Assessment 1 taught me many things. One of the most surprising was that it highlighted that to understand the local community of a library you can’t just rely on Australian statistical data of who lives in the suburb. This was made clear to me when I looked at Kew where the bureau of statistics shows an average number of children live in the area but because I grew up in the suburb I knew there were several schools, large, medium and small, in the area that would draw in students. This means that libraries have to engage with their community and be aware of what needs the library could fill (Barbakoff
, 2015, p.73). Working on the assignment also gave me the opportunity to use my accounting skills that have got rusty since I completed my accounting course. The assignment refreshed The knowledge I acquired when inputting information into the different budgets after finding the best price at which the school could acquire resources when I volunteered at a school library. The assignment also reminded me of other budgeting techniques that I had forgot about, as well as giving me the opportunity to practise calculating the costs of running a program. The other major thing that I learnt while working though the module is that people may have information needs that they are not aware of. The module also points out that needs and wants can be quite hard to define and separate from each other and are often used interchangeably (Beautyman & Shenton, 2009, p.68). I also learnt this is important because there is a perception among children that they can use technology to find information faster without the help of the librarian (Agosto et al., 2016 , p.258).
With assessment 2 I gained experience creating a website as well writing a blog. I have little previous experience of either of these activities. I gained experience by having the opportunity to look at how some of my fellow classmates organised their websites, as well as how they wrote their blogs and introduced themselves. This helped to inspire me and give me ideas on how I could improve the website I had designed and make it more personal and cohesive. I was struggling to increase my motivation to make the website more than just bare bones and plain. This made me realise that I am much more comfortable writings essay and reports where I can analyse information and that I have very little experience talking about myself or engaging with people online. I know this is a skill I will need to improve upon as libraries are already using social media to advertise their events and services as well as helping create a sense of community with their patrons (Joo et al., 2018, pp.940-941). I can do this by posting and interacting with social media more in my personal life with the goal of building up confidence. I can also look at how libraries and other institutions advertise and engage with their audience on social media.
Referencing
Agosto, D.E., Magee, R.M., Dickard, M., & Forte, A. (2016). Teens, technology, and libraries: An uncertain relationship. The Library quarterly, 86 (3), 248-269. https://doi.org/10.1086/686673
Barbakoff, A. (2015). Get on Board with Community Needs. In A. Molaro & L.L White (Eds.), The library innovation toolkit : ideas, strategies, and programs (pp.71-80). ALA Editions.
Beautyman, W., & Shenton, A.K. (2009). When does an academic information need stimulate a school-inspired information want?. Journal of librarianship and information science, 41(2), 67-80. https://doi-org.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/10.1177/0961000609102821
Joo, S., Choi, Namjoo., & Baek, T.H. (2018). Library marketing via social media: The
relationships between Facebook content and user engagement in public libraries. Online information review, 42(6). 940-955. https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-10-2017-0288