An Existential Rethink

Back in 2016, I wrote the following blog post and today I rediscovered it while looking for something else.  It surprised me how little had changed over the intervening years; and yet I was interested to realise how much my thoughts on the role of the library and librarian had not remained as I described them in the blog but had come full circle with a few major and minor tweaks.  And then there is the question of how my administration and teaching colleagues view the library today!

"I woke up in the middle of the night about a week ago and the voice in my head told me that I really needed to get rid of the majority of our periodical collection.  I told it to shut up and that everything would seem better in the morning.  Then I tried to go back to sleep.

A short while later, the voice said that I should also get rid of most of my fiction collection since hardly anyone was reading.  "Be quiet," I said.  I wanted to yell that but I didn't want to wake up the whole house.  Instead, I turned over and tried to think of something else.  "And then there's the non-fiction collection!"  I didn't have to listen to anymore.  I was now awake.

I might have asked myself where this was all coming from but I didn't need to.  It is something that has been bothering me for quite some time.   I told people the next day that I was suffering an overly long existential moment but that moment has turned into a week.  So, the question became this:  what is the point of the upper school librarian and the library at our school.

I hear the voices of fellow librarians and of course, I know that there is a point and I am fairly certain that I can elucidate it.  However, I don't know if anyone else can.  I might ask my colleagues what they see as the role of the library and librarian and I would get back the usual platitudes.  I have educated them well.  However, their actions don't confirm this.  The English department has stopped bringing their classes for book talks and book selection, claiming they can't afford the time.  The science and humanities departments don't come for research lessons as often as they did, giving the same reason.

Was it something that I did or didn't do?  I have spent a lot of time thinking about this.  I surveyed, I increased my book displays and bulletin boards, I have given mini workshops at staff meetings and gone to department meetings to peddle my wares.  Finally, yesterday I came to the realisation that it wasn't something I did or didn't do, that it is simply the way my school is going.

To meet the requirements of the MYP e-assessments, a lot of time given in the past to research has been cut.  I have even had someone say to me that it didn't matter to them what sources the students used and how good (or bad) they were.  Students would now only be given a short period of time in class to ask about the essay topic and then it would be due a week and a half later.  No time to come to the library, no time for me to share good resources, no time for me to assist with the development of their research skills.  And as for referencing, well who knows how that is going!  Encouraging students to use the excellent book resources we have was always a challenge.  Now, I might as well pack them up and send them off to Better World Books.

I don't want you to think that I am feeling sorry for myself or heaven forbid, wallowing in self-pity. Quite the contrary (though that might have happened for a short while), I am feeling liberated by the realisation that the needs of the school have changed and that the library and the librarian are going to have to change as well.

You may not be reading the situation right, you might say.  And that is true.  Thus, though I have decided that I will probably reduce my book stock by up to 50% (notice I'm not being totally radical), and stop subscribing to most of my periodicals, I do recognise that I could be wrong.

I wrote the following email to my senior management team:

Please excuse my existential crisis but......I was wondering what you saw as the function of the library and the librarian.  I know what I believe it should be but I was wondering about how the senior management saw it. I'm not asking for a quick reply but would appreciate you giving it some thought over Christmas and getting back to me in the new year.  I am going to ask the rest of the upper school staff to think about it as well.  I am sure that I will get the usual responses but what I would like to know is how you would like to see the library and the librarian function within the school.  Perhaps after the feedback, we could arrange to meet and discuss your thoughts and mine.

More to come!"

The reply I received was as follows:

'It may be worth posing some questions in a google form for all of the SLT and possibly HoDs if you are asking the same question of them?'

I am waiting to see if this is the only reply I receive from them.  If it is, it speaks volumes!"  (It was and it did!)

So here I am eight years later, revisiting an existential crisis that could have led somewhere significant and didn't!  Well, that probably isn't entirely true.  Nearly all of our print periodicals have gone.  However, we do have PressReader and individual digital subscriptions to the New York Times, the Economist and the Financial Times.  We also have 12 print copies a week of First News shared between the lower and upper school libraries.  As for our fiction collection, it has grown.  We have an entirely new English department and their middle school students either come in once every two weeks for book selection or every time they finish what they are reading in class. Furthermore, each teacher allows them time to read in each English period.  Our circulation has never been this good.  

