I haven’t thought about this question before so I find it hard to answer. In today’s society there appears to be more authors and literature seems to be more readily available. When I reflect on my childhood, what was certainly popular were the golden books, Winnie the Pooh, Disney Princesses and not a lot else. I struggled through high school trying to find novels that I enjoyed – I really only read books because he had to for high school. A favourite was “Looking for Alibrandi” and I am pretty sure it is still on my bookshelf. It wasn’t until I was a young adult that I found Karen Kingsbury and haven’t stopped reading all of her books. 

There appears to be such a range of literature now, I know that our library has shelves and shelves of picture books and it can be tricky to know which are good and what my students will like. Chapter books can be a little harder, especially for students who are in the year 1/2 bracket and aren’t fully ready from leaving picture books but aren’t fully ready for chapter books. What happens with the other end of the spectrum, years 11 and 12? It can be hard to provide literature for those students too. 

Change is being influenced by the voices around us and making sure that everyone is equal and depicted in books. I don’t feel that as a parent you can let your child pick up any book anymore. I think we need to be a little more selective, especially when we may believe in the traditional family values. I also have two very different children that have different interests. One is happy to read “Wings of Fire” and I know she is capable of dealing with the content – the other child won’t touch it all. 

It would be interesting if we could bring books to life, rather than making an app of our favourite characters. In school we were required to read ‘Seven Little Australians” and then we went on an excursion through the city of Sydney. It explained what life was like in that period of history, and we potentially walked through the streets that those people would have walked a hundred or more years ago. Could we do the same for our students today?  Living in Melbourne, we can’t take our students to Sydney but surely there would be some books that we could use and integrate excursions with to bring a book to life.

Is it up to us as teachers and teacher librarians to be the vision for children’s literature and be a driving force for change by bringing books to life and having a happier balance and alternative to always integrating technology. 

After completing the first module for this subject it appears that it will roll on nicely from ETL503. This subject will focus on the field of Information Organisation.

One of the first questions that was asked was ‘Why is it necessary for a school library to organise information?’ Without some form of organisation our students and or teachers wouldn’t be able to find the resource that they were looking for. And when we go to put the resource back on the shelf, how would we know where to put it? It would be a total mess and nobody would know where anything was. This would also relate to online resources and having previously learnt about resource lists, this is a great way to keep resources organised whenever a teacher requires it.

The module states that the teacher librarian’s role is “to ensure that appropriate and efficient means of retrieving the information held within the collection are in place and meet user needs” (Rowe, 2022).

After reading chapters 1,2 and 4 of the text, there is lots of descriptions about information resources and in particular ‘metadata’ which is essentially data about data but it is only effective if people understand it and use it.

It was interesting to read how over a period of eight years, the rise of the metadata librarian and the fall of a cataloguing librarian. This may apply in bigger or more commercial libraries where this is predominately their job. A library technician in a school may be involved in more than just cataloguing. I know in our library, they are partially involved in the deciding and purchasing and also the budget. There is also the borrowing and returning of books.

I am always a little apprehensive about the start of a new uni subject but the fact that this one follows on from the subject I completed last semester, it will be rather interesting and may give further information into the role of the teacher librarian.

As I start a new year and a new subject there are many new things I am already learning. 

It was interesting to re-read about the preferences of printed books. Most students prefer a book because they can feel it, there is less eye strain, there are less distractions and they like the smell and experience of reading a physical book (Schaub, 2016). Many students have tablets but don’t actually read books off those devices. I would like to see what the impact of remote learning will have on students in years to come as for lower primary students the only option we had was to read books online during lockdown. I really like the quote from a student in the Copyright Agency Blog post (2017) that they “prefer print books because they look nice on my shelf and you can have them forever – you also don’t need WIFI.” This is so true on many levels – I am so proud of my book collection and my favourite author takes pride of place on the middle shelf. 

Looking into the definition of the library collection proved to be more difficult than I had thought. Searching comes up with lots of policies and frameworks for libraries. It was good to have a look through and I would like to investigate what our own school policy and definition entails. 

Watching the TEDX video (Marshik, 2015) about learning styles has certainly changed my thinking. We shouldn’t put students into boxes and say that they can only learn one particular way. We have to change our teaching to allow them to learn in different ways. If something doesn’t work, try something different – teachers need to be adaptable. 

After reading more about the role of the teacher librarian I am very quick to look at what our teacher librarian does and think that there are certainly aspects I would like to change when I am in the role. Having a ‘team’ or others to help with the collection is a great idea. It can give others opinions rather than just being the one person. This year I purchased my own books for some Big Write topics because I didn’t want to use an online version but I feel these should be in the library for teachers to use and that is something that I would eventually like to further develop. I offered to donate some books to the library but was told “I don’t know where they would fit in the collection” I thought this was a really shocking comment and felt really disappointed that it appeared to be a very controlled collection.

I am looking forward to this subject so that I can learn how to best develop a collection that will best serve the students that we teach and work with teachers to help them teach.  

Copyright Agency. (2017, February 28). Most teens prefer print books [Blog post]. https://www.copyright.com.au/2017/02/teens-prefer-print-books/

Marshik, T. (2015). Learning styles & the importance of critical self-reflection. [YouTube]. https://youtu.be/855Now8h5Rs 

Schaub, M. (2016). 92% of college students prefer print books to e-books, study finds. Los Angeles Times. http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-92-percent-college-students-prefer-paper-over-pixels-20160208-story.html