Sunday 29 December 2013

Social Media Frenzy (1)

I'm busy looking into various social media tools for International School Librarians for my next assignment.  And at the same time, I'm trying to resolve for myself what works and what doesn't to manage my own ever-increasing flow of information.  Over the next few posts I'll introduce each new tools I've found and give a link to what I've done with it.

I'll start with what I consider to be the most successful result - using paper.li to curate information flow from Twitter.  Now I must admit, that prior to doing my research I was pretty agnostic about Twitter.  I didn't really "get" it.  I didn't want a constant flow of information and my weekly updates were exhausting to look through, even if it was only 140 characters a post.  And, I think Brain Pickings tweets too much so I had a ton of stuff from them.

Then, I saw, according to the social savvy librarians in my survey, that Twitter was the highest ranked social media for professional use, and in the explanations, I was led to the hashtag #TLChat.  But then when I went to Twitter, I couldn't find a way to follow #TLChat.  So, Joyce Valenza to the rescue, as always.  She had a blogpost on how to feed twitter tags into a curated newspaper using paper.li - it's already 2 years old, but it still works perfectly - just goes to show how badly I didn't get Twitter.

Anyway, it works a treat, and here is the newspaper I made combining the hashtags for #TLChat, #EdChat and some other bits and pieces.  Now I need to make it all mobile and download onto my ipad.

Livin' and learnin'


Tuesday 17 December 2013

A Dutch Village libary


Here are some pictures from the local village library in Bergen op Zoom where we are staying for the Christmas vacation.  The library fits into the street scene and yet it has a very modern facade - which in fact created quite a controversy between the local government and the conservation movement in town. From the outside it looks more like a modern office or shop than a library.   On entering you immediately see that the shelving has been placed on large industrial wheels which creates a multi-purpose space.

Further along, in the next space, the books are on more traditional shelving, however the fiction section has been sorted by genre as well as having a part still by alphabet.  There are large icons on the walls, which are echoed later in the shelving to show where magazines, DVD's, Books, CDs etc are located.

Sunday 15 December 2013

Library 2.0

ACTIVITY
View this YouTube video called 'Building Academic Library 2.0'. This is part of a symposium sponsored by Librarians Association of the University of California, Berkeley Division in 2007. While this presentation is over one (1) hour in duration, there are a number of key points raised by a number of speakers, including the keynote speaker Meredith Farkas, that relate to any library or information agency that is trying to transform their library into a 2.0 Library.
Consider advice provided by one or more of the speakers in terms of a library and information agency that you know (as an employee or user). Select five (5) key pieces of advice from these speakers, and consider how these may be applied to your library to help it embrace a Library 2.0 ethos. Write up your findings as a post (of no more than 350 words in your OLJ).

Although the library I am working in can be considered to have embraced Library 2.0 in all of its aspects, that doesn't mean that there isn't a possibility for improvement.  After listening to the talk, the following 5 points struck a chord with me.

1.  Use of microblogging to communicate within areas of the library - since our campus has two libraries and the college has a sister college who we co-operate closely with, also with two libraries setting up some kind of professional micro-blogging knowledge exchange would have potential benefit.  
2.  The fact that current students often turn to their parents as their first port of call.  I think we could be much more proactive in involving parents in understanding how the library can help the academic success of their children.  A few sessions aimed at parents explaining how libguides work, how the catalogue works and how to search academic articles through our journal databases and a bit on citation and social/academic bookmarking would be very helpful and possibly lead to a higher take-up.
3.  "Go where the user is" - we have started greater co-operation with subject teachers through creating LibGuides with help of their input. It would be useful to also have subject specific Diigo accounts where students, teachers and the library can all tag useful links to articles and information.
4. How do we classify? We have already separated out parts of the collection, such as playscripts, biographies, graphic books, poetry.  We are also creating special areas for the IB subjects where we keep multiple copies of "hot reads" where books are no longer purely in the Dewey System. I can only think this process will continue, perhaps to the fiction area where genres are separated out.
5. Time taken to implement.  A number of times the talk mentioned that take-up time for any technology could be in the region of 18 months.  I think we have a bit of a mentality that "build it and they will come" and perhaps we need to spend even more time on user education and encouragement to use the wonderful tools we have created.

