International Association of School Librarianship Conference Proceedings
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Breaking Down Barriers Through the Creation of an International Digital Library for Children
No full textA research project, begun in the fall of 2002, expects to tap the potential of the Internet for breaking down barriers and building tolerance and understanding through access to exemplary children’s books from all over the world. The creation of the International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL) is the focus of a five-year project being conducted by the University of Maryland/College Park and the Internet Archive with funding from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). This paper describes the project, discusses initial research findings and outlines the direction of ongoing research.
Jessica Anthony, and Brewster Kahl
Reducing the Digital Divide: The Role of School Libraries
No full textTechnology offers great potential but can also create inequities and problems. One such inequity is the digital divide. The digital divide refers to the gap between those who can effectively use new information and communication tools, such as the Internet, and those who cannot. Those who are on the less fortunate side of the divide lose out in education, training, shopping, entertainment and communications opportunities. The causes of the digital divide are numerous, and include costs, access problems, lack of skills, cultural issues, and personal factors. As a result, reducing the digital divide needs to take a multi-faceted approach, which includes creating awareness and promotion, facilitating access, developing necessary skills, providing reliable support, developing suitable content, and ensuring community involvement. The mission of school libraries is threatened as long as the digital divide exists, and it is important that school libraries take steps to reduce this divide. These steps should include the approaches mentioned earlier, as well as using coordinated national, regional or local strategies, and collaborating with other organizations
Gender Issues in School Libraries: Paradigm Lost or Found
No full textSchool Libraries are not value free or neutral, they cannot be assumed to be collecting information sources free from gender stereotyping. They are characterized by clear set goals, values and mission statements. Knowledge is a social construct and therefore reflects dominant social, economic and social order. In the new millennium social, educational and economic institutions have pledged to remove all forms of prejudice based on gender. The paper seeks to explore the role of school libraries in challenging gender stereotyping concepts. The purpose of the paper is to identify issues and suggest how school libraries can shift the paradigm. It also shows how and why the library and information systems are silent on gender issues
The Future of the OPAC: Integrating the OPAC with Emerging Discovery Tools
No full textThis presentation will explore how the library catalogue, a tool with a long and distinguished history, is changing with the advent of the Internet. We, as library practitioners, know the power of the catalog to find information sources in library collections. But our users, who have become used to having some results regardless of what search terms they enter into Web search engines, are becoming increasingly frustrated with the current OPAC technologies. What are some of limitations of online library catalogues and in what ways are members of the information community and library automation vendors discovering ways of making local resources more available to our users? Information will be presented about recent studies of user behaviour as well as some commercial solutions to the problem of user/catalog interface
Podcasting in Library Research: A Discussion of Three Projects Developed Using New Audio Technologies
No full textThe integration of Information and Communication Technologies into the school curriculum is a growing trend around the world and certainly mandated by the education authorities in the Australian state of New South Wales. One of the difficulties often faced by teachers is that the use of technology can often distract students from the relevant curriculum outcomes. This paper discusses the use of student created Podcasts with Stage 3 students (10-12 year olds) to enhance learning outcomes. It briefly examines the educational theory that suggests why podcasting could be of educational value and then traces the development of three different units of work that were undertaken at my school by a team of teachers and support staff. The process that we went though and the outcomes that were observed by the students and their teachers will also be discussed
Effective Use of Open Access Resources in a School Library: A Case Study of Zydus School for Excellence Resource Centre
No full textThis paper presents an outcome of a study conducted in the Zydus School for Excellence. The major objective of the study being, to create awareness and to promote the use of scholarly and quality educational electronic resources available freely on the web for teaching and learning purpose. The target group was teachers of the school. A questionnaire based method was used to collect the data required for carrying out the study. A comprehensive list of quality resources was also compiled and given to the teachers to find out the scholarly value of the same. The data collected through these two questionnaires has been analyzed and presented. The major learning outcomes of the study have been presented in the last part of the paper. The study clearly reveals that resources available on the web greatly compliment and supplement the print collection. Therefore, there is a need for putting an effort to create a portal of such selected resources to add greater value to the teaching process
Diversified Services of Delivering the Passion of Reading to Campuses: The Kaohsiung Public Library
No full textLiving in a world of television, computer games, and a visual online world, children and books become more distant. Reading habits of the next generation determine the future of the nation. Many nations in the world promote a reading environment, raising reading ability as policy priority. The Kaohsiung Public Library has been the landmark of effortful and proactive promotion of reading in southern Taiwan. In recent years, in order to complement school education, and raise national competency, the Kaohsiung Public Library has, based on the principal of “Customer Center, Proactive and Progressive”, reached out to numerous campuses, providing diversified services to promote and raise the level of literacy of school children. Mayor Ju-lan Ye, a great enhancer and promoter of reading, in addition to founding the “Reading with the Mayor: the Chrysanthemum Reading Club” to read with under-privileged groups, has added 5,000,000 NT dollars to the originally allocated budget for the purchase of books for elementary and middle schools to enrich the library collections. Through the various strategies to promote children’s reading, the Kaohsiung Public Library has disseminated the seeds for reading in every corner of campuses where students can read and enrich their lives in the world of books
Students, Concept Maps, and the Issue of Transfer
No full textThis paper focuses on the use of concept maps by year 7 students in three rural schools in New South Wales, Australia. The study examined the views of students, teachers and teacher librarians on the use of concept maps and on the extent to which students would transfer concept mapping skills across time and across subjects. Grounded theory was used as the method for the study. Data was gathered via student diaries, questionnaires and interviews, and teacher and teacher librarian interviews. Data was analysed and interpreted using grounded theory techniques. Findings indicated that transfer was a complex issue for students and school staff
The School Library Leading the Way: Providing Information Literacy Professional Development for Teachers
No full textIn 2007 the principals of three schools in Auckland, New Zealand, formed a cluster with the aim of improving standards of information literacy in their schools over three years. Research, reported in a paper at the 2008 IASL conference, demonstrated that few teachers in the cluster were explicitly teaching their students the skills they needed when undertaking research or inquiry. In early 2008, a group of Lead Teachers, led by the teacher librarian in the largest school, and including trained library staff, designed a cluster model for teachers to use with their students when processing information. They also designed cluster-wide professional development which each school implemented in different ways. This paper reports on the findings of an evaluation carried out to measure the effectiveness of the first round of professional development
The Dispositions of Exemplary School Librarians: How Professional Dispositions Relate to Student Learning in the 21st Century
No full textAs former students ourselves, we know instinctively the qualities of exemplary educators even if we have difficulty naming these ourselves. A review of the extensive body of dispositional literature indicates that educators struggle with the concept of dispositions, what these entail, and their assessment; however, little has been written about the dispositions of school librarians. Interest in this topic has increased since the development of Dispositions in Action as an essential component of the American Library Association’s American Association of School Librarians Standards for the 21st Century Learner published in 2007. The authors provide foundational information about dispositions and justification of their importance to student learning and present a self-assessment instrument which is the first step to understanding one’s dispositional strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, a theoretical framework for obtaining dispositions is presented