Connections 88

Connections 88
Connections issue 88

Heading into holidays? Now you have some time, catch up on some professional reading. In case you missed it – the term 1 issue of Connections is published online at the SCIS website and features the following articles of interest to school library staff.

Literacy loves storytelling

Dr. Pam Macintyre looks at the role of oral language in the development of successful literacy and suggests how schools can foster this in programmes such as In Other Words at Dinjerra Primary School, Melbourne. Pam is a lecturer in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne. She is editor of the quarterly review Journal Viewpoint: on books for young adults and sits on the 100 Story Building board of directors.

Teacher associations support Australian Curriculum

Education Services Australia has partnered with Australian teachers’ associations to develop practical, classroom-related digital resources that are aligned to the Australian Curriculum. In this article Gabrielle England provides an overview of free online resources available for Phase 1 Learning Areas.

Miss Scarlet in the library with the smart phone

Joanna Hare provides a handy how-to-mobile photography guide for librarians looking at practical uses for libraries, some basic tips and apps.

Inanimate Alice

Inanimate Alice is a fictional story designed to develop student’s digital literacy skill. It is linked through Scootle to many of the Australian Curriculum guidelines for English and literacy.

School library collections survey 2013

In 2013 SCIS conducted an online survey of Australian school library staff to find out more about the state of school library collections. Clare Kennedy reports on the survey results.

New and revised subject headings: Bible and Qur’an

List of the new and revised subject headings for the Bible and Qur’an approved by the SCIS Information Services Standards Committee following implementation of Resource Description and Access (RDA).

SCIS Asks 2013: The future of vocabularies

Education Services Australia manages multiple vocabularies including SCIS Subject Headings List and ScOT. At the SCIS consultation SCIS Asks, Ben Chadwick, ESA Metadata analyst outlined how vocabularies assist search.

Australian Education Vocabularies > Schools Online Schools Online Thesaurus (ScOT)

Australian Education Vocabularies >
Schools Online Thesaurus (ScOT)
  • Search expansion and faceting
  • Navigation and browsing
  • Collections Redirects (“See”)
  • Related topics (“See also”)
  • Mapping between repositories

ScOT as Linked Open Data

Ben outlined how ScOT  is published as open linked data and can be linked to other unique identifiers, inside and outside the vocabulary. It is available for consumption on the open web and is expressed in a standard, machine-readable format (RDF).

ScOT linking curriculum to resources

To date ScOT has been used to tag  20,000 resources  in Scootle  and 350,000 resources  in SCIS MARC records.  The Softlink survey 2013 showed that schools want curriculum alignment.  Aligning existing resources to the Australian Curriculum is one of three top priorities of school library staff. Future decisions  for SCIS around curriculum alignment  include

  • dealing with pre-2006 records without ScOT terms,
  • non-subject vocabularies,
  • increased records for digital resources,
  • retrospective updates of schools’ SCIS records
  • viability of Linked Open Data authorities as a new model for authority files.

Discussion points

Many have indicated that they would love to be able to search by curriculum in order to find related resources and that this would be a huge time saver. Suggestions included looking at the 658 MARC field to introduce a curriculum element.

It was noted that there was demand for automated  updating of bibliographic records. This would require a new process to ensure that library management systems can handle requests.   It was agreed that the ability to refresh bibliographic and authority records is an important one and further discussion is needed about whether models of linked data could address this problem.

SCIS Asks 2013: The view from the school library

Di Ruffles from Melbourne Grammar School was invited to set the scene for the SCIS Asks 2013 consultation forum and provide her wishlist for school library services.

Di Ruffles
Di Ruffles, Melbourne Grammar

Di stated her top five issues in school libraries as:

  1. Staffing
    Demonstration of the value of the school library to principals and school councils is essential
  2. Budgets
    Plateauing of budget figures is a trend being noticed across many schools
  3. Resourcing the Australian Curriculum
    Phase 1 learning areas (English, Maths, History and Science) is a priority. Then resourcing of new learning areas.
  4. Australian Curriculum General Capabilities
    Development of programs and resources to support these and,
  5. Australian Curriculum Cross curriculum priority areas

At her school Di noted, iPads are being used through the school with Year 12 providing their own choice of device. Students are not necessarily accessing the same information at the same time. E-Books are causing issues importing into the various devices in a  BYOT school environment.

Identification of suitable apps for teacher resources and for use by students is  featuring increasingly. Particularly useful apps include  an app for the library catalogue as well as the EasyBib app  which means students can scan  a book’s ISBN for a  citation.

For students and staff 24/7 access to resources is important, as is providing resources in a variety of formats: print, e-book, DVD, audiobooks and digital video library (eg. Clickview).   Journals and databases of e-journals are used extensively. Di is seeing less use of the print non–fiction collection. Non-fiction eBooks are used but not necessarily a preferred option for all students. Students are not so fussed with format but the item must be relevant.