Here is a link to a summary of the talk.


References:
Farkas, M. (2007). Building Academic Library 2.0 [YouTube]. Retrieved January 30, 2014, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_uOKFhoznI
University of California Berkeley Library. (2007). Academic Libraries 2.0 Keynote - Meredith Farkas [Blog]. Retrieved January 30, 2014, from http://blogs.lib.berkeley.edu/newdirections.php/academic_libraries_2_0_keynote_meredith_


Thursday 12 December 2013

RSS

Activity
Now that you have explored some examples of how libraries and the media make use of RSS to deliver updated information and the applications that can tailor and aggregate feeds for specific users, find two (2) additional examples of 'RSS in action', and develop a 350 word post to your OLJ on how RSS can enhance a library or information service’s ability to meet the information needs of its users.


In the library I currently work in we have a number of uses for the RSS feeds.  Particularly these are used to link the "physical" world to the "virtual" world.  

In the first instance, we have created a number of LibGuides for the International Baccalaureate students who are about to commence research for their Extended Essays.  Each guide has a number of sections, including books, journals, online resources etc.  The books section, makes reference to our physical shelf collection.  Then on our shelves we have created subject specific areas, clearly demarcated with shelf-signage, and on the signage is a QR code which leads back to the LibGuide of that specific subject. Here is a picture of the Development Economics section which leads back to the Development Economics LibGuide.
  


The second area where QR codes are used is to lead students from either a poster or a place-holder on the library shelf back to the library catalogue.  The picture shown is a large (i.e. 1m x 2m) poster which shows some books recommended for Grade 6 reading. The poster may be in the library or in the classroom or the grade corridor.  The QR codes will take the student back to the library catalogue where they can see whether the book is on-hand or out and make a reservation if necessary.  The books on the poster are also place in a separate shelf in the library, where the behind the multiple copies, the same picture and QR code appears, so if the books are all check-out, students can place a hold.

There are other uses as well, for example we have posters of books which have been turned into movies, and the QR code with a picture of the movie poster, will lead to the movie trailer on the one hand, and on the picture of the book to the library catalogue on the other.

Friday 6 December 2013

Dewey didn't do Geography

Series
There's been quite a bit of chatter about the "de-dewification" of the library, if that's the way to write it. Of course that all started way back, when people pulled their fiction out of the 800's and sorted it by author, but the trickle seems to be turning into a flow.

Graphic book Section
While I was on the Singapore Study Visit, Ngee Ann Poly was one of the many libraries who have moved towards a bookstore concept for their lifestyle books.  Library Grits wrote about the topic this week, referring to the AASL13. Where I work, in Secondary, we've pulled out Biography, Playscripts, Graphic Books, and Poetry.   In primary, we've got boxes for series and have pulled out Graphic Books.When I did my Libguide for Development Economics, and we wanted to link the physical to the virtual, we were pulling books out of various sub-classifications and putting them together (in DDC order in the Economics section, but not in Economics order - if that makes sense!).  That was reasonably manageable and not to way out.


The Princess Book Section


But then last week I started work on the Geography Libguide.  Boy o boy, Dewey didn't do Geography.  Or at least not in any form that a modern geographer or geography student would recognise it these days.  A complete aside, but Ms. Katie was then telling me why Geography is not such a big deal at American universities as it could be, or is in the rest of the world.  So, what did Dewey allow us?

910 Geography & travel 
911 Historical geography
912 Graphic representations of earth, atlases
913 Ancient world
914 Europe 
915 Asia 
916 Africa
917 North America 
918 South America
919 Other areas

And what do we need?  - This is a little topic list from our school's IB syllabus:

People on the move: Migration
Global Climate change: causes and consequences
Demography
Resource consumption and the environment: Making a difference
The big Blue: Ocean morphology and Climate Connections
Where land meets sea: coast
Resources and marine ecosystems
Urban Environments
The Melaka fieldtrip unit
IBiodiversity and tropical ecosystems
Soil resource management
Water on tap: water resource management
Development Disparities: Measuring the differences, disparities within communities and responses
Life on the edge: Hazard perception and vulnerability
Global Interactions: Globalization

So it looks like we're going to have to work with a separate shelf plus some kind of sticker identification on the spine of the books.

