"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."
There have been a number of illuminating moments over the past 18 months which highlight this statement in action at my school. After taking over the library, I started to wonder why few teachers used the space, and why students (when looking for books) wandered the shelves looking at titles.
First, 80% of the teachers did not know that they could access the database from their classrooms, and few knew how to search for a book or topic using the data base. Worse, was many of the grade 12s had never, yes NEVER, checked out a book from the library. I discovered this horror when I took my grade 12 English class into the library to find a banned book of their choice. I was stunned.
Over the years, with staffing decline, and what might have been the disillusionment of the librarian who could no longer do the job to the level she had become used to doing, use of the library diminished and collaborative teaching and unit planning amounted to zero. The library had become a storage area for books, many of which had cobwebs and garbage behind them.
Over the years prior to retirement, sick leaves, surgeries, salary deferment, admin take a block of library type events occurred, and when I took over my first discovery was that 2000 books from 0-600's or so had been deleted from the data base. The previous librarian had left me a note to say that something was wrong with the database and she didn't know what. I found out before school started when I attempted inventory. (Nice start to my library job!) It appeared that the books had been deleted about three years prior, since new acquisitions were in the database going back a few years. How scary to think that none of those books were checked out in that time, or if they were no one questioned why the message... no record.. was coming up. Perhaps it was just too overwhelming of an error to deal with so close to retirement.
Other errors have popped up that are in the process of being dealt with:
1. MARCs that do not have subject details. In other words, if you search for cellular biology, nothing will come up, b/c you have to use Science as that was all that was put in when the record was created.
2. MARCs that have the correct call # ie DDS # and the first three letters of the author's name, yet on the book itself, the letters are the first three of the title. In other words, if you search for the book and get the call # from the data base, you will not find that call # on the shelves.
3. Authority control/subject heading errors: Because the subjects did not conform to Sears headings, many have been entered incorrectly. Thus science and Science, or biology, cells and cells, biology.
4. We had no cover art, even though this feature was allowed in our L4U
5. No websites or digital resources are linked in our records.
6. Multiple Audio books are piled all over with no records and no way for students to know we have them.
7. No picture searches for easy searching for common subjects such as castles.
In the end, the more I know, the more overwhelmed I feel, yet I have a clear sense of what needs to be done to make the system more user friendly. Whether teaching students one on one, or teaching them as a class, most now know how to search the data base. All teachers know through staff meeting demonstrations. Now the goal will be to develop the L4U in a way that makes it more user friendly and get those resources into students' and staffs' hands.
Since there is no place to add the activity for this unit, I will add my thoughts here instead of the discussion area of the course:
ReplyDelete1.
These are problems that real students have had recently in my library while using the opac.
Problem #1: few subject headings in NonFic, so students get directed to the general area and then look around to find more appropriate books.
Problem #2: Students have no idea to look in the index of a book to see if it has their particular search need.
Problem #3: Students do not know that you look for a person's last name vs first name.
Problem #4: Few students know how the library is organized DDS or where to go once they find the call #
2. Determine how difficult it may be to use these applications with a minimum of training.
Very difficult: Since I had minimal training, it is just about impossible to read the manual and figure out what to do. I need the tech support on the phone and they remotely do what I want them to do while I watch. After 18 months, I have yet to figure out how to do reports I want etc without calling for help.
On the other hand: I read the manual from front to back before I started, and read about the email feature. When I asked for it to be set up, the tech support said it was not a feature. I had marked the page, and sure enough by a week later we had all the emails ready to go.
Another feature that was not possible, but I read in the manual was the students' photos. I was able to point it out in the manual, and it has been a great way to learn students names and recognize my freaquent users, even when they check out books when I'm not there.
The OPAC systems need hands on use in order to get the basics and then you need to have someone you can call to ask for help with the advanced features.
The deletion of 2000 records before my time, goes to show that without training and support, crazy events like that can happen.