Category: ETL503 – Resourcing the Curriculum

ETL503 has illuminated the collection practices behind  the The Teacher Librarian (TL) role in a school library which impacts across school communities. Australian research shows the inverse relationship between student to equivalent full time (EFT) library staff ratios and increased NAPLAN scores (School Library Association of Queensland, 2013, p. 6). Australia’s House of Representatives (2011) has detailed the importance to school libraries of buildings, collections, and qualified staff. The aspects of collections including: development, management, evaluation, as well as ethical and legal considerations do not always have clearly delineated boundaries but are all critical to effective function of library spaces.

I would like to move away from the limits of “the imperial origins of our information institutions constructed in the Western ideological ideal of taxonomic breadth, hierarchical control, and limited accessibility” (Sacha.juggler 2019 May 22) and the dichotomy of censor vs selector described in Jenkinson’s (2002, p. 22) work. Though the contemporary praxis is shown to be one of continues compromise (School Library Association of Queensland 2010) I aim to remedy this through collaboration as (Sacha.juggler 2019 March 24) “Firstly I advocate for the establishment of stakeholder advocacy groups empowered and emboldened to put forward items for the collection. Groups could consist of teachers, students, or parents and these bottom up organisations would be accountable to their peers and guided by the collection policy whatever process they used for decision making” though I would be ultimately responsible through my professional responsibilities to the selection criteria as the structural reforms for alternatives would be beyond most principals.

The importance of a written collection policy lies in its process of creation and implementation. As every library collection exists for a different audience the policy must be constructed individually for that community while taking account of best practice such as  Australian Library and Information Association Schools and Victorian Catholic Teacher Librarians (2017) recommendations. The creation attunes the policy to the vision, mission, and objectives of the institution and needs to be endorsed by the executive in order to provide authority to the outcome. The implementation allows for resilient processes and outcomes not vulnerable to challenge from ignorance, fear, or bigotry. This is critical to the ethical duty of the school library towards providing open access to diverse viewpoints.

ETL503 has shown me the depth of complexity of collection practices such as evaluation through collection mapping, regular stocktaking, the perils of selection and acquisition and the pains of weeding. Also that “The TL is the steward of the collection which can be collectively a significantly sized financial asset. Management of the funding resources therefore goes not only into acquisition but also maintenance and repair” (Sacha.juggler 2019 April 13) and there are never enough resources of staff and volunteers to complete all these tasks that the ideal library system would encompass so ruthless triage of priorities by professionals is essential. There is also not complete agreement in the best way to approach digital resources such as Ebooks as “established processes, relationships,  and stability in how libraries made books available to their users which have been upended by the nature of the digital medium … Some … are refusing to engage in purchasing these works at all as the risk of corporate failure removing access to purchased works is too great” (Sacha.juggler 2019 April 14). Risks such as these must be encompassed in collection policy to future proof the resources held, the physical infrastructures that hold them, and the qualifications of the people who manage them as any lapse in in any one of these can lead to an inexorable decline of what can be delivered to the population that you serve.

The practitioner’s duty to the collection also includes legal and ethical considerations as well. Ethically librarians are needing to be “more assertive in their professional responsibilities to protect the free speech rights of their users” (Lukenbill 2007 P. 5) which in the Australian context (McCloy v New South Wales, 2015) means the right to political discussion which has been interpreted as encompassing International, federal, state and local issues which implies all topics should be able to be discussed and therefore resources from diverse views should be provided on all topics possible in the collection as according to the collection policy. The largest key legal issues discussed in ETL503 were issues of copyright and licensing. The former of which is part of the specialty of a TL and needs to be constantly promulgated to staff and students. The latter of which encompasses sourcing the most advantageous licenses for the school community and reading all the small print carefully to minimise hidden costs or unethical clauses like being able to use the information generated by interactions with the licensor to further monetise, limit, or exploit the school community.

 

Reference list

Australian Library and Information Association Schools and Victorian Catholic Teacher Librarians. (2017). Manual for Developing Policies and Procedures in Australian School Library Resource Centres. Retrieved from https://www.alia.org.au/sites/default/files/ALIA%20Schools%20policies%20and%20procedures%20manual_FINAL.pdf

House of Representatives. (2011). School libraries and teacher librarians in 21st century Australia. Canberra:Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved from http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House_of_Representatives_Committees?url=ee/schoollibraries/report.htm

Jenkinson, D. (2002). Selection and censorship: It’s simple arithmetic. School libraries in Canada, 2(4), 22. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.csu.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lih&AN=7277053&site=ehost-live

Lukenbill, W.B. (2007). Censorship: What do school library specialists really know? School Library Media Research, 10. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/aasl/sites/ala.org.aasl/files/content/aaslpubsandjournals/slr/vol10/SLMR_Censorship_V10.pdf