Anyone else there struggling with Geography?

Thursday 28 November 2013

Use of social bookmarking



I'm fairly new to social bookmarking, having only commenced using it during my Student Placement for my degree.  I'm currently using it at it's most primitive form, i.e just as a cloud based bookmark bar, although I have used the sharing function with the librarian.

I think my use is similar to that of most people's use of most technology.  They use it as a "quick and dirty" tool and seldom use all the functionality.  This assignment has prompted me to thinking of it in a broader sense and to exploit it more widely, particularly as I start working as a reference librarian.  I need to exploit the "social" part not just the "bookmarking" part. 

Originally our school used Delicious, but moved to Diigo as a result of the fact that it provided the following additional features that Delicious didn't

"What can you do with Diigo that you cannot with Delicious?

Bookmark

  • - save bookmarks as private by default (optional)
  • - organize your bookmarks as a list and shown as a slide
  • - set up groups to pool resources and curate content
  • - automatically bookmark your twitter favorites
  • - keep a full-text copy of your bookmarks (Premium features)
  • - full-text search of your bookmarks (Premium features)
  • - save notes and images, in addition to bookmarks

Annotation

  • - use highlights and sticky notes as you read - do not just bookmark
  • - capture a portion of the screen and annotate on the screenshot" (Diigo, 2013)

At present we are busy preparing the Grade 11 IB students to write their extended essay.  Diigo is a useful tool to teach them and to use while conducting reference interviews for their specific essay, and also to create an area where information on common problems such as citation, accessing databases and referencing can be accumulated.  





Further to this, Library Grit has written a very nice piece on Diigo which you can access here.

=============
References:

Delasalle, J. (2013, February 22). Bookmarking websites: switching from Delicious to Diigo [Blog]. Library Research Support. Retrieved November 28, 2013, from http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/libresearch/entry/bookmarking_websites_switching/
Diigo V5.0: Collect, Highlight and Remember! [YouTube]. (2010, July 21). Retrieved November 28, 2013, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHWapAF1Txw
Garmoe, P. (2010, December 17). 17 Reasons Delicious.com Users Should Head to Diigo [Blog]. For Bloggers By Bloggers. Retrieved November 28, 2013, from http://bestbloggingtipsonline.com/17-reasons-delicious-diigo/
McKenzie, D. (2014, January 4). Day 1 - Diigo [Blog]. Library Grits. Retrieved January 12, 2014, from http://librarygrits.blogspot.sg/2014/01/day-1-diigo.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+blogspot/zLvwr+(Library+Grits)
Transition from Delicious to Diigo ~ Instruction & FAQ. (n.d.). Retrieved November 28, 2013, from https://www.diigo.com/transition-from-delicious-to-diigo-faq

Tuesday 26 November 2013

Social networking - the dark side

I've been on the internet a long, long time.  There was some primitaive stuff going on when I did my first degree around the mid-80's (that's 1980's) but we only really got it going at home in 1994 - and then we were living in Brazil, where and when at that time, even having a home phone line was a luxury.  I remember hours and hours trying to get things up and running with a techie mate of mine, both of us with broken Portuguese, the old black screens with green writing and lots of C backslashes.  Besides email, social media for me only started in 2006 when we moved from Spain to Hong Kong and I started blogging.   And I discovered the wonderful community you could create through blogging, but I also found the dark side of trolls and anonymous comments that didn't add much to the conversation except to satisfy some need in the writer.   Finally, when things got too personal and my thick skin had been worn down enough, it just didn't seem worth carrying on, and besides that we'd moved countries and a lot of what I'd written was no longer interesting or relevant or current, so I just shut it down.  But I did make some truely wonderful friends through the experience, and they've remained friends, so the virtual to the reality.

