HOW DO YOU ORGANIZE YOUR DIGITAL COLLECTION ?

HOW THE WORKSHOP WORKS

QUESTIONS
Create a starting point for yourself. Answer the questions , reflect on your own practice. You may wish to jot down a few notes.

EXAMPLES
Click to the online examples.

DISCUSSIONS
Contribute your original ideas to the COMMENTS, at the bottom of each section or respond to someone else's comments. Discuss your own way of doing things, or the online examples. Or ask Judith a question.

back to the workshop start

JOIN ANOTHER DISCUSSION,  BUT CHECK BACK HERE OCCASIONALLY TO SEE WHAT HAS BEEN ADDED.

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QUESTIONS

1.    Do you have a sense of ownership over the free online resources available to you?

2.    Do you make good use of your proprietary databases? Do you promote their use? Do you teach skills for accessing them? Do use alerts offered by some databases, to send articles to teachers? Do you make full use of their e-mail capabilities?

3.    Have you added WWW links to your OPAC?

4.    Do you promote the use of librarian-selected search tools such as:

• Internet Public Library
• Intute
• Librarians' Index to the Internet (LII)

5.    Bottomline - do you have an online presence for organizing digital resources, and that make them accessible to your students and teachers?

 

EXAMPLES OF ORGANIZING DIGITAL RESOURCES (blended with print)

Proprietary blended with Open Access databases (natural language) used to ease access)

1. As needed! e.g. by subject  social studies teachers (references, memory institution, discipline and theme)
2. Assignment topics

3. Curriculum guide

4. Currency

5. Alphabetical Lists

6. Subject/Teacher

7. Reading promotion

8. Media literacy

9. Information literacy

9. Workshops

ADDENDUM: DIGITAL PRESENCE

WHY DIGITAL?

Because our school library walls have dissolved with the invention of digitized information. No longer confined to so many feet of shelf space and so many volumes, this information is part of our reference collection, if we want it to be. We are the educators  most professionally - trained  in our school communities, to pick and choose what's meaningful. (more)

WHY PRESENCE?

Because our ability to communicate is multi-dimensional in an instant messaging world. We really need to do more than hand a student  or teacher a list of sites and walk away.  Lists of book titles have never been useful by themselves either, unless, introduced by a teacher-librarian in an enthusiastic one-on-one or class endorsement, or at least, enhanced with well-written annotations. Our job is not only to find materials for students and teachers, but also to teach them how to do it themselves next time.

DIGITAL PRESENCE IS OUR PRESENCE

OUR presence - at school, at home and on the web that circles the globe, exists well beyond our 8-4 cinder block library homerooms.

Effective teacher librarians teach well and communicate well (both multi-faceted skill sets) and have always surpassed list makers.

WE ARE PRESENT

• When we are accessible.  We weave online conversations into our day, free of time and space impediments.

• When we find rich digital content, which we adapt (with online editing) to the exact needs of a child or adult; the right amount of information, depth and detail. And we e-mail or print out that definition, magazine article, rubric, lesson plan, diagram at a reading level they can comprehend.

• When we frame content with our critical comments, integrating information literacy naturally, the way we would do in a one-on-one conversation.

• When we teach with online computers to promote cross-disciplinary issues such as academic honesty and citation grammar.

• When we teach students and teachers the art and science of online searching including information literacy, critical thinking, and media literacy

• When we publish online

• When we are open and generous

SOURCE

ADDENDUM

ONLINE PUBLISHING FOR TEACHER-LIBRARIANS