need to be able to access the information they need quickly. If there is a delay or a cog in the system preventing success, the catalogue will not be used. A catalogue that is easy to access will make it more likely that students will use the library. The easier it is for students to learn the features of the program the more likely it is for students to use it independently. A catalogue that is flexible in accessing resources will strengthen the flow of information between the classroom and the library. By having easy access to both print and digital resources, the users will have access to an increased amount of information and this will help promote the development of information literacy skills. By having the catalogue available online 24/7, students will be more likely to access it because they can do so at a time that is convenient to them. By having flexible applications, the TL can examine the resources in the collection more critically to find better ways to meet the information needs of the users of the library. The ease in which the TL is able to use the various applications of the program determines the likelihood that those programs will be used to create a more efficient and effective library which will meet the information needs of its users.

My School's OPAC - Destiny

My school district uses Destiny and to be honest I had no idea how powerful the program was until I began this course and took the time to look at it. I teach grade one and I tend to get most of my books from the public library because their collection is so great and it is so easy to request books and have them all sitting on a shelf for me to pick up. However, our cataloguing program is really great and I am embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know that! Could I be the only one on staff who has missed this? I am going to have to ask others if they know about the great things Destiny will do and see if I am the only one who has missed the boat on this! For example, one of the great things I have learned is that when you search in a term you have a choice of getting the information from the print resources in the library or from websites. There is a tab at the top that you just click on and it will retrieve websites related to your topic. A summary will be given for the website as well as the grade levels that it would be appropriate for. One disappointment, however, is that one would think that all the content on these would be appropriate but I did notice that the advertisements on the sides of the websites are not always appropriate. For example, one search I did awhile ago had an advertisement box in the sidebar where you could rate your favourite porn. I was accessing the Destiny program from home, however, and so perhaps our school computers would have caught this and not allowed that to be shown. I will have to check that out. 

Another feature that is interesting about Destiny is that rather than a word search students can do a visual search by clicking on the visual tab. This presents them with 8 different images for topics such as animals, history, folk and fairy tales, etc. When you click on the image for the topic you want it will give you more images for more categories in this image. For example, when I clicked on history, it gave me three more image choices (exploration, Native Americans, pioneer life). When you click on the topic of your choice it lists the records in the collection that are related to that topic in the usual manner. It is nice that the covers of many books are shown so that non-readers can see the resource. I am not sure how useful this “visual” search is, but I suppose with younger learners who can’t spell yet this gives them an option to still do a search and identify a resource they want. They would still have the problem of having difficulty locating items by call number and they would need help with this step. The categories are rather limited and I suppose I should note the American bias as well, but I think this is something we’ve come to expect by now anyway when we buy from American companies.

The administrative options in Destiny seem really great. With the click of a button you can print so many useful pieces of data about the library collection. For example you can print circulation reports and copyright date reports to aid with weeding and generate reports to show the general age of a section of the collection or the entire collection which would be useful when advocating for increased funding for your program. I have limited experience using these applications but the ones I have tried are very easy to use and require minimal training.

Reflection - jobbers, sources, etc

In our school district representatives from jobbers are not allowed to come into our schools to discuss resources with TLs. However, TL’s are welcome to use whichever jobber they would like to order resources of their choosing. The TL in our school uses a variety of them and she uses ULS quite a bit and from looking at it seems like a good resource for the TL. In some cases she uses ULS to get ideas for book suggestions. Then she will go to a book store to take a look at the physical material herself, especially if she has a particular need in mind. For example, she wanted to address one topic in the grade 6 curriculum. The topic was drugs and she wanted to look at the resources herself to ensure that they were written at the grade 6 readability level as opposed to high school. After looking at the resource she may still use ULS to order from, but at least she has a clear idea of the resource she wants. In our district all cataloguing is done by our central service so the materials the TL orders just get shipped there for processing and then returned to our school, usually within a month.  Our TL does also purchase items from bookstores herself and then she searches within our system for the MARC records to see if they can be copied from another school. If no other school has the resource then she completes an online form from our central processor, and sends in a copy of the cover of the book, title page, and the verso. A full MARC record will be created and entered into the system within two weeks.

I have made a couple of observations from looking at the resources listed in this week’s learning module. If I were interested in ordering eBooks for my library, Follett has eBook bundles grouped by various topics that would be interesting to have a closer look at. One thing that I found interesting from looking at ULS is a listing of Canadian Aboriginal Books for Schools. If I were interested in purchasing Canadian materials this is where I would start. World Cat would be an interesting resource to use as it has an increasing amount of records for electronic resources and digital objects. I did an advanced search in z39.50 and found that it linked to MARC records very quickly and easily. If I needed to find MARC records for a resource this is definitely I source I would go to.

Getting resources to the students would be of primary importance to me if I were a TL. In my school district, if I can’t locate a MARC record within my school district for a book I have in hand, then I can just submit some information online on a form from our central server. This will allow a brief record of the book to be entered into the system. The book can then be loaned out to students while a full record is being created and entered into the system at a later date. I think it is most important to get materials into the hands of our students when they need it – the full MARC record can wait. If students have to wait too long for materials this may discourage them from using the library and this is the opposite of what we want to happen.

Delicious!

One way I would teach the DDC is with a very simple game activity. It is a “Beat the Clock” game. I would set a timer for a certain amount of time. When I start the timer I would begin by asking students rapid fire questions about the DDC. For every correct answer they give me the class earns one point. When the time is up we mark their score on the board. The class can work cooperatively to try to beat their own score or they can compete against each other in two teams. Class scores can also be kept up on the board so classes can compete against other classes. If time allows, before playing the game, students could create the questions for the Beat the Clock game.

Folksonomy

I recently opened a delicious account and I really like being able to bookmark sites through creating my own tags. I have found that my ability to create good tags has evolved since I first set up the account. At first my tags were a little too general and so in some cases I spent more time than I wanted to sifting through my tagged sites to find the website I was looking for. I am still learning, but now I am able to recall the bookmarked site I am looking for more quickly. For this assignment, I did a search for sites that contain ideas for teaching art. Before when I bookmarked sites that I liked I just used the tag “art”. Then I would have to sift through all my art sites looking for that one project. Now I use the tag “art” and then another descriptor such as “polar bear”, “collage”, or “Valentine’s Day” so that I can find the page I am looking for more readily. I really love it. I keep signed into it all the time so that if I can bookmark easily. For this assignment I have created a stack in Delicious called Art Ideas for Elementary School which anyone can view on the Delicious site.

From experimenting with using tags it is handy that the user can create a vocabulary that works for them, but without a consistent controlled vocabulary in the library it might be harder for others who do not share the same vocabulary to find the information that others have tagged. It is nice that everyone can create their own unique way of categorizing information but in a library setting this may create chaos rather than order. Perhaps if the computer program can become “smart” and can detect tags of a similar category, then it may be more user friendly for library patrons.