Fast forward to now, and I'm using Pinterest and Flipboard for my work, and also dabbling in them a little privately.  Full disclosure - I have a child with ADHD.  It's not a secret.  I'm not ashamed of it.  So when I come across things on ADHD or related matters, I flip them into an ADHD flipboard, and I keep track of nice infographics and articles and graphics and things on it in Pinterest.    Out of politeness and in the spirit of the social side of the internet, and being supportive of other people who take the time and trouble to curate things on the matter, I also "follow" their boards if I've pinned something from it.

And they follow me back.  But it can be dark.  So, recently one of the people I followed on the matter then followed me back and started inviting me to all sorts of boards along the lines of domestic violence, abused people, children of abuse and all sorts of psychological matters that, while I'm sympathetic to, just doesn't have relevance to my life.  I had one of those "oops" moments, and kind of felt like I was being stalked, or having a bible basher (sorry, value judgement) put their foot into my living room door.

Will it stop me using social media?  No.  It just makes me more aware, and maybe I won't follow someone quite so quickly without looking at the context of their other pins first.  Am I glad it happened? Yes.  Because I'm the parent of two pre-adolescents.  And it can and will happen to them, and I'm real glad it happened to me first, so we can talk about it, and they'll know what it is, how it can happen and how to respond to it when it does.

Sunday 24 November 2013

Reading and Weeding social media

It's terribly addictive, I've just spent an hour hopping from blog to blog to pinterest to facebook entry and back again.  And added a couple of pretty good blogs to my blogfeed (The Daring Librarian, and DaveCaleb).  It wasn't all for nothing.  I had a good lesson on infographics from Library Grits, along with some concrete hints on how to get started and what to use.  Katie, our school librarian, has put down the tricks and secrets of getting stuff out of the catalogue into social media in her The Librarian Edge blog and I found a good book to pin for getting adolescents to read (Book Love) and found a cute poster on the rights of readers for my daughter.

I also decided that anyone who hasn't posted for 2 years doesn't deserve to be in my feed, no matter if he's on the CSU recommended reading list or not ... 2 years is a century in social media.  But on the other hand, here is a provocative new book (Writing on the Wall by Tom Standage) on the fact that social media has always been with us it just keeps changing clothes.

Saturday 23 November 2013

Professional Placement


ASSESSMENT ITEM

Professional Placement

INF 408 – Professional Placement
“I hereby confirm that this is an original essay and my own work and that all ethical standards have been addressed and adhered to”

Nadine Bailey
Student ID: 11510358

Word Count:2673






1. The role of the Library......................................................................................... 1
2. User needs and services...................................................................................... 2
3. Collections and information resources........................................................... 2
4. Cataloguing, classification and indexing.......................................................... 3
5. System management............................................................................................. 4
6. Reference and information services................................................................. 2
7. Network infrastructure....................................................................................... 3
8. Staffing..................................................................................................................... 3
9. User education....................................................................................................... 4
10. Promotion and marketing................................................................................. 5
11. Evaluation of library services.......................................................................... 5
12. Reflecting on an activity..................................................................................... 6
13. Evaluate the placement...................................................................................... 7
References................................................................................................................... 8



1.  The role of the Library

United World College South East Asia East (UWCSEA East) is one of the two campuses of an International school located in Singapore.  This campus commenced operations in 2008 and moved to a purpose built campus in August 2011.  It offers a kindergarten (K) to International Baccalaureate (IB) programme – K1 to Grade 12.  Each campus has two libraries, Primary and Secondary. 
The goals of the library are closely aligned to those of the school and include amongst other things, continue to develop the library collections, assessing them against the curriculum and identifying gaps and areas for improvement, continue to develop the libraries’ homepage and online presence and develop online research tools.  These goals are cascaded down to individual staff member’s goal setting and development and training guidelines.

The library is an integral part of the school and as such is involved with the service opportunities created there, such as assisting schools in Cambodia to set up libraries, and the literacy projects of related charities.  The library also runs a “read and recycle” program whereby book donations from the school community are sorted and re-resourced either in the library, given to school-linked charities or put on shelves outside the library for users to take.  The library space and equipment has been designed for flexibility.  Exhibitions, talks and seminars are often held there. The library also hosts a parent’s association book club.