McCloy v New South Wales 2015 257 CLR 17

Sacha.juggler. (2019 March 15) Reflections for Information Professional Transformation [Blog post] Retrieved from https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/sachareflections/

School Library Association of Queensland. (2010). Primary School Case Studies. Retrieved from https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=2ahUKEwi5nZyPwrHiAhVUg-YKHUf6C0AQFjAAegQIARAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aph.gov.au%2FParliamentary_Business%2FCommittees%2FHouse_of_Representatives_Committees%3Furl%3Dee%2Fschoollibraries%2Fsubs%2Fsub283.1.pdf&usg=AOvVaw0uttzRW8H4LFHgn_Q7h9tK

School Library Association of Queensland. (2013). School libraries, teacher-librarians and their contribution to student literacy in Gold Coast schools. Queensland: School Library Association of Queensland. Retrieved from https://eprints.qut.edu.au/60260/37/60260a.pdf

 

 

 

There appears to be agreement that the currently applicable copyright laws in Australia are outdated and not suitable to the modern world where information generation, transmission, and engagement are markedly different from when the original conception of copyright was produced.

The laws themselves are written in general terms meaning that ongoing interpretation is required within each decision making process and missteps likely along the way.

The impetus within an educational context is to then be within the letter of the law for when the punitive and complete sweep of what has been photocopied in the staff room or hosted on school content management systems is analysed the school is to be punished without mercy for any infringement and the maximum capital extraction through penalties is to be implemented in order to satisfy our oppositional legal system and uncaring neoliberal framework.

Given that, as Bourdieu claims, education is the reproduction of society surely it is in the best interest of societies to allow students, at the very least in the underfunded public system,  access in as many ways as possible to the cultural inheritance that has been produced.

When someone is being enculturated it makes the least sense to involve money unless inequality is part of what you wish to reproduce.

Neoliberalism meets Marx’s Means of Production

It is clear that the digital revolution is changing the nature of libraries. There appears to have been established processes, relationships,  and stability in how libraries made books available to their users which have been upended by the nature of the digital medium that is the Ebook.

These reflections are based on reading 29 pages of
Morris, C. & Sibert, L. Chapter 6, Acquiring ebooks. In S. Polanka (Ed.), No shelf required : E-books in libraries [ALA Editions version] (Chapter 6, pp. 95-124). Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/lib/csuau/detail.action?docID=598919

The critical issue to me seems to be the sale of an item that our technology provides very simple reproduction of. Even if Marx never considered the ramifications of being able to reproduce an item with the pushing of buttons control + A, Control + C, Control + V this is now the world we live in.

For the publishers of content this leads to the creation of more and more restrictions embedded within the medium, for the consumers of content it leads to a lessening of value due to the explosion of availability and sharing.

The same dynamic has affected the industries of music, visual art, as well as writing. The truth is we have not developed the solutions that allow content producers to be recognised and supported in ways that are sustainable to their practice and fair for their talent or contributions in the modern context. Despite the presentation of success for those individuals who break through all the barriers to achieve stardom or even merely attain the threshold of making a living wage the market suppresses the diversity and compensation of these individuals as externalities to be minimised in the sale of content.
This is evidenced in the claim from Macquarie University that average income derived from practising as an author is $ 12,900 in Australia.

Now that I’ve described the chasm we face in getting to where we need to be I will now look at what models have emerged to discuss where libraries are in the digital resource context regarding Ebooks.

Some libraries ( certain academic research libraries) are refusing to engage in purchasing these works at all as the risk of corporate failure removing access to purchased works is too great.

Publishers are debundling their fees into greatly fragmented models so you may purchase a license for a work, then have to pay for the platform to host it, and then potentially also for updates to both of the above going forward.

Some libraries are using the same models of acquisistion for print and Ebooks and just waiting till they have the physical version in order to process both simultaneously despite the inefficiency of waiting 6 – 9 months for physical copies to catch up with digital access.

Aggregators work across different publishing companies to provide offerings to libraries that greatly simplify the licensing negotiations for each work. It is noted that the library needs to protect itself from 3rd party copyright infringement if the aggregator does not negotiate as required on their behalf and that some publishers will not work with aggregators as they act as middle men taking a cut of potential profits.

Patron Driven Acquisistion holds the most hope to me as a responsive path forward as it involves giving library users a large amount of access to titles for a relativley small outlay by the library and then purchases are made based on demand for titles within the system. The most common protocol I have heard of was for the first 3 accesses to be temporary loans and for the 4th use to trigger the purchase of the work. The benefit of this system is the more costly decisions of permanent purchase are left to the wisdom of actual users as guided by a swarm level of intelligence.

