Author: Pru

Syndetic Solutions

Through the subscription service Syndetics, SCIS offers additional descriptive and evaluative information for its catalogue records where available. Syndetic logo
Features include:

  • author notes
  • awards
  • books in a series
  • fiction and biography profiles
  • summaries and annotations.

Syndetics reviews

Syndetics delivers edited reviews from authoritative reviewing sources including:

Awards for Harry Potter and the deathly hallows by J.K. Rowling
Awards for Harry Potter and the deathly hallows by J.K. Rowling

Continue reading Syndetic Solutions

LibraryThing for Libraries

SCIS is now a member of LibraryThing for Libraries, an enhancement service that delivers information created and shared by members of the LibraryThing social networking service into library catalogues.

LTFL logoCommunity generated content from LibraryThing for Libraries includes a range of features that provide additional descriptive information about resources in the SCIS catalogue.

Recommendations point to other ‘similar’ titles available within the catalogue.

Similar books to Queen of sorcery / David Eddings
Similar books to Queen of sorcery by David Eddings All rights in images of books or other publications are reserved by the original copyright owners

Links to other editions and translations are provided where applicable.

Tag-based discovery provides tag clouds for resources and tag-based search, drawn from the 75 million tags added to resources by LibraryThing members.

LibraryThing reviews are sourced from the LibraryThing customer base around the world – a diverse community of readers, taggers and reviewers.

Individuals or libraries registered with LibraryThing will be able to add their own reviews through the SCIS OPAC interface and share these for the benefit of all SCIS and LibraryThing users.

A short introduction to LibraryThing provides useful information to individuals interested in joining the LibraryThing community.

Please note: LibraryThing’s terms of use exclude children under 13 from joining. Children over 13 years of age require parent/guardian permission.

SCIS as selection aid

Next term our grade 2s will be studying Looking back: how and why things have changed over time?
The teachers already have come knocking to borrow books on these topics. Our library doesn’t have  much on this, and I would love to get some more resources for our library. (Ozge, Library Manager, Melbourne)

This is where SCIS OPAC becomes a valuable selection and collection building tool.

SubjectBrowse
Screen shots of SCIS OPAC produced by permission of Ex Libris

Browse or Search by Subject for the topic you need to find resources for.

  1. In this case ‘Australia Social life and customs’
    (but it could be Scarecrows – Fiction, or a Dewey search for more recent books ‘like this’)
  2. Then select the specific headings that are relevant to your students.
    In our ‘Looking back’ example, investigate specific decade subdivisions.
  3. If you sort the results by Published date (most recent first) you will find titles that are more likely to be available from your regular suppliers.
    **Of course, you will still need to evaluate these resources against your specific collection policy and school requirements. SCIS catalogues resources held in a large number of school libraries, and not all of these will be relevant or appropriate to your school.
Screenshots produced by permission of Ex Libris, based on Voyager
Screenshots of SCIS OPAC produced by permission of Ex Libris

SCIS NZ workshops

SCIS is pleased to offer the following workshops in New Zealand in July 2011

Click here to register for SCIS NZ workshops

North Island NZWELLINGTON, TUESDAY 12 JULY 2011 9.00am-12.00pm

National Library NZ Training room, 77 Thorndon Quay

HAMILTON: WEDNESDAY 13 JULY 2011 9.00am-12.30pm
Melville High School, 6 Collins Road

AUCKLAND: FRIDAY 15 JULY 2011 9.00am-12.30pm
St Cuthbert’s College, 122 Market Road, Epsom, AUCKLAND – NOTE venue change

SESSION CONTENT

This half day workshop is open to all school library staff and provides an understanding of how SCIS cataloguing services can assist to provide a more effective library service to your school community. Participants will enhance their understanding of SCIS as a database of consistent catalogue records for education resources created to agreed standards.

Learn how to customise your SCIS profile, and make the most of book cover images, catalogue records for digital resources, educational websites and e-books.

Find out how to use SCIS Authority Files to save time and enhance your library catalogue.

