(This is this post as a word cloud from http://www.abcya.com/word_clouds.htm.)
"... a right of passage for TL's" (Garrison, 2014)
As described by Garrison (2014) this subject is a “right of
passage for TL’s” (teacher librarians). It was a challenging but necessary
journey, if one is to feel like a librarian
rather than an imposter in the library. I have gone from having a rudimentary understanding of Dewey, none
of subject headings or what Resource Description and Access (RDA) were, to
having a useful but fundamental grasp of all three.
Furthermore, I now have sufficient grounding in resource
description to appreciate the implications of RDA working alongside Oliver as a
library management system in New South Wales public schools. RDA allows school libraries to move into the
21st century finally by facilitating the incorporation of a wide
range of resource types. Not to mention how much more student friendly the
natural language of RDA will be.
This understanding
has lead to an appreciation of the specificity
that the School Catalogue Information Service (SCIS) gives to resource
description and the implications of the
four Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) (Hider, 2012, p. 17) when locating resources in the school library. The
reliability of the catalogue was something I took for granted, previously. I
now appreciate the value of a controlled vocabulary and thus why it is
essential to send items that do not exist in SCIS to be catalogued. However, school
libraries may, in the future, become more digital in nature. This then makes me
ask what will happen to the role of metadata
librarians?
If school libraries are to become increasingly digital then
a controlled vocabulary should be more important. This is because students and
teachers will no longer be able to browse the shelves to the extent they do
now. Quality metadata may be the key here as it will be the layer underneath
that facilitates a user-centred interface (David Allan Hubbard Library, n.d.
para. 5). Consequently, this will not only mean less books and shelves but also
the role of the metadata librarian will grow with the importance of accurate
resource description (Weinstock 2010, p.
18).
The increased digitization of school libraries may also lead
to the development of a federated search being available in a primary school
library! In the future, this would be facilitated by the semantic web in which
a wide range resources will be sorted and presented as one search on a topic,
for example (O’Connell, 2011, p.41). The metadata could be organised to include
curriculum outcomes, outside databases or literature genres (Manifold, 2014,
para. 16). This will be accommodated by virtual shelf browsing of digital and
print items (Breeding, 2010, p.25).
Systems like Oliver will allow NSW school libraries to take
advantage of folksonomies (SCAN, 2014, p.8). Folksonomies involve user
generated metadata to appraise resources available in the library. For school
libraries this could be a genuine way to engage students by using this as a
teaching tool to encourage reading by making it more appealing.
A future school library will surely be more of a mixture of
digital and print resources than it is now. The changes in resource description
will facilitate this development so that the library catalogue will be more user-centred.
References:
Breeding, M. (2010). Next –Gen library catalogs. London:
Facet Publishing.
David Allan
Hubbard Library. (n.d). Next-Generation
Library Catalogs: a resource guide. Retrieved on October
11, 2014 from http://infoguides.fuller.edu/content.php?pid=151747&sid=1560806
Garrison, K.
(2014, October 90. [Ass2Forum – Miram Kelly] Part Bqu.10 [Online forum comment]. Retrieved from http://forums.csu.edu.au/perl/forums.pl?task=frameset&forum_id=ETL505_201460_W_D_Sub8_forum&message_id=7208564
Manifold, A.
(2014). Libraries and medata in a sea of information. Connections, 89(2),
4-5. Retrieved from http://www2.curriculum.edu.au/scis/connections/
O'Connell, J. Web 3.0 : preparing our students for
tomorrow's world : part 2. Scan, 30(4),
37-42.
Porter, J. (2011). Folksonomies in the
library: their impact on user experience, and their implications for the work
of librarians. Australian Library Journal, 60(3), 248-255.
Retrieved from https://www.alia.org.au/
Weinstock, J.
(2010).Turning the page. Education Digest, 76(4), 12-18.
