Assignment 3 School Library Learning Commons Reference sources' evaluation

Our school is even more challenging to evaluate and collect resources since it is a triple track school. It includes: early French Immersion, Late French Immersion, and English tracks. It is currently the home away from home to approximately 400, K- grade 7 students. The Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) for Teacher Librarians (TLs) is determined by the number of students (i.e. 400 students = 1.0 FTE).

The reference materials section in our school has been eliminated from the Library Learning Commons (LLC). All of the resources have been weeded with the exception of a few. Those few resources have been added to the shelves in their designated Dewey location for patron circulation. Other reference resources have been relocated to classrooms; such as: dictionaries, thesauri, and a few atlases. 

What We Have

In turn, the school's reference collection section can be found completely online, within our digital resources. Our digital resources are carefully curated by BC Digital Classrooms from Focused Education Resources. Focused Education Resources curates and evaluates the digital resources for all the public schools of British Columbia which come from the BC Digital Classroom collection. 

The digital reference resources that are available to all students in our district include the following (as curated by the BC Digital Classrooms):

*SD 38 Library Learning Commons Digital Resources

In addition, students have access to information by accessing the internet through the provided devices. For example, students can search Wikipedia, Youtube, DuckDuckGo (an online search engine that does not track your searches, nor keeps any of your information) and more.

For more information click on the search engines below:

*Youtube home page

*Wikipedia home page

*DuckDuckGo main page for information on the kind of search engine they offer

Evaluation

I will evaluate the resources above using the suggestions from our class materials and readings (i.e. accuracy, scope, bias, and cost). Most of the resources have the option of picking another language (i.e. French). For this paper I will evaluate the English resources, for the students in the English track. 

Accuracy	Scope	Bias	Cost
Excellent because the resources are part of the BC Digital Classroom resources collected and curated by Focused Education Resources which is gathered by specialists.	- is accessible from any digital device anywhere and anytime - Resources are available in other languages (especially French and English since we are a triple track school) - kept current as they are updated in real time - offer cross curricular resources - resources for every age group (e.g. Wold Book)	Some of the resources can have American bias by excluding relevant information even though the resources are curated by BC Classrooms. For example, I typed Truth and Reconciliation Day on World Book and it had no information but in Historica there was.  For more Canadian specific information, students should use other sources to confirm their findings (e.g. Learn 360, Curio.ca, Historica, Canadian Biography, and Know BC)	According to an interview with my district TL; the cost of these resources is high but the value exceeds the cost. Purchasing in this format allows the district to share the cost rather than purchasing print versions for every school. Especially since each item has several volumes in order to contain the amount of information that is offered through our digital resources. The cost of the digital resources ends up coming out to be approximately $1-$2 per student.

Rationale

According to the assessment above, our digital reference resources more than meet the requirements to provide information to students. However, our physical reference resources are lacking since there is no designated section in the LLC for them and since the few that are circulating may be outdated. As stated by Caldwell and Carefoot, TLs need to plan for the purchase of a wide variety of learning resources formats, including print, non-print and electronic resources.

Rationale for purchasing more print reference resources:

- It is part of the curricular competencies for all grade levels to do research inquiry lessons/projects.

- Our school does not have enough digital devices for more than 4 classes to use at any given time. It's not enough devices for 18 divisions. Especially if different classes need the devices at the same time.

- It's considered "exemplary" for teachers to have physical materials on hand in order to meet the diverse needs and interests of students (Riedling, 2013).

- We need to respond to student and teacher needs (Canadian Library Association, 2014).

Plan 

This plan has several elements discussed in lesson 6 (stages in collection development), where Richard Beaudry discusses the steps for evaluating resources in Ray Dorian's article.

1. Form a Library Committee. From my other LIBE course I have learned that one of the most important things to do before deciding what to do in your LLC is to establish a Library Committee. In fact, Doug Johnson stated in his article how he drew more people into the LLC after he established a committee.

2. Get circulation data of existing reference material.

3. At a staff meeting inform teachers that you will be establishing a Library Committee to help you make decisions for creating and maintaining the LLC, including a reference resource section. At the staff meeting, teachers will be informed that we will spend a small part of our up coming pro-d filling out surveys to help the Library Committee find out where to allocate funding for the reference resources. In addition, we will include questions on which reference resources they will use and which inquiry topics they usually cover in class.

4. Collect the surveys and meet with the Library Committee to decide how to fill the gap of reference resources. What will the section look like? Which classes need sets of dictionaries, thesauri and atlases? Which is better, class sets or small sets?

5. Before making any purchases the Library Committee will have to figure out how much funding they have in the budget and how much they want to allocate to reference resources. Since these are more costly resources, the purchasing might have to be done slowly to spread the budget or move onto next year's budget. 

6. Once the reference resources section is established, the TL will do a mini orientation during book exchanges so students know about this new section. Students will be able to take these out to maximize circulation (Beaudry, 2023). However, teachers can place reference books on hold in advance for inquiry projects/lessons.

Conclusion 

I believe that with time and the plan stated above, the LLC will be a place students can come to and find reference resources quickly. For easy access there will be a special section for these books. In addition, the TL will rotate the resources on display by casing them to teachers and students. Most importantly, by creating a space for resources in both settings (physical print and digital) we are catering to individual differences in learning styles, abilities, needs and interests. 

Citations

R. Rubio, personal communication, March 7th, 2023. 

Canadian Library Association (CLA), 2014. The Leading Learning: Standards of Practice for School Library Learning Commons in Canada.  https://llsop.canadianschoollibraries.ca/. Retrieved on March 19th, 2023.

SD 38 Library Learning Commons Digital Resources. https://libraries.sd38.bc.ca/student-elementary. Retrived March 25th, 2023. 

Riedling, A. & Houston, C. (2013). Reference Skills for the School Librarian: Tools and Tips (3rd ed.) Libraries Unlimited.

Caldwell and Carefoot. Achieving Information Literacy: Standards for School Library Programs in Canada ail110217.pdf. Retrieved March 28th, 2023.

Doiron, Ray. 2002. School libraries in Canada and Ministry of Education materials. Vol. 21 No. 4. 

Johnson, D. (2012). Twenty + Years of Working with Advisory Groups. Blue Skunk Blog.

Beaudry, Richard. Theme Three course work material. Retrieved March 28th, 2023.