Di looked at the changing role of the teacher librarian and used ‘What do teacher librarians teach’ by Joyce Valenza and Gwyneth Jones  to highlight the  multifaceted role of teacher librarians. Evaluating resources is an important focus for teacher librarians, as is digital citizenship and educating students about  plagiarism. The library’s website includes research guides (which suggests catalogue subject headings) and  a Harvard style referencing tool.

Di highlighted how teacher librarians at her school are working with classroom teachers, for example in a new subject for 2014, Extended Investigation (inspired by International Baccalaureate) which aims to develop student’s capacity to identify and ask good questions, research an area of interest in depth and prepare for university level study.

SCIS and Campfire Film

The Campfire Film Foundation provides schools access to short films which promote understanding and discussion about meaningful issues including many curriculum areas.  SCIS provides bibliographic records for these films in the database.  Here is a quick guide to accessing a full list of Campfire Films on the SCIS catalogue.

Logo
Campfire Film Foundation

1. Subscribers wishing to bring up a full list of Campfire Films should use ‘Campfire Film Foundation’ as a search term

Use ‘Campfire Film Foundation’ as a search term
Use ‘Campfire Film Foundation’ as a search term

 

 

 

 

 

2. The search will bring up all the titles distributed through Campfire Film Foundation.

Titles distributed through Campfire Film Foundation
Titles distributed through Campfire Film Foundation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Click on the title that you are interested in and the full bib record looks like this including summary.  Subscribers can use the SCIS number to order bib records using the SCISWeb Orders screen or Z39.50.

The full SCIS record
The full SCIS record

 

 

 

 

SCIS Asks 2013: The future of the library catalogue

Philip Hider,  Head of the School of Information Studies, Charles Sturt University presented his vision for the future of the library catalogue for the SCIS Consultation 2013.

Philip Hider
Information Resource Description:
Philip Hider
Available from
www.inbooks.com.au
SCIS no. 1624199
ISBN 978 1 85604 667 1

Based on his latest book, Information Resource Description: creating and managing metadata (2012) published by Facet, Philip outlined three approaches to metadata creation, and considered  how cataloguing services like SCIS might develop a hybrid model around these three approaches into the future.

  1. content-based retrieval, eg. search engines
  2. metadata-based retrieval: socially generated
  3. metadata-based retrieval: professional description:

Philip’s vision for future library systems included:

  • Finding, identifying and obtaining supported mostly by content-based systems
  • Selecting supported by user reviews & professional metadata
  • Navigation supported by controlled vocabularies

Phillip recommended that future priorities for SCIS should include providing metadata for key resource to support curriculum in controlled fields, to support tagging done by teachers and students and to manage or co-manage controlled vocabularies such as ScOT.

SCIS Asks 2013: The future of discovery systems

This SCIS Asks 2013 presentation by Alan Manifold, Digital and Library Applications Manager at the State Library of Victoria sets the future of library discovery architecture in the context of the evolution of library systems and search. Alan outlined the purpose of metadata as being to:

Alan Manifold and Ben Chadwick
Ben Chadwick and Alan Manifold
SCIS, CC-by-nc
  • Authorize
  • Limit
  • Evaluate
  • Categorize
  • Link

He postulated that the format of the item no longer matters, it is about providing connections between resource and curriculum and resources inside and outside the library.  The catalogue which was once designed for inventory control has morphed into a search engine.

Alan posed questions about the evolution in libraries and catalogues in the age of electronic resources, searchable full text and mega-aggregate sites.  He touched upon discovery products such as EBSCO, WorldCat Local and the State Library of Victoria’s Primo Central. A useful observation was that while school students need authoritative information as soon as possible, they tend not to require a specific title or edition of a work.

His advice was that SCIS needs to provide connections between resources and curriculum and external indexes and search platforms.  He recommends SCIS

  • continue to provide quality metadata
  • increase the connecting of resources with curriculum
  • work on linking controlled vocabularies
  • highlight diversity of resources and formats and
  • explore ways to rate materials

Education Services records its thanks to Alan for his clear thinking and recommendations.

 

 

Christmas in the library

It’s that time of year again. Christmas is rapidly approaching and end of year celebrations are just around the corner for Australian and New Zealand schools.

To read about some of the quirkier aspects of Kiwi Christmases past and present, schools can visit New Zealand History Online [SCIS 1486174]. New Zealand schools will also find Christmas resources on TKI. Schools interested in Australian Christmas traditions can visit the Australian Government site [SCIS 1637519]. Anyone looking for a more general history of Christmas could explore the BBC’s site [SCIS 1235815].