And finally, there is the non-fiction collection.  I have always found this to be the most problematic part of the collection.  The books relating to particular units, are used if the teacher encourages their use or asks for them to be kept in the classroom for the duration of the unit.  Students in certain DP subjects will seek out books mentioned by their teachers or if they are encouraged to use books for their IAs or EEs.  However, they can be a hard sell.  

I have considered paring down the collection.  In fact, there was a dramatic reduction during the pandemic and which continued just afterwards when the library was divided into a fiction and non-fiction collection in two different locations.  I have integrated the reference collection (what was left of it) with the rest of the collection; I got rid of most of the dictionaries; I weeded books published before a certain date and on topics which seem no longer relevant.  And so it continues.

At the present time, I am investigating digital collections for non-fiction but so far, I have only found one which offers a wide selection of topics and it is really only appropriate for grades 10 to 12.  Furthermore, though this is an excellent collection of over a million books, it would be cost prohibitive to provide it for every one of our upper secondary students.

Blog Entry 5: Perlego and its AI Researcher

 (So here I am a day late writing my next blog in my personal challenge to write every day.  It isn't that I didn't write yesterday, it's just that it wasn't appropriate for this blog!

 Yes, I am still excited about Perlego and I have spent time every day since I discovered it, exploring its possibilities.  When you start poking around, the first thing you are likely to come across is the search bar.  You can use it in a traditional manner, looking for author, title, ISBN, etc. but more exciting still, is the AI Researcher.

I experimented with a research question and with key words and both were effective.  Below is a sample of the research question results: To what extent did the bombing of Hiroshima lead to the Japanese surrender in World War Two?

Keyword Search

The book results vary but that isn't surprising since the keyword search wasn't as focused as the research question search.

(I may update this blog tomorrow!)

Down Various Rabbit Holes

 I didn't write yesterday or Friday, not because I didn't have anything to discuss but because I was sucked down several rabbit holes and I still haven't really emerged.  The first was that of Perlego, which I hadn't heard of until Wednesday evening when a student emailed to ask if I could find a copy of a book called, The Oslo Accords 1993–2013: A Critical Assessment by Peter Bauck.  Well, no I couldn't, to my frustration, despite checking all my usual suspects.  Then, I alighted upon a reference to it online on a website called Perlego and down I went.  

I don't often get this excited about websites, especially ones which offer access to ebooks.  Truth be told, I don't enjoy reading online.  I do recognise all the positives of ebooks and of providing access to them for my students.  Though as luck would have it,  Perlego turned out to be far more than I could ever have expected with over a million academic non-fiction titles, appropriate for the upper secondary and the university level reader.  However, it didn't stop there.  It wasn't just the books but it was also the tools offered for interaction with those books.  (I'll list them and then discuss each later.)

1. An AI Researcher, which doesn't offer an answer to your question but suggests books from the collection which will help to answer it, and provides key excerpts from each suggestion.
2. A workspace for each of your topics of research 
3. A number of tools to assist the user in accessing the books
4. A notebook function
5. A way of setting up an assignment and sharing it with collaborators (or students) through the workspace.  Not necessarily meant for teachers but perfect for them!

There are likely to be tools and functions I haven't discovered yet but I will keep exploring and using Perlego for my own research and to find possible books for my EE and IA students.  

In my next blog post, I will expand on each of the 5 point above.  

Post 3: My Grade 7 (Year 8) Science Class

I wasn't thinking about using my class today as a topic for my writing exercise but the class went so well that I changed my mind.  The grade 7s have been working on a unit about the periodic table and were divided into pair groupings to complete a research project on one particular element.  Below is the information from their task sheet. (This is not included in my word count!)

Title: The Elemental Quest

Introduction:

In this project research we will embark on an exciting journey into the heart of chemistry and

its profound impact on our world. In this project, we will look into the essential building blocks

of matter: the elements of the periodic table. But we're not just exploring their scientific

significance; we're delving deeper into the catastrophic consequences that could ensue if

these elements were to vanish from our existence.

Each of your groups will embark on a research quest, assigned to investigate the importance

of a specific element from the periodic table. You'll uncover its indispensable role in various

aspects of our lives, from industry to medicine, agriculture to technology. But here's the twist:

you'll also examine the potential devastation that would unfold if this element were to

suddenly disappear from our planet.

Imagine a world without oxygen, carbon, or even something as seemingly inconspicuous as

iodine. The repercussions would be far-reaching and severe, impacting everything from the

air we breathe to the food we eat, the devices we use, and the medicines that keep us

healthy.

