I felt that Arc resources looked very professional and easy to use, but there were not really enough resources appropriate for my teaching at the moment (I found about 4 that I could possibly use) and these resources felt like they could deliver a wide range of material, which is a positive aspect but it would take any teacher substantial time to integrate them into their class.  

I found Magabala website layout as I feel that looking at their collection, I could gain more understanding about what is meant by educating following strong indigenous cultural principles as the site also features very comprehensive teachers notes and resources for each of their publications which are free to access, with open copyright. Resources tended to be aimed at younger students of primary and lower secondary, which would not be suitable for my students.  

The resources within Trove felt like they went on forever which was a wonderful feeling after struggling to find sufficiently updated resources on Indigenous history. It felt especially easy to find primary sources for teaching indigenous histories, as well as providing links to resource collections (eg. https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/20835961?keyword=indigenous%20history), which I have never seen before through my Google searches. I think with the level of my students, this website might seem too ‘academic’ to motivate them sufficiently, but I will definitely be using it for class planning and class content. Being able to access the books digitally online is very efficient and user friendly, especially when combined with information on where to find and borrow hard copies.  

For the setting in which I work, I would much prefer my students to use books, for the simple reason that the depth of knowledge that they need to have on Ancient History (I teach secondary high school history) is simply not covered by on-line material. If I do let students use online resources to study from, they struggle with digital literacy and have a tendency to believe that the internet has the answer to everything. In a library context, for the teacher, a well-maintained lib guide and subscriptions to resources such as click view and various podcasts would be a godsend. However, I can see that the upkeep and development of this across the high school curriculum would necessitate at least one more library employee. I do not consider there would be much problem with access to subscriptions, as all of my students have a device.

This need for subscription based resources is a results of the TAFE NSW Collection Policy, where at the moment, textbooks are not supplied to classes or teachers. I understand that this is due to the high prices, additional work involved in stocktaking, as well as content changing quickly. I have noticed especially with history books covering indigenous Australians, they have become quickly out of date, especially in terms of new interpretations of ancient Australian life as well as terminology.

In an ideal world, my class would have access to a comprehensive textbook, along with the accompanying subscription plus subscriptions to appropriate resources which could be clearly linked to their work by being included in details for their assessments. At this point, this would take a large part of the TAFE library budget, as well as work, effort and time.

Collection management has been defined as a cyclical process of acquiring materials for a library based on needs analyses, along with stock-taking and reviewing the collection (Oddone, 2019). The cyclical version differs from the cultural collection management process of “a process of information gathering, communication, coordination, policy formulation, evaluation, and planning” (Johnson, 2009). Arguably this process is a dynamic one as Gregory (2019) claims that e-books, self-publishing, Web 2.0 and globalisation will continue to impact library collections and their policies concerning collection management, and along with that, the new and developing abilities of AI and Chat GPT. According to the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), collection management focusses on the creation of policies or themes to stringently guide procedures (Acquisition and Collection Development Section – IFLA, n.d.). All definitions define the activity of collection management as needing a qualified librarian or information professional who is specialised in improving the library’s collection in lines with the growth and direction of that library using various selection techniques such as citation analysis. This is where access is sought to materials most frequently used in the citations of bibliographies, indexes. 

Looking at the practice of librarianship in the last decades, there has been a shift to people-centred library collections where the stimuli of acquisitions is based on accurate analyses of the needs of the users. 

References 

Acquisition and Collection Development Section – IFLA. (n.d.). https://www.ifla.org/units/acquisition-collection-development/  

Gregory, V. L. (2019). Collection development and management for 21st century library collections: An Introduction, Second Edition. American Library Association. 

Johnson, Peggy (2009). “1: Introduction to Collection Management and Development”. Fundamentals of Collection Development and Management (2 ed.). Chicago, IL: The American Library Association.  

LaBonte, K. B. (2005). Citation analysis: a method for collection development for a rapidly developing field. Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship. http://www.istl.org/05-summer/refereed.html 

Oddone, K. (2019). School library collection development: it’s not as simple as you thinking. Linking Learning. https://www.linkinglearning.com.au/school-library-collection-development-its-not-as-simple-as-you-might-think/