1,720,966 research outputs found
From School Libraries to Media Resource Libraries in Secondary Schools in Singapore, 1946-2010: Critical Issues of Training and Manpower Planning for Teacher Librarians / Lim Peng Han
Get PDFSingapore was under British and Japanese rule from 1819 to 1945. In 1946 the British provided free primary schooling in the Malay, English, Chinese and Tamil streams and there were only secondary schools in the English and Chinese streams. The first professional library association was formed in 1955 and the first short course on librarianship was conducted for 55 teachers in the primary and secondary schools. Subsequently, only two short courses were conducted in 1959 and 1961. After attaining self government in 1959, Malay and Tamil secondary schools were established for the first time. In 1964 the Commission of Inquiry into Education recommended that teacher librarians should be given training on school librarianship. Courses were conducted at the Teachers Training College (TTC) from 1968 to 1969. A survey on secondary schools was conducted in 1968/69 and it was discovered that school libraries were run by untrained personnel and were not given sufficient time to do the job. The first ―Recommended minimum standards for secondary school libraries‖ was published in 1972 stating that a trained teacher-librarian should be in charge of the school library. The Institute of Education (formerly TTC) and the Library Association of Singapore (LAS) began to conducted courses on school librarianship from 1973 to 1979. The courses were discontinued after 1979. In 1973 the Ministry of Education (MOE) established a School Library Unit with one officer in charge of 352 primary schools and 93 secondary schools. However, it was only in 1977 that MoE provided funding for schools to convert classrooms into libraries and the purchase of books. In the same year the position of Library Coordinator (LC), a trained teacher, in charge of all teacher librarians in a school, was created. In 1992 Temasek Polytechnic (TP) conducted the part-time Certificate in Library and Information Studies course. Its Diploma in Information Studies courses were organized six years later. In 1993 the Division of Information Studies was set up at Nanyang Technological University to conduct part-time two-year Master of Science courses in information studies, offering a specialization track in managing media resource libraries. In 1997 the MOE launched its ―Thinking Schools, Learning Nation‖ vision to teach creative teaching in schools and introducing project work. Since 1999 the MOE outsourced the management of its library automation system and staff to manage media resource libraries (MRLs, formerly called school libraries). In a survey of 112 LCs (out of 159) conducted in 2001, they agree they lack professional training and recognition. The School Library Unit was dissolved in 1999 and in 2005 TP stopped offering courses in information studies. The outsourcing has completed two cycles from 2000 to 2005 and from 2006 to 2010. The third cycle commenced in the third quarter of 2010. The vendor would find difficulty to recruit suitably trained personnel to managed MRLs. This paper attempts to identify the gaps in the supply of qualified staff and provide opportunities for stakeholders to contribute the lack of manpower training, including the perceived challenges to initiate manpower planning for MRLs
The Changing Role of School Libraries/Media Resource Libraries in Secondary Schools in Singapore and the Need to Implement Mandatory Standards, 1946-2010: Issues, Challenges and Opportunities / Lim Peng Han
Get PDFThe aim of this paper is to study the development and evolution of secondary school libraries into Media Resource Libraries (MRLs) in Singapore after the Second World War and the rationale to have mandatory school library standards. It is an historical survey analysing published data about the linkages of libraries and librarianship, school library standards, education and school reforms in Singapore. It analyses historical and current documents on the roles played by stakeholders like the Library Association of Singapore (LAS) and the Ministry of Education (MOE) in the introduction and development of school library standards. The need for school libraries standards was first discussed when the Malayan Library Group (MLG) organised the first course on librarianship for school teachers in 1955. But there was no follow up. The need for school libraries standards was also mentioned by the LAS in 1962 when a memorandum to the Commission of Enquiry into Education to train teacher librarians and school library standards to be formulated and adopted in schools. However, it was left out in the final report of the Commission published in 1964. The need for school library standards was discussed in a school library seminar for 150 teacher librarians in 1970. The first Recommended minimum standards for secondary school libraries was published two years later by the Standing Committee on Libraries set up by the MOE. But it was not mandatory of schools to adopt the standards. In 1997 the MOE launched its ―Thinking School Learning Nation‖ vision to teach thinking skills. Students were expected to do multidisciplinary project work and to be independent users of information. The MOE began to convert school libraries into Media Resource Libraries (MRLs) with print and non-print materials. However, a survey conducted in 2001 on the roles and competencies of 112 Library Coordinators (LCs) or teacher librarians revealed that they lack the skills and knowledge to management MRLs effectively. This is because subsequent school library standards published in 1983 and 2002 did not require trained and full-time teacher librarians to manage the MRLs. Furthermore, it is essential for the standards to be periodically updated with regards to professional staff, collection development, facilities, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure and school library programs. Otherwise MRLs risk to being ―hollow shells still considered on the periphery of core educational requirements‖, and are run by teachers not professionally prepared to do the work. The national standards published in the United States from 1918 to 2008 are well researched and provided substantive guidelines to develop school libraries. Therefore it is essential for the MOE to formulate MRL standards by doing comparative studies of school library standards in other countries. These standards have to be mandatory and fully adopted by the schools. It provide opportunities for stakeholders like the LAS, National Library Board (NLB), the National Institute of Education (NIE) and the Singapore Teachers‘ Union, to collaborate in the formulation these standards and take collective ownership to implement them
Malay schools and school libraries in the Straits Settlements under British Colonial rule before the second world war,1876-1941
No full textThis article attempts to re-examine whether school libraries in the Straits Settlements were a post war innovation by going through primary and secondary historical records available. It was discovered that although the first policy to initiate school libraries in Malay schools was stated in 1899, it was unlikely to have taken off since the only press to publish Malay school books was discontinued the same year. It was not until 1925 that the Malay Translation Bureau was reorganized to produce Malay school books and reading books. However, not much books were translated and finalized as there was no more than nine staff employed in the Bureau when compared to 250 staff in Balai Pustaka in the Netherlands East Indies (NEI). By 1936, 165 out of 171 Malay boys schools had school libraries. However, the libraries were limited to having 30 titles each. In contrast school libraries in the NEI had 328 titles. Therefore not much efforts were put in to make the Malay Translation Bureau into a full-fledged publishing house, like Balai Pustaka, to meet a growing demand for Malay books as Malay schools and school libraries expanded throughout the Straits Settlements during the first 40 years of the twentieth century
The beginning and development of English boys\u27 and girls\u27 schools and school libraries in the Straits Settlements, 1786-1941
No full text(b) There was no central book-buying agency to coordinate the importation of English books from India and Europe as the publishing and distribution of Malay books were centrally controlled by the Education Department(c) Government funding for English school libraries began in 1939Europe was already at war and resources were prioritized for the defense of the settlements(d) The public libraries in Singapore and Penang did not provide services to school libraries as practiced in England(e) Although two school library associations were established in England in 1937, the movement did not spread to the settlements
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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