Prison Library Collections

Paddock, Denise 

Vogel, B. (2009). Collection, coercion, and constitution: A collision with the absurd. In The prison library primer: A program for the twenty-first century (pp. 42–60). Scarecrow Press.

Brenda Vogel has been an authoritative voice on prison libraries for the last two decades. This chapter looks at prison library collections; what they should be; points out some flaws in arguments against a well-rounded collection, and gives a really good guide on creating a collection development policy that reflects library standards and can stand up to scrutiny. 

A few highlights are:

·      Collection’s, both in development and maintenance should follow same principles of librarianship as any other library.

·      There aren’t standards, basically at all. There are guidelines but none that prison administration have to adhere to. There are legal requirements that can be fulfilled but leave room for seriously limiting libraries.

·      There are some prison librarians that believe in self-censoring collections to decide what’s best for inmates. But luckily, these (at least those who put things into print) are quickly called out by others defending the principles of librarianship in prison libraries be upheld.

·      Great collection development policy justifications that are written out section by section.

This chapter does a great job of realistically looking at the likely issues a prison librarian will face- and how to be prepared. Issues being that libraries are libraries, and often can have arbitrary decisions about what isn’t acceptable, made by people outside of the library. She does a great job pointing out how and when to make the connections needed to prevent issues in the future. 

The presentation of the collection

Students learn things better if they have good background knowledge of any  new material. So we cannot assume they have certain amount of background knowledge or their background knowledge is same (Rosenshine, 2012, p.13). I remember when I was a primary school librarian; I used to visit Wikipedia for general knowledge of a topic and then listed all knowledge regarding the topic in a mind map. Sample of information content is in the screenshot below. Our students were very fond of display. I have not done this at my current school. The good thing to have all different sources related to the same topic put toghter expands the scope of knowledge of our students to a topic but also enhance students’ background knowledge regarding the topic (Wikipedia, n.d.). The arrangement will is easy for them to understand the concepts of the topic.

Figure 3. Screenshot of Content of Romeo and Juliet taken by Qing Zhao, accessed 9^th May 2020, Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo_and_Juliet

Summary

The collection development is not about how much resources library is going to buy. It is how to find useful resources and how best use them to support teaching and learning, how easy they are accessible. There are procedures to go through. Procedure are important to ensure we are on the right track. What is more important? I think the more important object is the person working in the library. The level of their professional knowledge, the depth understanding of patron needs, the openness to new change, the capability of their interpersonal skills will affect the quality of the collection development. 

References:

Figure 3. Content of Romeo and Juliet information. (n.d.). Wikipedia, Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo_and_Juliet

Loertscher, D.V., & Crompton, M. (2018). Collection Development using the Collection Mapping Technique: a Guide for Librarians. (3rd ed. PP.121).  Salt Lake City, Utah: Hi Willow Research and Publishing

Why we need diversity formats of information in our collection

I had ignored the usefulness of different formats of information until recently. When I am looking for hair clip for my hair, I suddenly recalled the type of hair clip Daisy used for her hair. Daisy (Google, 2013, Figure 1) is one of main character in the film <The great Gatsby>. Her hair style and shape of face similar to mine. So I searched on Google and found the film post I needed as below.

Figure 1 Prada Dresses Daisy; The Great Gatsby Costumes – The Prim Girl, 2013, Retrieved from https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theprimgirl.com%2F2013%2F05%2F03%2Fprada-dresses-daisy-the-great-gatsby-costumes%2F&psig=AOvVaw3jlJzcFpbOiASj1pazY2Ns&ust=1589263336283000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CA0QjhxqFwoTCLCUkreRq-kCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAZ

Recently I worked with English department to develop collection in Romeo and Juliet. English teacher told me that she needs diversity formats of the play. At my course of instructional plan, I learned the learning style and its connection with learning effect. Although, Daniel Willingham (Sanderson 2011, p.380) argues that auditory presentation of information is most useful when meaning is connected to that form of information.

I visited the Romeo and Juliet pages on Britannica School. Screenshot of it is as follows. I found that if materials I contact first, the best way for me to understand the content is combination of visual and auditory presentation of information. When I heard something I do not understand, I can know what the presenter is talking about by watch his presentation on video.

Figure 2. Screenshot of Romeo and Juliet webpage taken by Qing Zhao, accessed May 8^th 2020,  Retrieved from https://school.eb.com/levels/high/search/articles?query=Romeo+and+Juliet&includeLevelThree=true

When I chose new database, my suppliers offer me the introduction of their products, which all containing information of diversity of formats. The table below is made by me to compare offering from 2 different database suppliers. From teacher and vendor, they all require materials in diversity formats. I am an intermediary person between them, I realized the low interest in technology has affected quality of my work.

