Alaska Bush Library Service

This year we are reorganizing the media center and trying to organize the database for Koha so that it looks better.  This will be a long process that will only be accomplished with small steps along the way.

Last week, I went to Shaktoolik.  I uploaded a bunch of books and got them processed and set up for their students.  I just went into the OPAC and looked at recent arrivals for Shaktoolik.  Each of the books show up just as they should.  Their location has their school abbreviation and shelving location.  Their ISBN’s don’t have anything extra so their pictures show up like they should.  It seems funny, but just seeing that these records work like they should give me the energy to work on the older records and make them look better.

I am attempting to gain admission to University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa School of Library Information. This has required me to step out of my box to some extent. I took the Miller’s Analogies Test. The results came back today. I was expecting to be in the 60th percentile based on my raw score. I am in the 89th. I am hoping that helps me to get in. I have gathered my transcripts, letters of recommendation, written my purpose statement, and sent it all in. Now, comes the waiting time. This is new to me. I have not had to apply for admission to college before. I hope the wait doesn’t seem too interminable.

Next week I am starting to travel again. I will spend a week in Brevig Mission. They finished some new construction there. During the construction period a class moved into the library. I know there will be maintenance to take care of. I will work with the library aide and build some training modules for Koha based on what we find difficult.

I read the article Disconnects Between Library Culture and Millennial Generation Values  in the new issue of Educause.  A checklist is mentioned that would be good for libraries at all levels to ask themselves:

What is your library doing to:

• Support the user’s affinity for self-paced, independent, trial-and-error methods of learning? - Are we putting up online tutorials for students to look at when they need to?  I have seen some libraries that have iPod guides for library tours. Currently, I have built some online tutorials for using the Alaska Statewide Databases.
• Create opportunities to make library information look and behave like information that exists in online entertainment venues?  This may be the best place and time to install Worldcat buttons and the new search features of Google for each of our libraries.  Websites that interact with the students rather than sit there and wait for student to search and the OPAC to distribute information.  Why haven’t we added the ability for students to leave their book reviews in our OPACs?  I think a lot of this has to do with the software we have at our disposal.  I am hoping that this is something that will be able to the added to Koha down the road.
• Explore alternative options for delivering information literacy skills to users in online environments and alternate spaces?  I return to the online tutorials for students to gain information.  In my position, I am usually not at the student’s side when they need the information.  I am connected through three different IM programs for students to get a hold of me when they need to.  The problem I am finding is how do I advertise this so it is there when students need it.
• Apply the typical user’s desire for instant gratification to the ways that libraries could be using technology for streamlined services? I am not sure how we can meet these needs.  I do know what I do which is offer inter library loan so that users know that their needs are met, even if it will take a week to get the book.  I have added downloads to my district’s wiki of sites that give students the information they need to meet different standards.
• Redefine administrative, security, and policy restrictions to permit online users an online library experience that rivals that of a library site visit? I think we need more audiobooks that are downloadable and a better way to provide this service.  Copyright stipulations need to be met, but I would love to figure a way that students have access to the electronic resources, electronically rather than having to visit the library.
• Preserve born-digital information?  This is a matter of who is willing to stand up and pay for the storage medium.  It is easy to be in charge of the digital medium as long as you are willing to ensure that the materials are always accessible through current technology.  I think we have seen enough errors in this by now that we know how to keep abreast of changing technologies that we can revisit our ability to preserve materials on a yearly basis. — or am I the only one who lost all my MARC records by using an antiquated back up method?

I hope this gets us thinking to how we can provide the millennials the best library experience they can get.  We have moved a long way with technology.

My high school librarian was so afraid that the computer would make her unnecessary to the research process that she actually removed subjects, ISBNs, authors, and other parts of the MARC records so that students would have to come to her for the information.  I only know this because I became a library aide there before getting my own school library.  I spent the year adding full records and deleting a LOT of books that wouldn’t ever be used.

We need to embrace the technologies that our students are embracing and make sure that our libraries will always be the place that our students can gain more access to information.

Last Monday I traveled to Gambell Alaska for my first trip out for the school year. I worked with the elementary students on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Great lessons in how to come up with ideas for research. I bring in Jelly Bellies, a movie on how they are made. This takes about seven minutes and then we discuss why I would choose Jelly Bellies if I could research anything. I then move the third through sixth grade students into Ebsco Student researcch databases so that they can find magazine articles on anything that interests them.

I work with the kindergarten through second graders on our statewide Battle of the Books program.

The big news comes next, on Thursday, I head to the jr. high and high school area. One of the seventh grader students comes up to me and says, “I remember you. You taught us how to use Worldbook Online last year.” I was blown away. I mean I remember that I did teach his class how to use Worldbook Online. They got to use the laptop lab which was new to the school. The class was great and by the end of the lesson, I could allow them to sit anywhere because they did a good job of staying on task. I remember most lessons that I give in each school so that I can build on them and/or ask teachers how it is going later, but I didn’t expect to be remembered by a student.

I am in Savoonga this week. Here, I will give the same lessons. In addition, I will do a lot of library maintenence. This school wants to implement Accelerated Reader. We have a $5,000 Laura Bush Grant to purchase books. That will help a lot to purchase books that the students here will enjoy. I have talked to teachers about which books they would like to see. I will tallk to students this week to see what they want to see.

Is the textbook the curriculum, or should it serve the curriculum?

This is the line I latched onto from the blog entitled “The Education Bazarr” which is a discussion on the uses of open source in the classroom. In my last job, I remember having to educate several teachers, one several times, on the fact that the adopted curriculum is not the same as the textbook. The teacher wanted to get a new secondary school reading text adopted. Her reasoning was that , “We haven’t had a curriculum adoption in six years.” This was six years ago, had we purchased new textbooks then, it would be time to buy them again. More importantly, at what point did we decide that publishers that live far away from us should decide what our children learn.

As we move more and more into open source, how will this effect textbooks? How will this effect books in all? I am in the middle of a class project. “How to answer the school board member who meets with the technology coordinator and librarian to ask with all this new technology, can we give up the book budget to purchase more technology?” This makes me wonder what our libraries will look like in 20 years. We need to be thinking of this as we plan our library futures.

We are currently weeding the district media center. I think this is the least liked job for all librarians. I have just pulled all the software that can’t be read by our current computers and come to a decision that I shouldn’t be supplying software for check out. There isn’t enough use in it to justify the cost. Another item that is being pulled from my library are videos that were taped off educational television in about 1986. It is kind of fun to watch these tapes and see the styles from my teen years, but they definitely don’t need to be watched by students. The information has changed.

Pluto - Weeding takes on a new thought process when you think of Pluto. Do all materials that refered to Pluto as a planet need to go away now? Can it be a great teaching experience for teachers to explain that science is a changing field? Finally, do you think that the people who declared Pluto to not be a planet are the same ones that will write the new textbooks.

This year, as opposed to last, I am working on organizing my library better. As all libraries have, we have materials that don’t get checked out. These materials either need to be promoted better or weeded from the library so we have more room. This will be a long process, but my library will be better for it when it is finished. My goal right now is to clean and weed a section of shelves each day.

Then I will start on the library tubs. Some of these we don’t need any longer because each school has purchased the material. Some we don’t need because we no longer teach in those areas.

Today I tried something different. We printed spine labels from the automation program. It includes a line on the top of the label that says ‘Fiction’ or ‘Nonfiction’ on the top. This is why we don’t use the label program. I do not like this automation system. This year another goal of mine is to get KOHA up and going. It is an open source program. We know that we will have to spend some money to tailor it to what we want, but it has got to be better than what I am doing now.