Presenter: Pru Mitchell, SCIS Subscriber Support Coordinator

Many thanks to the National Library of New Zealand Services to Schools for assistance in organisation of venues for SCIS workshops.

How do I register?

You will need to complete the online registration form in order to reserve a place at the workshop.

If your school requires other documentation beyond a printout of the online form, please register online and then email scisinfo@esa.edu.au with what you require.

SCIS will invoice participants after the workshop. The cost per registration will be AUD$50.00.

What about the South Island?

We look forward to planning workshops for other regions in 2012, so even if you are unable to attend the July 2011 sessions, you are invited to indicate your interest in future workshops on the online registration form so we can contact you when these are organised.

Feathers for Phoebe

‘We find stuff’ for Australian Library and Information Week, 23-29 May 2011

The aim of LIW is to raise the profile of libraries and information service professionals in Australia, so check out the myriad of ideas on the ALIA website and take time this week to tell your teachers, students, parents and community what school libraries do!

We catalogue stuff!
We look up stuff!
We research stuff!
We know stuff!

National Simultaneous Storytime

NSS 2011 logo
National Simultaneous Storytime, 11am Wed 25 May

NSS is one of the highlights of the week for school libraries.

At 11am on Wednesday 25 May 2011 everyone stops to read Rod Clement’s colourful, creative story Feathers for Phoebe [SCIS No 1487992].

Register your storytime to join in the fun and add your site to the national map.

Phoebe at Marryatville PS
Marryatville Primary School's Phoebe (created by Tsam)

e-book versions
PowerPoint, PDF and podcast versions of Feathers for Phoebe plus interactive whiteboard activities are available to registered participating sites.

Teacher’s notes
Christine Sarandis provides links to author information, reviews and activities to use this week.

Blog posts with more ideas
Auburn North Primary School
Book Chook
Book Crowd
Ian McLean
Kids Book Review

Read and enjoy!

Connections 77

You can now read the latest issue of Connections online. Copies have been mailed to all Australian schools.

Teacher librarians and the networked school community

Everyone knows everyone!
Everyone knows everyone!, image by arianamedstudent, licence: CC-by

Mal Lee and Lyn Hay present their view of the evolution facing schools and the role of the information centre professional.

Schooling worldwide is in the process of evolving from a traditional paper-based operational mode to one that is digital and networked. The opportunities being opened daily for the astute, proactive information professional prepared to embrace and lead ongoing change are immense.

Natural disasters and disaster plans

In recent months many areas of Australia and New Zealand have experienced very serious natural disasters. These natural disasters have had significant impact on schools in the affected areas. Many schools continue to operate in difficult conditions or are temporarily operating off site. This article raises the timely question of school library disaster plans.

Behaviour

Adam Le Good explores the reasons behind unacceptable behaviour (of students and staff) and what we can do to minimise its effect.

Schools and social media

An article adapted from Denis Masseni’s report of a 2010 survey of Victorian school principals entitled ‘Why schools are spooked by social media‘. It discusses the benefits of social media for schools and security and protection issues.

From little things big things grow

The fifth instalment of Nigel Paull’s account of a new BER library at South Grafton Public School, New South Wales in which he describes the enthusiastic response of students to the finished library.

Print complete issue of Connections 77, term 2 2011

SCIS workshops

In the 2010 SCIS Survey there were requests for access to SCIS training from a significant number of respondents. In response to this, the SCIS Subscriber Support Coordinator role has been designed to provide increased training and professional learning opportunities in the use of SCIS and its value to the school library community.

The following half day seminars are available to Victorian library staff in Term 2, 2011.

‘Making the Most of SCIS’ workshops for Term 2, 2011

Register online for either workshop at: http://tinyurl.com/scisPDVIC

Cost $85 per person includes materials and light catering. Payment on invoice

This training will highlight how SCIS cataloguing services can assist staff to provide a more effective library service to their school community. Learn how you can customise your SCIS profile to optimise your use of SCIS. Make the most of book cover images, and catalogue records for learning objects, video files, educational websites and e-books. Find out how to use SCIS Authority Files to save time and to enhance your library catalogue.