The Library is a founding member of ISLN (International schools Library Network) a Singaporean non-profit organisation linking the International schools and the librarians are active in organising the annual Red Dot book awards and reader’s cup (http://www.reddotawards.com/).

Read and recycle shelves outside the library, books can be borrowed or taken. Books are not catalogued
Steampunk sculpture exhibited in the library by the school artist in residence.

2. User needs and services

The library works closely with the school and the heads of curriculum of the Infant, Primary, Middle, High school and IB program to ensure that the needs of students are met. Further, the needs of teachers and other support staff (such as learning support, literacy coaches and digital literacy coaches) are also considered and catered for with special collections of books as well as digital materials and other resources.  For example, the drama department request films, which are downloaded onto iPads that can be borrowed during a class depending on the play, script being studied.

The librarians are in constant contact with students, teachers and curriculum staff, heads of staff, the head of conferences and they work closely with literacy and digital literacy coaches.

3. Collections and information resources

Since the school is relatively new, having only moved to the current campus in the last two years, the collection is currently being developed.   Because the school started with a primary section and added a year each year, the primary school collection is more developed than the secondary school collection.  The school had a Grade 12 class for the first time this year.  The policy of the library is to ensure that the collection reflects both the philosophy of the school, and the pedagogy outlined in the curriculum articulation.  The physical collection is constantly assessed as the school grows.  A recent focus has been on the LOTE (Languages other than English) collection where the libraries have consulted with the heads of language to acquire materials to assist in classroom learning and pleasure reading.

In July 2013, the National Library Board (NLB) of Singapore stopped students in  international schools from accessing their online databases without a paid library card. The library has therefore had to invest in online databases that had previously been free.  The librarian selects material with recommendations by heads of departments, literacy coaches, parents and students. Everyone has input in the selection process subject to the approval of the librarian and the material compiling with the values and ethos of the school.

4. Cataloguing, classification and indexing

The library uses a combination of inhouse and outsourced cataloguing.  Follett Titlewave purchases come with downloaded and labelled MARC records, and books are stickered for the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system.  Internally books are stamped and a school barcode is added.  For other purchases, including from Follett UK, all processing is done internally following bad experiences with trying to outsource the cataloguing and processing. Use is made of Z39.50 files in reading in information in the case of incomplete data.  Particular issues arise in the cataloguing of material for the LOTE collection, where teachers or parents need to be called on in order to help cataloguing material, particularly in non-Roman scripts.  A recent exercise during my study placement was to consider the current LOTE cataloguing, and compare it to the needs of the users and other LOTE catalogues in operation in other schools.   There is a movement towards more descriptive tagging as well as the use of subject specific site cataloguing in order to assist users to find materials (for example the guided readers for a specific level and/or grade.  The DDC system is used with exceptions for Fiction, Biography, Graphic Materials, Poetry and Playscripts, which use the “pull-out” method of separate shelving following a more “bookstore” type of concept. Most materials, including textbooks and guided readers or teaching aids and classroom books, are catalogued.  Access to databases such as subscription journal databases is provided through the library webpage, the LibGuides and the subject curriculum guides. The library also makes extensive use of QR codes leading back to the catalogue, webpages or LibGuides.

QR Codes on shelf leading back to LibGuide
QR code on display leading back to library catalogue to see when books will be returned

5. System management

Follett Destiny is the library management system in use.  It is one of the two systems widely used by schools, the other being Softlink’s Oliver.  Each has their advantages and disadvantages.  The primary disadvantage appears to be that Destiny is a system designed for a Web 1.0 environment with bits of Web 2.0 tacked on.  The interface is not as user friendly as the “Google generation” is used to, and many search and reporting tasks that the librarian would like patrons to have access to, are not easily accomplished without running asynchronous reports using batch processing.  The report output is in PDF and XML, the latter which cannot be opened on a Mac system, and the school uses MacBooks in its “one laptop per student / teacher” philosophy.  So, a separate computer has to be maintained just for reporting purposes and to customise and change MARC records.  Sometimes the library has to resort to the vendor in order to accomplish tasks that should theoretically be achievable inhouse, particularly with a librarian who is so adept technically. 

