Month: August 2020

Farmer’s (2014) ideas about selection aids and criteria for both print and digital material mirrors a lot of the content I learned last Semester in ETL503. It makes sense to hold digital resources to a higher standard than print, as there are more elements that need to be taken into account (ownership vs access, ease of use, licensing etc.). It is also interesting to think of parents, teachers and TLs as reference sources, particularly as I am myself asked ‘research’ questions or even simple questions about facts and information just about every day by multiple students!

In my own experience the biggest factor influencing the decision about formats of reference resources  is the purpose of the resource (what need is it fulfilling) and budgeting. Our school has had access to WorldBookOnline for a number of years but it had not been promoted until early last year (just before I started my role). As a result, the license had been continually renewed even though it had barely been used at all and only recently did I think to re-evaluate the purpose and usefulness of the resource. Originally, the license had been purchased purely as it was a ‘new’ resource and there was no specific use determined for it, nor were students or staff made aware that they had access to it or even what it was. In fact the very old reference books it was intended to replace were still on the shelves until I performed a weed earlier this year! I have since promoted World Book as our key reference resource that students should be using to start their research and the use has picked up dramatically, particularly during the COVID drop off. However, it is still not being used anywhere near as much as it should be considering how many research tasks are conducted by our secondary school students.

References

Farmer, L. S. J. (2014). Introduction to reference and information services in today’s school library. Rowman & Littlefield.