When it comes to balancing digital resources with physical resources I continue to feel that I do not have the understanding to guide my school’s digital resource collection policy (Wilson, 2021, May 23). For example, I have only just learned of the Australian Library and Information Association’s (ALIA) goal of a 50:50 balance by 2020 (2013). I was shocked. And not because my current library has zero digital resources and zero budget to improve on this for 2022. I was shocked because I couldn’t understand why we should have this goal. It seems that ALIA was making this statement purely based on technology trends and in just over 12 months the trends changed and they revised their goal significantly to an 80:20 ratio of print to digital (ALIA, 2015).
My understanding and therefore my values and beliefs about a balanced collection continue to grow. Ratios should be a guide not a goal as the collection balancing act is complex. O’Connell et al (2015, para. 3) suggest that a school library collection should respond to the “learning ecology” but I offer my own definition. The ecology of the school is the balancing of curriculum and societal expectations with community and student needs. These needs are comprised of experience, language, culture, abilities and the ever-present technology access issues (Honeybone, 2021, December 20).
A third aspect of the balancing act are school goals and subsequent teacher programming and pedagogy. O’Connell et al. (2015) argue that digital literature has improved teacher pedagogy but I have only witnessed the opposite. Teachers using read aloud videos to babysit the class while they tend to administrative jobs and teachers using digital texts that were quick to find on Google but are of poor quality or not appropriate to the age and ability of the students (Wilson, 2022, January 5).
Finally, I believe that the balance can be achieved when the teacher librarian evaluates and selects the best resources for their school. All of the resources that students use. The ones for reading and viewing but also the ones for creating. I agree with Merga (2021) and O’Connell et al., (2015) that we should utilise and expand on the social media and game experience that students have online. However, I mainly see this happening in responding and creating tasks, not reading and viewing. While digital literature is mostly limited to e-books and videos of read alouds, high quality digital presentation tools are cheaper, more accessible and easier to find (Wilson, 2022, January 5). The NSW Department of Education (2019) has curated a list of 113 “digital learning tools”.
Poor use of digital literature and technology generally could be due to the fact that currently, the school library does not feature in the school goals at all. Furthermore, I have been instructed that it is not my job to resource the curriculum (Wilson, 2021, April 23). I think now I finally have the tools to advocate for the school library’s role in achieving school goals and; the place of digital resources.
References
Australian Library & Information Services. (2013). 50:50 by 2020. https://read.alia.org.au/file/32/download?token=_PfRzIrz
Australian Library & Information Services. (2015). 80:20 by 2020. https://read.alia.org.au/file/30/download?token=ADmxaXNk
Merga, M.K. (2021). How can Booktok on TikTok inform readers’ advisory services for young people?, Library & Information Science Research, Volume 43, Issue 2, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2021.101091.
New South Wales (Department of Education). (2019). Digital learning selector: Learning tools. https://bit.ly/3AEtcn5
O’Connell, J., Bales, J. & Mitchell, P. (2015). [R]evolution in reading cultures: 2020 vision for school libraries, The Australian Library Journal, 64:3, 194-208.
DOI: 10.1080/00049670.2015.1048043
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