Passing in Review

    One of the many jobs I've had in a long and varied work life - and one of the two that came closest to my actual dream job of being a librarian - was a stint as an abstractor/editor for a company that created online databases and a range of other library service products. As an abstractor, it was my job to take a stack of magazines, select articles, read the articles, and create an abstract for each of them that would allow a researcher to decide if a given article really spoke to the topic he/she was working on. The abstracts were synopses, not reviews - but the selection process, though theoretically guided by such quality-neutral criteria as length of article and type of article, became a sort of de facto review.

    Now Jeffrey Beall, a metadata librarian at the University of Colorado (Denver), is suggesting that the long-standing practice of librarians to create readers' advisories and reviews of books should be expanded to include shorter works, including magazine and journal articles, short stories, essays and individual poems. Beall maintains that the constantly increasing number of scholarly articles being published - he notes an estimate by University of Manchester professor Douglas Kell that five scientific papers are published every minute - argues greatly for the same sort of pre-screening process applied to books be applied to these shorter works.

    Leaving aside, for the moment, the very real concern of where to find time to do the necessary reading, I can almost hear librarians thinking something along the lines of, "But I don't know anything about (and here you can fill in the blank), how can I tell if an article is worth reading?" 

    From personal experience, I can tell you that the weak articles sort themselves out from the strong ones, regardless of the reviewer's level of knowledge. To give an example, I once had to abstract an article on the use of beta splines. To this day, I have no idea what a spline is, let alone a beta spline - but the article's emphasis on certain aspects of the usage of beta splines allowed me to ferret out the main idea and craft a useful abstract.

    To be sure, creating a review - forming an actual opinion on a work and stating that opinion in print - adds layers to the process. But even when the scientific detail of an article is beyond one's comprehension, the organization of the writing can be evaluated, the number of resources cited can be noted, and the overall reputation of the journal in which the article appears can be taken into account.

    Beall goes on to suggest that review journals such as Booklist ought to add sections for journal article reviews, separated by discipline, as are the book reviews. Anything indexed, he maintains, can be reviewed. Perhaps not surprising for someone dealing in metadata, Beall even suggests that reviews could be reviewed - although, personally, I think that may be drawing the paradigm out a bit too far.

And now you've just read my review of Jeffrey Beall's article "Let's Review Everything".

References:
Beall, J. (2010). Let's review everything. American Libraries, 41(5), 23.

Libraries Without Walls

    The Internet changed things for librarians - that much is no surprise. But some of the ways in which things have changed are shocking. Most of the focus on student use of the Internet in school libraries has been on protecting students from accidental exposure to pornography, or from Internet predators. But what about the ways in which students themselves use cyberspace? Several recent court cases have arisen from students using their personal blogs to malign or even threaten violence against teachers and administrators. And the courts have given widely different opinions on the authority of schools to punish such behavior when it occurs outside of school, including two completely opposite opinions from two different panels of the same Third District Court of Appeals, issued on the same day in two nearly identical cases.

    All of the cases involved either YouTube or Facebook, and most school district filters block these and other social networking and blogging sites (I can't even access my own personal blog from my classroom). But students are notoriously savvy about getting around and through filters. And e-mail programs are generally not blocked. Nothing prevents a student from creating a slide show or other document on a library computer, e-mailing it to him-or-herself, and posting it to a blog or other site from home. What possible liability would the teacher-librarian bear in such a case? (Note - I don't have any answers for this what-if scenario, I just find it very disturbing.) How closely is one supposed to monitor computer usage? What can a TL rightfully stop a student from doing, without risking violating the student's First Amendment rights? We are already extremely restricted on what we can say in the classroom - how much more will be added on?

References:
Simpson, M. (2010). Cyberspeak no evil. NEAToday, 29(2), 20.

Where Do I Go From Here?