New Zealand students can write a letter to Santa from the New Zealand Post website. Australian students use Australia Post [SCIS 1637538], where there is also a range of interactive games and lesson ideas.

Wombat Divine by Mem Fox and Kerry Argent
Wombat Divine by Mem Fox and Kerry Argent

There are a number of Christmas themed websites with student activities from craft ideas, recipes, jokes, videos, music, stories, colouring sheets and interactive games. Primary Games: Christmas [SCIS 1637543], Disney’s Spoonful: Christmas [SCIS 1485028] and Activity Village: Christmas crafts [SCIS 1481860] are three of the best.

If you are looking for some creative ideas for Christmas displays in your library it is worth visiting the Creative Library Displays blog.

And we can’t forget about all those classic Christmas stories. Wombat Divine written by Mem Fox and illustrated by Kerry Argent [SCIS 1436850] is one of our favourites.

To search for further Christmas resources in SCIS select a subject search and search one of the SCIS headings listed below [SCIS login required].

Christmas

SCIS Subject search for Christmas
SCIS Subject search for Christmas

Narrower Term

  • Christmas entertainments
  • Santa Claus

Related Term

  • Jesus Christ – Nativity

Other useful subject headings

  • Carols
  • Christmas cookery
  • Christmas decorations
  • Christmas trees
  • Christmas music
  • Christmas services

Post by Clare Kennedy, RMIT industry placement 2013

SCIS Asks 2013

SCIS conducted its annual consultation workshop in Melbourne on Thursday 14 November 2013 from 9.30-3.30pm. The consultation engaged SCIS and its partners in discussion about future priorities in our support of school libraries.

SCIS Asks logo 2013Twitter hashtag for the day: #scisasks

Programme

9.30am Welcome and consultation goals: Victoria Johnson, General Manager Education Services Australia

9.40am The view from the school library: Di Ruffles, Melbourne Grammar School

10.00am SCIS update: [from slide 9] Pru Mitchell, Manager SCIS

  • What are SCIS users asking for? How can SCIS and library system providers best serve school libraries?

10.30am Key issue: The future of identity for integration and personalisation
Nick Lothian, Developer ESA

  • Key question: How can ESA and library systems work together to support integrated search and access across school-selected resources?

11.00am Morning Tea

11.30am Future of the catalogue: Panel

12.20pm Discussion and questions

  • How should SCIS source, create or enhance catalogue data to meet future needs?

12.45pm Lunch

1.30pm Future of  vocabularies Ben Chadwick, Metadata Analyst/SCIS System Administrator ESA

  • Schools Online Thesaurus (ScOT) report
  • Linked data developments
  • Australian Curriculum alignment opportunities
  • Discussion and questions

2.10pm Resourcing of the curriculum project reports

2.50pm Final table discussion and recommendations

  • Discussion and questions
    Outcome: Recommendations on priority areas for SCIS services

3.30pm Close

If you cannot attend the Consultation you are invited to contribute via the SCIS Asks Survey

Connections 87

You can now read the latest issue of Connections at the SCIS website.

This issue features the following articles of interest to school library staff.

Early Harvest: A literary journal made by children

Sofia Makin looks at a Melbourne after school programme, Early Harvest, which engages primary aged students in the process of creating a literary magazine for children.

Gold Coast study links school libraries and teacher librarians to literacy

Dr Hilary Hughes presents a recent study of Principals which provides a snapshot of school libraries in the Gold Coast Queensland, and their positive impact on learning and literacy.

alisoncolpoys
Titles from the Australian Children’s Classics series published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2012/2013, Australia. Photograph by Allison Colpoys

Educating the educators: a disaster resilience education project

Heather Bailie worked with Australian Red Cross and the Australian Emergency Management Institute to develop a programme to improve  teacher confidence in teaching disaster resilience.

The future of the school library catalogue

Pru Mitchell considers the future of school library catalogues and cataloging standards, linked data and the semantic web.

How to judge a book by its cover

Meelee Soorkia talks to Allison Colpoys about children’s book design and illustration and the new Australian Children’s Classics series.

You can read online or download the full edition.

 

Scootle update

Stacey Hattensen, Program Director, Content Services at Education Services Australia provided an overview of Scootle at the ASLA 2013 conference. Stacey’s presentation was titled: Scootle, supporting teachers to implement the Australian Curriculum, and guided participants through the latest developments of Scootle including:

Stacey encouraged teacher librarians to download the apps for Scootle [Android and iPad] and Scootle community [Android, iPad and iPhone].

Want to participate in creating a national collection?
Stacey also asked for voluntary reviewers with a good understanding of the Australian Curriculum, and a keen interest in digital and online learning. If you are interested in reviewing online resources and providing advice, or if you find something great that you think fits the Scootle criteria, get in touch at: stacey.hattensen@esa.edu.au.