MELBOURNE STUDY VISITS - April 20-23
Reflections
WHOA! What a busy first day to the study visits - it was like being on "The Amazing Race" - checking maps for our locations.
Tuesday April 20
The first stop was the Melbourne City Library.
It is a vibrant and forward-thinking library, providing services and programs to meet the diverse needs of its users - residents, workers and students within the City of Melbourne. As a teacher librarian I was impressed by the way the library does not differentiate between its employees - librarians, technicians and library assistants - qualifications are irrelevant. This enables the library to provide patrons with a service that should (in theory) give them the same answer, regardless of who they approach with a query for assistance. The focus appears to be on customer service. This model also allows its employees to be multi-skilled, fostering the development and transferability of skills.
The practical things that I really like that could be employed in my school library are:
- "hot picks" - one copy of new and popular books are set aside for one week loans and are not reserve able or renewable.
- face out displays - these were effective for displaying books, magazines and graphic novels. This is a great way for students to find reading materials and for promoting books.
- OI! (Online Information) - I envisage this promotional strategy to increase awareness of online resources could encourage teachers and students to use our school databases more (which is unfortunately barely used at my school). This campaign has been trademarked by the library. It's designed to encourage library users (as a visual reminder) to use their online resources. Since starting the campaign online resource usage has increased significantly.
- Shelf talkers - these are fantastic for guiding patrons/students to books and authors they may not consider when looking for reading material.
- These relatively simple strategies are a means of making the library's collection and services more accessible for its patrons. These are easily adaptable for school libraries to encourage students to read and use resources from a variety of means.
Not so inspiring was the Victorian Parliamentary Library. The key message emerging from the Parliamentary Library is its emphasis on being client focused. While I had heard of the parliamentary Library I was not aware of the extent of its services to meet the information needs of MPs, electoral office staff or Parliamentary staff. In working in this specialist library, employees would need superior information-seeking skills. and obtain information quickly. In this library, the reference interview appears to be crucial because the nature of some information requests could be complex and highly political. The librarians would need to have excellent communication and negotiation skills in order to engage with their clients. Perhaps the most significant issues relating to Parliamentary library reference work that distinguishes it from others is the necessity to preserve confidentiality and being impartial. This appears to be a very busy library.
Wednesday April 21
First stop for the day was the Cunningham Library at the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), Camberwell. This specialist education research library, whose collection focuses on education resources - journal repositories and articles, books, reports, conference proceedings, plus more. The library's predominant users - ACER's staff - receive (upon request0 literature searches from the librarians for the researchers to save them time during the early stages of the research process. This area of work I find interesting because I enjoy education and locating/undertaking research in my studies. This could possibly become a career move that I could consider pursuing. The benefits of schools becoming Institutional Members of the Cunningham Library is the access students and teachers get to comprehensive resources through the Australian Education Directory.
From the National Meteorological Library visit two important pieces of advice were significant for me as a library and information professional. For corporate/specialist librarians professional networking is crucial in order to keep up-to-date with what's happening in the library and information world, keeping in touch with colleagues and becoming aware of the latest news and scientific-related matters, for example, new journals. Secondly, in terms of reference/research support services, librarians MUST never assume that people who are 'experts' in their fields of expertise know how to use the catalogue, undertake a database search or access Grey Literature. The host emphasised how we as information professionals become renowned within the organisations we work for our expertise for locating and finding relevant information.
Thursday April 22
First stop of the day was to La Trobe University's Borchardt Library. It is evident the Borchardt Library is responding to its primary users' needs - university students and staff - in its moves to become part of the digital age in its electronic resource provisions. In supporting current research and teaching, the library has over the last two years increased its e-journals and e-books in preference over print materials. The importance of this direction is that it makes the resources available for all its library users regardless of location and highlighting its policy of equitable access to quality materials. Secondly, I was impressed by the library's learning and research services that emphasises the importance of supporting people to becoming independent learners, rather than being spoon fed the answers they seek from the library staff. Compared to specialist libraries visited this week (Parliamentary, ACER and Meteorological libraries) who do most of the information seeking, the La Trobe library staff guide users to ways of finding out how to find the information they require, rather than giving them the answers. This is the type of approach I want to try and instill within my high school, in order to assist students to be information literate and life-long learners.
Prior to this visit I had not heard of CAVAL Collaborative Solutions, nor any of its specialised services for academic, public and specialist libraries, which include book and journal digitisation, cataloguing and processing and the CARM centre. Learning of the CARM Centre's repository for storing low use and last copy research materials was, for me, most valuable. This service is essential for member libraries because over time space for rarely used books and journals becomes an issue. Being able to deposit these materials at CARM enables the items to become shared and accessible to members. CARM is an important way to preserve many of these valuable and historical materials for future use. CAVAL's digitising service is another important service that assists in preserving rare aging bound journal volumes and books without risk of damage or disbinding. These CAVAL services are becoming increasingly important as we move into a world where digital content is a vehicle for information and knowing sharing and will become a historical record for future users.
Friday April 23
The last stop on this study visit was the State Library of Victoria. The SLV highlighted the importance of policy which drives all services and programs it offers. In my own school library I should now evaluate my school's library and collections policies because I can now see how clearly established policies underpin all that a library does. In particularly, ensuring my school's library makes reference to the disadvantaged, both socioeconomic and ESL,students and how the library can work to address to offer reading opportunities and materials that are appropriate for their specific needs Considering my own school library policies (not written by me) they are outdated (20 years old) and clearly do not reflect the school's clientele currently served as previously mentioned. After hearing this morning's session on policy development, I realise this area needs revision ASAP.
SUMMARY REFLECTION
Overall this study visit program has provided me with an opportunity to be exposed to a variety of libraries and library services, , some of which I was not aware of previously. It has informed me of libraries that I might want to consider seeking future employment, in particular ACER's Cunningham Library. This study visit has highlighted how crucial it is for libraries and library services to meet the specific information needs of its users, and that different libraries operate and function very different ways to meet those needs. The nature of library work is so diverse, it is much more than the school library experience I have so far. I look forward to competing my MEdTL course this year, so I can explore the variety of options that exists in the library and information services fields.
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