Other models include subscription packages which are predominantly works that no longer sell in print and publishers are trying to eke out last dollars out of.

Perpetual access where the library gains permanent use of the system but has to generally pay ongoing fees for the system that delivers it.

Pay per view which is what it says it is.

Publishers may offer previews to selectors of a page, chapter or whole work there is no standard. The reviewer can find it hard to know if all of the same content (images, graphs, etc) is in the electronic version as the print book. The purpose of the library is to spread information far and wide whereas the publisher is seeking to extract the maximum monetary value from the works they hold.

I am interested to see how this part of the GLAM sector evolves.

Such a pleasure to move onto a new topic.

However disturbing to once again have the teacher librarian role situated as fighting for the necessities of existence, in this case for funding.

Framing the advantages of a functional school library in terms of increased achievement whether in literacy or NAPLAN is suggested. Though the calculus of working at a school in the first place where the principal requires convincing of the existence or basic funding needs of a library is problematic to me.

The TL is the steward of the collection which can be collectively a significantly sized financial asset. Management of the funding resources therefore goes not only into acquisition but also maintenance and repair. Funding impacts on how many roles are employed within the space and thus how many volunteers can be managed also.

Collaboration is the key to maximising the benefits as a solo school librarian can only interact with so many students in a day. Through the management and promotion of the collection the necessary interactions can occur through other stakeholders and that can be where the valuable experiences are enacted.

I have just returned from volunteering as a panel member for a discussion on GLAM Education roles as part of my role on the committee at ENVI for our first crossover event with New Cardigans a library originated GLAM organisation. I got to reflect on many aspects of our work from the casualisation of the workforce, the siloing of GLAM professionals , and due to sitting beside twitter star Alissa (@lissertations) I had a discussion of some of the epistemological conundrums I uncovered as part of the Annotated Bibliography assignment.

I was concerned about bias. That my personal experience would color the selection  of resources and thus exclude equally viable alternatives. Alissa responded that GLAM institutions and practitioners are inherently biased and attempting to ignore or censor this fact led to negative outcomes.

I realised that my selections were based on the strengths of my knowledge and that includes both lived experience as well as the navigation of selection aids. The fact that I lived for years near Lake Burleigh Griffin which is surrounded by the Federal cultural institutions, that I worked within one of them, and that I have some expertise in navigating them enriches what I am able to offer knowledge seekers.

The annotated bibliography is just an offering to engage. Not a mandated curriculum. The issues of diversity of the lived experiences of Australians vs the fact of a national curriculum and standardised testing are a different question to wrestle with and can wait for a later time in this course or my career.

 

Reviewing Hughes-Hassel & Mancall’s (2005) decision-making model for selecting resources and access points that support learning shows a hierarchical linear system of priorities where each threshold can exclude a resource from further consideration before any of the later qualities are considered. This is inherent in the flow chart model and why I would consider such a linear system to be incompatible with the holistic decision making process involved in acquisitions for a collection. Examples of specific criticism of these flow chart stages that I would like to draw attention to include the ‘Fits the teaching/learning context’ and ‘Is consistent with current knowledge base”  where recreational reading, as the opposite of taught texts, is not embraced or for the student to encounter alternative epistemological systems not embraced by the western mainstream. I still remember my excitement when I discovered the book called Ethnomathematics : A Multicultural View of Mathematical Ideas which provided me with mathematical perspectives I had hungered for and foundational alternatives of basic concepts which enrich understanding through contextualisation  of the systems we use. This book presumably would not have made it as it wouldn’t fit with the current knowledge base being taught in the school.

So now that I’ve critiqued those who have come before me from my position of limited experience dealing with collections now I will propose some ways forward that mitigate the issues I’ve described above of hierarchy, linearity, and exclusivity. I will also note that the flow chart is a process rather than the collection policy and the policy is what can guide effective outcomes.

Firstly I advocate for the establishment of stakeholder advocacy groups empowered and emboldened to put forward items for the collection. Groups could consist of teachers, students, or parents and these bottom up organisations would be accountable to their peers and guided by the collection policy whatever process they used for decision making. These groups would supplement the selections and decisions of the teacher librarian.

Secondly I advocate for filtering the decisions through the principals lens of pedagogy and other priorities as without alignment with the power structure obstacles will be encountered with increasing frequency.

Thirdly I advocate for breadth when possible and representation of demographics in the school communities population within the resources held in the collection to ensure that those who I want to see using the library can see themselves in the library.

 

 

Hughes-Hassell, S. & Mancall, J. (2005). Collection management for youth: responding to the needs of learners [ALA Editions version]. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/lib/csuau/detail.action?docID=289075