Through this project, you'll not only deepen your understanding of chemistry but also

cultivate a sense of responsibility towards preserving these fundamental elements. You'll

discern why it's imperative to safeguard them for future generations and advocate for their

conservation.

Get ready to unlock the secrets of the periodic table and discover the power it holds over our

past, present, and future. 

Welcome to the Elemental Quest!

Your research product could take any of the following forms:

● A story (biography or autobiography) about the element

● A children’s book about the Element

● Powerpoint presentation about the element(12-15 slides)

● The element webpage or Movie

● A poem or song about the element

● An element case file or Poster

● Collage/picture book with captions or scrapbook of element

● Interview video (Student/Scientist, Journalist/Researcher, Parent/Child, etc., )

My role in this was to take the students through the process of setting up their Works Cited List (WCL) and to introduce the research guide and the print books available from the library.  

 As I demonstrated in my account, one person in each pair group set up a WCL using Noodletools and then shared it with their teacher, their partner, and me.  Next, I introduced the libguide for the project , which acted as a jumping off point for their research.  The guide contains links to various tools such as the library database and noodletools; slide presentations on using noodletools, in-text referencing and the referencing of images according to MLA.  There is also a tab for databases, three in all.  I went through each one briefly reminding the class how to use them.  Finally there is a tab for web links.  (All of this is available by clicking on the link above.)

I am returning to the class next week to assist students, mainly with the referencing.

(I am not entirely happy with this description so I will probably edit it!)

 As I said in my previous post, I was involved in a writing project a number of years ago.  Today I decided to find those blog entries and read some of them.  One of them is my jumping off point for today's post:  https://kitandcaboodal.blogspot.com/2015/03/post-6-round-2-of-28daysofwriting.html.

Bear in mind that the post was written over 9 years ago, when you read what I have to say today.  I came up with a number of suggestions to improve the research stills of our students and reading over them, I realise that we have made little progress.  

First of all, I recognised that we need to work with primary students to improve their skills (and those of their teachers) so that they are prepared when they move up to secondary.  I recognise that I have partially succeeded in achieving this goal even though I may not feel that I have progressed far with it.  The grade 5s (year 6 in the UK system), spend part of their year preparing a topic for their exhibition in early May, and I work with them.  

This year the students accomplished the following:

1. Learned how a browser and a search engine work in order to better understand how to phrase our keyword searches.

2. Learned how to use some of the google operators, such as: the site operator [site:]; the range operator [air flights 1950..2020]; how to find definitions using [define:]; and how to search for particular file types [filetype:pdf]

3. Became familiar with keywords which would help them find statistical information about their topic

We also did some work on how to verify that a website/source was reliable and how to find images, charts, and graphs.

Having written this, I don't feel that we've done too badly!

(301 words)

7 Draft Entries and Nothing to Show for Them!

 The last 7 draft entries in my blog haven't been finished.  Realising this, reminded me of a writing project I got involved in about 6 or 7 years ago.  The idea was to write 200+ words a day, every day.  I can't remember how long we planned to do this but I managed it for a month at least.  I have several blogs so the results of this 200+ challenge must be somewhere.  However, reading them isn't the point of this entry, which I plan on finishing!  It is to set a similar challenge to anyone who is interested.  I do know that the more I write, the more I write, if you follow that.  Not only do I start to write longer pieces but they get better.  (Thank goodness, my inner voice is saying!).   

Here is what I suggest.  Commit to write 150+ words on your life as a librarian and post it on a blog, the link to which you can share in this Facebook group.  Commit to it for at least 4 days out of 7, more if you can.  Read the blogs of others and perhaps have your blog entry be a response to someone else's from time to time.

Let's start a conversation!

(208 words! Now that wasn't hard!)

A Rose by any other name…would still be a library. Or would it?

Groan!  Another article about another area of the world, this time my home base of Canada, where libraries are being reimagined and pushed into a corner; and the librarians quietly confined to obscurity.  In this article, the library has become the ‘Curiosity Space’.  I don’t know whether to vomit or…well, what?  

https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/2022/12/31/its-not-a-school-library-its-a-curiosity-space

Were the school libraries I have overseen, curated, loved and nurtured over the years not full of curious children and young adults, learning about the world around and within?  I shout emphatically, ‘yes, they were’!  Did these libraries not evolve over the years to meet the needs of their users?  Again, I shout, “Yes, they did!”

Do I sound frustrated?  

I think that is an emphatic "Yes," shouted to the indifferent universe!