However, Follett is trying to keep up and new developments include allowing circulation by handheld devices such as the iPad or iPhone and catalogue searching by mobile devices.  All teachers have been given authorisation to checkout and check-in books of themselves or their students.
During my student placement I was fortunate to be able to attend a two-day workshop on Follett Destiny held by Follett covering their cataloguing, eBook system, collection analysis and reporting systems.




The school does not have many physical serials, as discussed earlier; they recently needed to subscribe to databases following the change in the NLB policy.

6. Reference and information services

Reference services are provided via desk enquiries, reference appointments, teacher queries, LibGuides and presentations on video.  Reference questions are not tracked by electronic means, however when questions in an area reach a critical mass, a guide or video will be created in order to help students in self-education.  An attempt was made to use Google Moderator for questions, however this has not been fully implemented, as it is not considered the best tool, given that many of the questions are too specialised for students to answer for their peers using the crowd-sourcing approach, and maintenance of the forum takes up a lot of time. As the college has two campuses and four libraries there is a possibility to borrow books from the other campus and delivery takes place through the inter-campus courier service.  The library also has an account with the NLB, where up to 2500 books can be borrowed for 12 weeks at a time in order to fulfil specific needs, for example a unit of enquiry where demand exceeds the school’s collection.  I had the opportunity both of observing and conducting reference interviews during my placement.   The school complies with all copyright and access agreements for accessing and using information even at the youngest level.

Screenshot of classroom update for Grade 5 outlining current research and warning against plagiarism

7. Network infrastructure

The library operates on an Internet based system.  All activities depend on network access and availability.  The catalogue system is open to all. Users can log onto the system to access databases that the library subscribes to.  Some are access through a proxy server and others require a separate login and password in order to comply with licensing and copyright rules of the various databases.   Since the school is a “one laptop per child” campus, there are a limited number of computer terminals mainly used for OPAC searching.  As the library is an open space without a “shushing policy” there are quiet rooms with power points and desks for quiet study.

8. Staffing

Both the Primary and Secondary libraries have one teacher librarian, two assistant librarians and one library clerk.  The teacher librarians have a Masters degree and the assistant librarians a diploma in library technology.   Professional development is partly based on library specific development needs and partly on individual management needs as assessed by the yearly goal setting and assessment by the school hierarchy.  Communication between staff in the four libraries over the two campuses is collegial and I was offered the opportunity of spending one of my placement days in the Dover campus libraries.  Decisions that affect both campuses are discussed between the head librarians and knowledge exchange occurs on matters such as cataloguing and most recently, online journal acquisition and access. The major issue I encountered during my placement is that the secondary library in particular is very short-staffed on the reference librarian side. 

9. User education

Both information literacy and digital literacy is integrated in the school’s curriculum. There are only two teacher librarians (see staffing), for over 2500 pupils, so the librarians do not conduct information literacy classes.

Data on information use is gathered through library reports that have been set up in Follett Destiny.  For all students, a wide range of “how to” videos and guides have been set up online and can be accessed through the appropriate level online “research hub”. For the Infant and Junior school, each class has one library period a week during which the teacher and library staff will assist with teaching children how to access the catalogue and find resources using the DDC.

https://sites.google.com/a/gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg/uwcsea-infant-research-hub/
https://sites.google.com/a/gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg/researchhub/
https://sites.google.com/a/gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg/uwcsea-research-tools/
https://sites.google.com/a/gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg/research-skills-professional-development/

 

10. Promotion and marketing

A number of initiatives have been undertaken to ensure the library is well utilized.  The library has a website (eastlib.uwcsea.edu.sg) and maintains an open catalogue. Events and exhibitions are regularly held in the library where all the furniture is on wheels for easy moving.  In conjunction with the teachers, the library has created large A0 printouts of various teachers’ “favourite reads” and “recommended reads” for different age groups which are displayed in the classrooms and corridors with QR codes linking back to the book in the catalogue in the library.  Within the library, QR codes on the shelves link back to virtual resources such as LibGuides. Parents are welcome to volunteer in the library and to borrow library materials and join the parents’ book club.

