With apologies for cross-posting. Also, I hope that you think this is
a suitable topic for this list. It was the only way that I could reach
colleagues in FE and HE, who I think are farther advanced in this area
than most school librarians.
I am in the early stages of setting out a plan for how the school can
make best use of developing e-learning opportunities. My new role is
to assist with the website, intranet, portal and VLE and I am trying
to work out how we can integrate these with the LRC to support the
whole school - staff, students, parents, governors - in terms of
information management in the widest sense. This includes learning
resources but also all kinds of materials, policies, resources and
documents in any kind of media.
At a training session yesterday, it became clear that plans for
developing the learning platform have been made at county level with
the role of school librarians included, but not fully understood. I
pointed out that if we had been involved from the outset, our
information management skills could have benefited the entire project!
There are various issues that are becoming clear to me and when I have
firmed them up in my mind, I am going to write a discussion document
for SMT. Why I am writing about this to this list is that one major issue is
how we support our schools in avoiding serious mistakes at the very
beginning. One very simple and obvious thing, to me, is setting up a
thesaurus or set of conventions for keywording resources, whether they
are documents, lesson plans, teaching materials etc.
Because the techies call them "tags" rather than keywords, they think
that this is an ICT issue, when in fact librarians have been doing
this for centuries! When I pointed out at the INSET session that
librarians have degrees in this, there was general surprise.
Sorry if this is rambling a bit, but I think this whole area has huge
implications and opportunities for librarians. I know that those of
you working in FE and HE are well ahead of us in schools and I am
hoping that some of you can help.
VLEs/learning platforms will come into all of our schools and the
potential for mistakes is
enormous. Just imagine in five year's time - all of those resources
uploaded by staff across each school/ county, using any word that
comes into their heads. If any of us have inherited chaotic library
catalogues, just think of this multiplied over and over! The
opportunity for us to be involved in county wide planning to avoid
this kind of issue is there for us to take, if we want it. This is a
fabulous chance for us to work with new ways of managing and providing
information in our schools.
What this is leading to is a plea. Have any of you begun to work in
this area? Has anyone got such a thesaurus that would be suitable at a
school level or wider county level?. If you have, can I share
it or contribute to the development of such a document. Please let me
know what you think.
Best wishes
Anne
--
Anne M Robinson, MA MCLIP
"SLA School Librarian of the Year 2005"
Learning Resources and Information Services Manager
Nicholas Chamberlaine Technology College
Bulkington Road
Bedworth
Warwickshire
CV12 9EA
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URL: http://www.strongest-links.org.uk
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