	Complete online package database	Student Resources Database	Opposing viewpoints database
For students	y	y	y
For teachers and administrators	y	n	n
Magazines	y	y	y
newspapers	y	y	y
biographics	y	y	y
primary sources document	y	y	y
encyclopeidas and reference books	y	y	y
images	y	y	y
maps	n	y	y
video	y	y	y

References:

Figure 1. Prada Dresses Daisy; The Great Gatsby Costumes – The Prim Girl. (2013). Retrieved from  https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theprimgirl.com%2F2013%2F05%2F03%2Fprada-dresses-daisy-the-great-gatsby-costumes%2F&psig=AOvVaw3jlJzcFpbOiASj1pazY2Ns&ust=1589263336283000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CA0QjhxqFwoTCLCUkreRq-kCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAZ

Figure 2. Screenshot of Romeo and Juliet page. (n.d.). Britannica School, Retrieved from https://school.eb.com/levels/high/search/articles?query=Romeo+and+Juliet&includeLevelThree=true

Sanderson, Heather. (2011). “Using Learning Styles in Information Literacy: Critical Considerations.” Journal of Academic Librarianship 37 (5): 376–85

Collection promotion and shift role of librarians at pandemic time

How to promote library collection and what is the role of librarian during pandemic?

Our school’s collections are largely paper based. When we all work at home, I cannot circulate materials in the library.  Students and teachers cannot get physical books from library. If the paper collection can do nothing to help students and teachers, what library can do to show our commitment to support academic work?

1. Promote all online resources we have

The online presentation organized by EBSCO (Yang, 2020) mentioned that how other librarians promote their online collection service. My school has 2 databases for G11 and G12 and 3 educational sites for all year groups.

Those databases and educational sites do not provide eBooks and eAudiobooks for students. When amazon opens its audible books for free, I posted the news on Moodle, which is a learning platform for students and staff to communicate.

2. Proactively communicate with different professionals whose work has connection with library

2.1 other librarians and social media

Librarians like to share their thoughts and ideas on social media. Get involve into their network and ask for help or offer what you know with them. This is how I get many information and new resources.

1.2 Proactively work with vendors and publishers

Vendors and publishers are great sources of information. Workshops .e.g Librarians’ action taken during pandemic organized by EBSCO, teach online organized by National Geographic give us inside what resources and information needed by teachers and students.

1.3 Proactively work with teachers and students

The major force for our students to receive information and read information and books is from their teachers. Therefore, I emailed teachers with my wish to support their work. I also emailed them some useful tips to teach online and researched resources to support their teaching.

When school called for offering online co-curriculum activity, I organized an online research CCA. It works well and was appreciated by students and administrators.

1.4 role change

In Ali’s (2020) article, he mentioned librarian’s role change to fit to new needs of community. My role shifted to be mentor for 2 students who were disengaged into online learning.  

1.5 store information

I listened an online course (Zhu, n.d.) and learned some tips to organize computer files. Our library management system did not good at organize computer files and I am the type of person who have many brilliant ideas but need support to organize resources. I am now using Onenote to store and organize my resources and files. I classify those resources and files according to topics they belong to, so if I need any resource in the future, I can quickly find them through topic search on OneNote.

References:

Ali, M. Y., (2020) The COVID‐19 (Coronavirus) pandemic: reflections on the roles of librarians and information professionals. Retrieved from  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/hir.12307 

Yang, L. P. (2020, March). Upgrade ourselves in a crisis-a case sharing from XJTLU Library. Presentation presented at the EBSCO online webinar, Beijing. Retrieved from  https://ebsco.webex.com/ebsco/m.php?MTID=e37924f93669530f26cc2e099e288ec7d

Zhu, D. (n.d.). Module 13: Most systematic way to organize your computer files [Class speaknotes]. Retrieved from
https://appvjpmzbar5202.h5.xiaoeknow.com/v1/course/audio/a_5cb340a664b2c_OdroojLH?type=2&pro_id=p_5cb340a3de420_r715Fu96&source=2&ct_app_id=YXBwOUhlNThiSGw5MDc4

Change believing before needs assessment?

10^th May is Mother’s day, my daughter bought me a pair of hair clips. The shape and the color matches my hair style, hair color, my skin color and my age and my personality. The type of the hair clips is what I have been longing for. I was so excited. Do you know how much are they? They are less than USD1. This tells me one thing. Anything once satisfy the needs of users are good thing even the price is cheap. When we start the course, the textbook <Collection Development using the Collection Mapping Technique: a Guide for Librarians > (Loertscher, & Crompton, 2018, p.121) told us needs assessment is one of initial steps to start a collection development. What are the needs of our users? The textbook gives us some tips e.g. demographic, social status, population, age and history of the community and etc. I would say that what people’s believing should be on of initial facts to consider when decide the materials selection criterial. I remember when our school promoted graphic novels to our Chinese student 2 years ago, the promotion was complained by many parents as they believed the graphic novels are childish and nothing to do with English study. What those parents believed is that their children should read classic books in English. The believing is from years of education they received in Chinese education system. The result is our Grade 9 students lost interest in reading those classic books after read them for few chapters as the language of those books are difficult for them to understand and there are many culture background information are new to our Chinese students. As a result of bad reading experience, they lost interest and confident to read other English novels in the following school year. Therefore, at the beginning of school year from last school year, English department and I will discuss with parents why we allow students to choose English novels by themselves, why graphic novels are necessary for their children to read as a start point to reading English novels at more complex level later on. This is why I argued the starting point of collection development could start from changing believing and perception of parents if schools like mine, has vast students who are weak in English literature.

Reference:

Loertscher, D.V., & Crompton, M. (2018). Collection Development using the Collection Mapping Technique: a Guide for Librarians. (3rd ed. PP.121).  Salt Lake City, Utah: Hi Willow Research and Publishing