Large A0 posters all over campus
Parents book club hosted by library
 
The giving tree for Christmas donations

11. Evaluation of library services

The evaluation of the services is done annually in conjunction with the annual goal setting outlined in point 1 above.  Goals such as number of books per user, age of the collection, quantity and quality of online guides, and professional development are included.  At the end of all research seminars or other library sessions that have been requested by teachers and set up by the librarian, students are required to fill in an online “exit” ticket in which they evaluate the class they’ve just received with opportunities to comment on potential improvements.

12. Reflecting on an activity

During my placement I was involved with evaluating the cataloguing for the LOTE collections, circulation, creation of guides using LibGuides and attending classes preparing the Grade 11 students for the IB Extended Essay. 

The most significant of these activities was creating LibGuides.  The objective was to create a template for online guides, and then create an online guide for subjects within each of the 6 major IB subject areas and populate these with appropriate physical and online resources. This involved coordinating with the IB coordinator, the secondary librarian and undertaking a reference interview with the subject head.  I prepared guides for psychology, economics, mathematics, science and music, (see for example: http://research.uwcsea.edu.sg/psycho)


The activity was valuable both to the school and myself. I learned to apply research across a variety of media and the incorporation of tools and widgets to make the content engaging.  It also gave me exposure to teachers and heads of department.  The school appreciated having someone concentrate on getting the guides up online to assist the launce of the research process of the Grade 11s.
In retrospect I could have used more of the teacher resources earlier in the process, as well as information available on other library guides.  In reality, given the time constraints a guide was often almost completed by the time the teachers were involved.  However, the teachers were very pleased with the process given that there had been nothing available in the previous year.

13. Evaluate the placement

The placement was extremely useful to combine my theoretical knowledge with real life practice.  In particular the balancing act of trying to achieve goals and complete tasks while still remaining available and approachable to users was a useful insight.   I have become more skilled in conducting the research interview, as well as understanding taxonomy and cataloguing principles and practise.  I also have a renewed respect for the role of a librarian in a school.  I wrote a blog during my placement, which can be accessed at: http://informativeflights.blogspot.sg.   A concrete benefit of the placement was that I’ve been offered a part-time job helping out on the reference side to make up for the lack of staffing in this area and the need to provide students with more access to reference staff.
I very much appreciate being able to have worked with such an experienced librarian, and particularly one who has embraced Library 2.0 in all its facets and is very progressive in the use of technology in the library.


References

East 5LWh 2013-2014. (2013). Retrieved November 23, 2013, from https://sites.google.com/a/gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg/east-5lwh-2013-2014/

High School Research Hub. (n.d.). Retrieved November 22, 2013, from https://sites.google.com/a/gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg/uwcsea-research-tools/

Informative flights. (n.d.). Retrieved November 23, 2013, from http://informativeflights.blogspot.sg/

Intro - Home - Research at United World College of Southeast Asia. (n.d.). Retrieved November 22, 2013, from http://research.uwcsea.edu.sg/research

Introduction - Psychology: Introduction - Research at United World College of Southeast Asia. (2013). Retrieved November 22, 2013, from http://research.uwcsea.edu.sg/psycho?hs=a

ISLN - Singapore. (n.d.). Retrieved November 23, 2013, from http://silcsing.blogspot.sg/
library.uwcsea.edu.sg. (n.d.). Retrieved November 22, 2013, from 
https://sites.google.com/a/gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg/library/

Oliver library management system from Softlink. (n.d.). Retrieved November 22, 2013, from http://www.softlink.co.uk/oliver/

Research Skills Professional Development. (n.d.). Retrieved November 22, 2013, from https://sites.google.com/a/gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg/research-skills-professional-development/

Software for Library Automation | Follett Software. (n.d.). Retrieved November 23, 2013, from http://www.follettsoftware.com/library-automation-software

UWCSEA Infant Research Hub. (n.d.). Retrieved November 22, 2013, from https://sites.google.com/a/gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg/uwcsea-infant-research-hub/


UWCSEA Junior Research Hub. (n.d.). Retrieved November 22, 2013, from https://sites.google.com/a/gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg/researchhub/