The future of books in an academic library

The article Books and ebooks in an academic library discusses the perdictions the authors had about eBooks popularity in the future. The authors suggested that eBooks will become more popular by 2020 and will increase the number of academic libraries transitioning their collections to have more online materials than physical books. eBook purchases from academic libraries are increasing. The article also discusses the future of journal articles. Print articles are still continuing to be produced, however libraries and scholars are using a lot more electronic resources (Wells & Sallenbach, 2015). This has cause academic librarians to allocate their resources and use their budget to purchase more electronic resources and less physical materials.

I believe that electronic resources are becoming more popular, but they're are still a lot of people that prefer the physical copy of a book. Right now the academic library I work for is focusing their budget on electronic resources.

References

Wells, D. & Sallenbach, A. (2015) Books and ebooks in an academic library. 64:3, 168-179, DOI: 10.1080/00049670.2015.1041216

-Daly, Briana

The Importance of Databases

This was a great article on collection development that focuses on databases and the essential role they serve in a school library. The article states “databases provide learners with a one stop shop for cross-curricular, up-to-date, vetted information in a structured and easy to manipulate format for class projects” (Ivory & Viens, 2019)  The article discusses the importance of collaboration with classroom teachers and the public library when it comes to choosing databases, “collaboration with teachers on their recurring research projects is a critical factor in determining which databases we purchase each year” (Ivory & Viens, 2019). When classroom teachers share their curriculum, the library teacher can subscribe to corresponding databases that will give students access to the information they will need in their courses. The articles also notes the importance of collaboration with the public library so that efforts are not duplicated, and funds can be spent on databases the public library does not carry. The article also gives useful suggestions such as making a bookmark with the various databases and passwords so that kids can access the databases outside of the school. The article also recommends schools purchase a domain license for $12.99 per year and then create a link with an easy to remember name such as “databases.colganlibrary.com” that goes directly to the databases which saves users from having to go through several pages before locating the databases. 

References

Ivory, A. I., & Viens, L. (2019). Databases, collection development, and student learning. Knowledge Quest, 48(2), 16-23. Retrieved from https://search-ebscohost-com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lls&AN=139376352&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

The Common Core and Children's Literature

Martinez, Evelyn

Wadham, R. L., & Young, T. A. (n.d.). Integrating children's literature through the common core state standards. Retrieved October 19, 2016.

Summary Notes: In the first chapter, the authors discuss the Common Core State Standards generally and how they were created.  They also discuss what it is and commonly held misconceptions about the state standards.  In chapter two the authors discuss how reading fiction and non-fiction texts along with other foundational skills such as writing, speaking, language and listening is the centerpiece of the standards and integrating these skills across all content areas and subjects including math, science and social studies.  In chapter three, text complexity is examined as well as qualitative and quantitative measures that should be understood to provide students with appropriate texts.  They also discuss the importance of considering the dynamics of readers and tasks when considering appropriate texts.  Chapter four examines the importance and centrality of children’s books in teaching across the curriculum.  Children’s books are very versatile because they include all genres and a variety of formats which can be used in all content areas.  Selecting appropriate children’s text is also discussed as well as the importance of assessing the text complexity in children’s texts.  In chapter five, the importance of Inquiry Learning, the process of learning through a process that is student centered, collaborative, active as well as well scaffolded and structured.  The authors also discuss the need for students to have “21 Century Skills” meaning being college and workplace ready.  They discuss the importance of students to be able to do close and critical reading which means to be able to decipher complex text independently.

Evaluation: This is an important resource for classroom teachers, Teacher Librarians and Librarians working with children.  The Common Core State Standards are central in public school education and the information provided will be extremely helpful and beneficial in order to assist and support children on an academic level.  The text offers background information that is helpful to understand curriculum needs of teachers.  The text also offers additional links to resources that will further assist readers to better serve readers and user of children’s texts.

Collaborative Connection and Collection Development

Loertscher, D. & Koechlin, C. (2016). Collection Development and Collaborative Connection Development: Or, Curation. Teacher Librarian, 43(4), 52-53.

This article by our professor and his colleague resembles our course goals at this time in Spring of 2016.  Collaborative connection development using Open Educational Resources (OER) is presented as the next best practice for collection development. 

The premise of “It’s my job as a teacher librarian to develop the collection” is changed to “It’s OUR job as teacher librarians, classroom teachers, and students to curate the best education resources for the topic at hand.”  Using free resources such as Google Apps, teacher librarians, classroom teachers and students can use and add resources, and completed projects to a topic being studied.  Thus, a Virtual Learning Commons (VLC) is created with collaborative connection input from everyone.

Different levels of participation are presented for implementation:  Within a school, district, region or state, national, and on every level.  This level of participation can compete directly with Google and Wikipedia.  And, regardless of funding restrictions, as all resources are free, everyone can participate to build and use these resources.

G Thormann
Spring 2016

Approaches to Selection, Access, and Collection Development in the Web World: A Case Study with Fugitive Literature

Schmidt, K., Shelburne, W. A., & Vess, D. S. (2008). Approaches to selection, access, and collection development in the web world: a case study with fugitive literature. Library Resources & Technical Services, 52(3), 184-191.

In this highly fascinating article, the authors discuss the challenges of collection development from the Internet.  They address the application of existing skills and knowledge to collect materials from the Web, and in particular focused on the topic of hate literature.  Such fugitive literature, the authors state, “contains important manifestations of present day social and political history, art, and literature, and primary cultural output” (p. 184).  This topic had relevance to special collections already at the university where the authors work, and thus could be used to enhance these collections.  The central questions they wanted to answer were: how to locate this material; and how it might enrich an existing collection (either print or electronic).  The authors targeted Internet hate literature on websites that came from Illinois or surrounding Midwestern states (Michigan, Iowa, Missouri, and Indiana).  An overwhelming number of sites were found, but eight websites/groups were eventually chosen for the study.  Some included the usual suspects such as Ku Klux Klan websites, or other white supremacist websites/groups, but some of the others were somewhat surprising, such as the Nation of Islam, Jewish Defense League, and the New Black Panthers.  The authors found that building a sustained collection of primary source materials from the web was very labor-intensive.  Various tools, programs, and webcrawlers were used, such as the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, and Archive-It.  A number of lessons learned from their project were provided to those interested in this work, and the authors write that “a powerful symmetry exists between the process of developing print collections and that of developing digital collections from the Internet” (p. 189).  And that this work is very accessible to subject bibliographers and specialists in research libraries.  Lastly, the authors argue that it’s the duty of librarians to collect and preserve such digital material, as they our part of our cultural heritage, which librarians have done with other types of material.  Print items in current collections may have appeared to be fringe back when they were collected, but are considered to have rich research value today.  This article was very interesting because it explores the issues of collecting from the Web (and thus very relevant to librarians today), but equally interesting was the fact that they chose hate literature as the focus.  I highly recommend this article.