The Library is My Happy Place

For reference label, photo by Holly Broadland Analysis of the Reference Collection In order to develop a plan to evaluate the reference services at my school, University Hill Elementary, I first analyzed the reference collection, both print and digital. In doing so, I kept our school population in mind. We have approximately 360 K-5 students with 40% English language learners (Vancouver School Board, 2017). I am currently a classroom teacher at the school, so I interviewed our teacher librarian to learn more about his priorities for the reference section. His comment was that he leans heavily on digital resources such as the World Book suite and other databases the Vancouver School Board has made available. This made me curious to learn more about how these databases are purchased and selected. I spoke with our district principal of learning technologies and learned that in order to take advantage of cost savings, our district purchases subscriptions to various databases through...

Quote from http://www.doug-johnson.com/dougwri/collaboration-and-reflection.html Image created in Wordswag app by Holly Broadland Collaboration It is widely acknowledged that there are huge benefits to collaboration in school libraries. The Canadian Library Association's Leading Learning document states, "The library learning commons plays a key role in cultivating and facilitating collaboration to provide rich experiential learning opportunities. It provides not only a physical space to develop skills and engage learners, but is also a portal to virtual connections, both local and global. It is important to acknowledge the diverse needs and contributions of all players within the school learning commons community, both in terms of resource formats and access to information and collaboration opportunities." (Canadian Library Association, 2004). My current position is as a classroom teacher in a primary class. Unfortunately, I am not able to collaborate wit...

Image created by Holly Broadland for LIBE 462 using WordSwag app As I am currently a classroom teacher anticipating my first days as a teacher librarian, I look at the role of the teacher librarian with idealism and optimism. In past courses towards my teacher librarianship diploma, I have focused on the relationships a TL develops with students, teachers, admin, parents, and other teacher librarians as one of the major aspects of the role. I see the TL as the connector between people and knowledge. Teacher librarian as connector, image from FotographieLink on Pixabay I continue to believe that being able to develop relationships with the school community is an essential aspect of the job. If no one likes the librarian, people aren't going to want to go to the library and collaborate! Chocolate chip cookies, photo by Holly Broadland I created a Padlet in LIBE 462 entitled Collaboration in the Library . It includes my thoughts on how to encourage collaboration, and...

University Hill Library reference section, photo by Holly Broadland Additional area of University Hill Elementary reference section, photo by Holly Broadland At University Hill Elementary, we have a well-stocked reference section that includes both print and digital resources. As our digital resources are purchased on a district level and teacher librarians don't make the decisions about which online resources we select, I have chosen to look at our school's print materials. The resource I decided to evaluate is The Nystrom Atlas of Canada and the World . When I assessed our collection this resource stood out as an outdated book and our teacher librarian agreed that it would be a priority to update our atlases. At our library, we have a class set of the 2005 edition of this atlas. As Reference Skills for the School Librarian by Riedling states that "a world atlas that is five years old portrays enough obsolete information to be considered only for historical pur...

As the name of my blog suggests, the library is my happy place. I love being surrounded by books and having the time to browse the shelves and find new resources. I can't see myself ever giving up print books. However, I also do a significant amount of information gathering online and am comfortable searching digital resources for the answers I need. It likely won't surprise you to know that I was born in 1977, the year that Riedling declares as the generational divide in our text, Reference Skills for the School Librarian. I have one foot in the print world and one foot in the digital world. I can remember using card catalogues and microfiches and I also use online databases and have been blogging for over a decade. I was amused when I read that my generation was dubbed the Oregon Trail Generation in a Social Media Week article by Anna Garvey .  I can't be the only one who remembers playing this game in elementary school! I'm comfortable using both print and d...

For my final learning curation in LLED 462, I created a Padlet with a selection of LGBTQ resources for the primary grades .

I chose to do a learning curation about Week 7's module as it meshed so well with my essential question for this course. This week's theme was "The teacher-librarian as educational leader: Supporting networks and partnerships in the library" and my essential question is all about developing relationships. I have used Padlet once before to collect links for a unit and this time I created multiple posts that were a mix of notes (with images to add interest and help make a connection to the topic), links to articles, and links to videos. I linked to readings from the course and then searched for some additional resources that were relevant to this module's topics such as the collaborative planning sheet from the BCTLA, the blog post about an Ontario TL finding ways to collaborate in the LLC, and a BCTF article on the benefits of collaborating with your TL. My notes from the readings built on the ideas I had expressed in my "Building Relationships...