One of the questions I keep asking myself as I progress through the SLIS program is whether I am on a fool's errand, trying to earn a secondary credential as a Teacher Librarian in a state where education is where the first cuts are when there are budget shortfalls, and librarian positions are generally among the first to go. Checking edjoin.org (the clearinghouse for teaching jobs in California) does little to reassure me. But an article in the October, 2010 issue of the California Library Association's Clarion seems to hold out more hope.
Author Lesley Farmer points out that schools are still being built, and teacher librarian positions still exist - and, in fact, sometimes take as much as two years to fill. State code requires the inclusion of libraries in all new schools built, and, although a loophole allows schools to contract with public libraries to provide library services, public librarians generally have to coordinate with classroom teachers so that instruction is being provided by a qualified educator. Yearly admissions to library programs averages between twenty and thirty students per site per year, which matches the market needs. New state and federal mandates for instruction in Internet safety and digital competency will also increase the need for school librarians at the elementary level (middle schools and high schools currently are more likely to have certificated librarians on staff than are elementary schools, except in more affluent districts).
What appalls me, especially in the face of numerous studies showing direct correlation between the presence of a credentialed librarian on a school campus and significantly higher test scores, is that California is not one of the states that mandate having a credentialed librarian at all school sites. (Most of those states seem to be in the Midwest, although New York was moving in that direction and may have completed the transition at this point.) I hate the thought of having to leave California in order to pursue my chosen profession.
Farmer's article also includes an overview of how library school programs developed in California - it's interesting to note that I am enrolled in one of only four teacher-librarian programs currently approved by both the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. What I still don't entirely understand is the need for fieldwork to obtain what is still classed as a secondary credential - that is, one must have a basic credential (Multiple or Single Subject) before the TL credential will be issued. But I guess that's just another hoop I need to jump through.


References:
Farmer, L. (2010). California teacher librarians: what's in a name?. Clarion, 6(2), 12 - 14.

Childhood's End?

“It’s cooler than ever to be a tween, but is childhood being lost?” – Sharon Jayson, USA Today

Tweens , generally considered to be boys and girls between the ages of 8 and 12 years old, have undergone many changes over the past two or three decades, and not all of them are good. Author Sharon Jayson describes a tween as being one who “…aspires to teenhood but is not quite there yet.” (Jayson, 2009) As such, this group has long been a target of retailers, but recently behavioral researchers and psychologists have begun to study tweens as a unique segment of the population. It is a growing segment, too - one that the U.S. Census estimated at 20 million in 2009 and predicted to reach close to 23 million by 2020.

The article notes that tweens are described as “…torn between family and BFFs, between fitting in and learning how to be an individual.” (Jayson, 2009). This is a description that in previous generations would have been applied to teens, not pre-teens. And at the same time that social pressures are shifting downward, so are scholastic expectations. Kindergarten, once seen as a mere introduction to the social aspects of school, such as waiting in line or raising one’s hand and waiting to be called on, now has a full set of academic standards that must be met. Likewise, middle school, which was once viewed mainly as a way for students to accustom themselves to the concept of multiple classes and different instructor expectations (so as to prepare them for high school) is now a place where high-stakes testing and pressure to perform has become the rule. It is not surprising that academic problems, as well as problems with substance abuse, become increasingly apparent in middle school. (Jayson, 2009)

Two statistics reported in a sidebar of the article have particular significance for librarians trying to determine how best to serve tweens. More than 1,200 tweens were surveyed in December of 2008. Of those responding, 46% of boys and 52% of girls had read a book for fun in the week immediately preceding the survey; during that same week 83% of boys and 39% of girls had played a game on a game console system. While it is encouraging that nearly half the boys and slightly more than half the girls actually read for fun, we also need to acknowledge the pull of video games on this generation. How do we pull in that other 56% of the boys, particularly those who are also included in the 83% of gamers? Many games now have novelizations available, and there are gamer magazines available – if we offer it, they will read. And what about the missing 48% of girls? What can we provide to pull them in?

What other needs can we as librarians address? We can’t entirely remove the pressure to “grow up- GROW UP – GROW UP!!!” but we can create a haven in which tweens are free to explore who they are and who they are becoming. Make the information tweens need available to them. Provide an atmosphere in which tweens can relax, as well as one in which they can study. Sponsor social activities based on different tween interests. Most importantly, provide a place in which tweens have the opportunity to be human beings rather than human doings.

References:

Jayson, S. (2009, February 4). It's cooler than ever to be a tween, but is childhood being lost?. USA Today, Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-02-03-tweens-behavior_N.htm