If you would like to discuss hosting a SCIS training seminar in your region, please contact Pru Mitchell.

Enhanced catalogue content trial

SCIS is trialling additional enhanced content in its online catalogue, including summaries, reviews and other content from Syndetics and LibraryThing for Libraries.

Step through our guided feedback surveyTrial Feedback
We are very interested in your feedback to help us decide on the most appropriate new content to display in SCIS OPAC.

You are welcome to explore the trial database

Notes
The trial catalogue contains a small subset of records from the SCIS database so you will not find a wide range of titles.
Enhanced content in SCIS OPAC is a display feature only and will not be downloaded with SCIS records.

New in SCIS series

Below is an important message about a change to the SCIS Cataloguing Standards which was sent to school library management system vendors on 31 March 2011.
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Thangmar Göttingen, SUB Library, Lesesaal, old bibliographies, Public domain
Gottingen, Old bibliographies by Thangmar 2005, PD

The MARC 440 field (Series statement/Added entry – Title) was made obsolete in the international standard in 2008.

In 2009 SCIS announced its intention to stop using 440 and use both the 490 and 830 tags as prescribed in the standard. Tag 490 is part of the description of the resource, and contains the series statement as it appears on the item; tag 830 is the series access point or added entry. In some cases the data in the two fields may be identical. SCIS does not use fields 800, 810 and 811 as it prefers to provide series access by title rather than name/title.

For new records, SCIS is now using 490 and 830 as required. Records created prior to the changeover retain the series added entry in the 440 field. Your local system should provide for searching and displaying both 440 and 830 as series titles. Both 490 and 830 are repeatable, ie there may be more than one 490 or 830 in a single record.

You can find some examples of 490 and 830 fields in the updated MARC coding section of the SCIS standards.

For full details see the MARC 21 Format for Bibliographic Data.

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Library system vendors have indicated that they either already support this standard, or are planning to implement it and that school libraries should experience minimal change as a result of this update. Please contact your support person if you have further questions about how this works in your system.

A more in-depth article on the series cataloguing standards change will be available in Connections Issue 77 arriving in schools in Term 2 2011.

Why authority files?

What are authority files?

Authority files list the Preferred Term for each concept in a Controlled Vocabulary.  In practice, they also may contain variant terms.
A Variant Term may be a synonym, an abbreviation, an acronym, a misspelled version of the Preferred Term, or any other term that a researcher or Search Engine might like to use to find the concept.

‘Authority file’ n.d., Taxonomy Glossary, Taxotips

What benefit are SCIS authority files?

In the case of SCIS authority files, the cross-references that establish relationships between subject terms provide additional functionality to catalogue searching. It would be an extremely time consuming process to enter references manually into your library catalogue each time you use a new subject heading, whereas SCIS authority files do this work automatically to:

  • enhance subject searching by students and staff
  • improve retrieval rates of the most appropriate resources
  • increase usage of resources
  • provide a cost-effective library solution

How do authority files enhance resource discovery?

Authority FilesAs a controlled vocabulary specifically for print and digital educational resources, SCIS Authority Files provide enhanced subject retrieval for school catalogues.
For example, a student searches for ‘dieting’ in your library system. Without SCIS Authority Files the student will not locate all the resources. With SCIS Authority Files the student will locate more relevant resources because SCIS maps their subject searches to related subjects.

Susan Marshall from Chilton Saint James School says

What I like most about SCIS Authority Files is that even if our users enter a non-preferred search term they will be taken to the available resources for the preferred term.“See also” references are also provided to suggest alternative subjects to search.

What does it cost?

Government schools in ACT, NSW, SA and WA are provided with SCIS Authority Files by their school system.
For other Australian schools the 2011 cost is AU$85.00 and for international subscribers AU$77.00.

Complete the SCIS authority file order form