When we visited New Zealand the Christmas before last we visited the Lord of the Rings movie set because Roz is a huge fan of both the books and the movies. While I watched the film it was interesting to spot places we had seen at the set and also to remember the tricks, like making people appear larger or smaller than they really are by having identical large and small fences and other props!
Last weekend I went to The Star to see the Lord of the Rings with a live orchestra and a choir of 250 people. I am not really a fan of fantasy, either to read or to watch, but I have to admit I really enjoyed the evening. I hadn't seen the film before, or any of the other Lord of the Rings films, but I am quite tempted to watch them all now. I just need to arrange for an orchestra and choir to come to my living room so I can have the same effect?! When we visited New Zealand the Christmas before last we visited the Lord of the Rings movie set because Roz is a huge fan of both the books and the movies. While I watched the film it was interesting to spot places we had seen at the set and also to remember the tricks, like making people appear larger or smaller than they really are by having identical large and small fences and other props!
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I often enjoy Google's special logos but this has to be one of my favourites. This logo celebrates what would have been Maurice Sendak's 85th Birthday (he passed away on 8 May 2012) by showing many of the scenes from his famous book, 'Where the Wild Things Are' - I love it! ![]() As you may know, I've recently started studying for a Master of Information Studies by Distance Education through Charles Sturt University, Australia. Last weekend I submitted the second, and final, assignment for my first subject, so that is one subject down…eleven to go!!! I am really enjoying studying again (after a twenty year break!) but it has been quite difficult getting back into essay writing and I have been surprised at how much time it takes to research and write an essay. It took me about 100 hours, including all the background reading and research, to write each of the assignments!! The first subject I have studied is 'The Information Society' which I have found really interesting. The title of my first assignment was "Is the UK an Information Society?" The rest of the students wrote about Australia but as I don't know much about Australia, and quite a lot more about the UK, I decided to be different! The problem with doing something different was that a lot of the course materials and the forum posts were about Australia so that meant more research for me. I didn't really mind though, it is doing the research and finding things out for myself that I find enjoyable! So, in my first essay I looked at how the UK has developed, and continues to develop, from having an economy based on industry to one mainly based on information. The rapid development of technology has facilitated a change in UK society towards an information society. Librarians and Information Professionals have vital skills to to help develop the essential skills of all citizens who are living and working in this new society, this makes the UK's closure and funding cuts of many public and school libraries seem very short sighted. One thing I found really interesting was how the UK government have always embraced advances in technology, beginning over 50 years ago when computers were introduced to areas requiring large transactions, like the Post Office. Since the introduction of the internet, the UK government has had an online public presence, which has grown to an extensive network of sites, and UK citizens can access GOV.UK for public service information. A white paper was recently published which states that the UK government “has released the largest amount of government data of any country in the world” (HM Government, 2012) and the public are now able to access crime and sentencing statistics, health data and information on school results. By 2014 the websites of all 24 ministerial departments and over 300 other departments and public bodies will be available through the 'Inside Government' section of the website, one of the only countries in the world to achieve this. After finding all this out for my assignment I was interested to see on this website that the UK Government's website has just received a 2013 'Best Design of the Year' award, competing against buildings, cars, inventions etc. It seems to be the simplicity of design, so people can find the information they need more easily, without distractions, that is key to the website's success. My second assignment, which I have just submitted, was a report in which I had to put forward "A case for the value that Hilltop School Library contributes to the community, economy and society." Again I just had to be different, most of the other students were reporting on a public library in Australia but I was writing about a school library in the UK! Hilltop School Library is created by me and if you read the report you would see lots of similarities with Tanglin's Senior Library including a website with similar pages, a collection of libguides, a QR code treasure hunt, blogs for students….. It was great having Tanglin's library to get inspiration from! The main areas I focussed on that add value are the library itself (both physical and virtual), the library staff and how the library improves students' knowledge creation skills, literacy, information literacy skills and their understanding of ethical issues. It was great to discover reports which prove how important a school library is, like Ofsted's Good school libraries on UK school libraries and School Libraries Work! (including the graph above) from America. The thing I found really difficult for this assignment was trying to stick to the 2,500 word limit, by the time I had done my research I felt I could write a book on the value of a school library! I always knew we were extremely important to students and to the school but it was great to sit down and really think about the value we add to our community, to society and to the economy by preparing students to participate and contribute to today's information society and by our positive impact on student's academic achievement and literacy skills.
I've got a few weeks break now and then in July I will begin my second subject, 'Information Sources and Services' which is all about library reference services so that should be really useful. REFERENCES HM Government. (2012, June). Open data white paper : unleashing the potential [White paper]. Retrieved from http://data.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Open_data_White_Paper.pdf Margetts, H. (2006). E-government in Britain-a decade on. Parliamentary Affairs , 59 (2), 250-265. doi: 10.1093/pa/gsl003 Ofsted. (2006, March). Good school libraries: making a difference to learning. Retrieved May 3, 2013, from Ofsted: http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/good-school-libraries-making-difference-learning School libraries work! (2008). Retrieved April 26, 2013, from: (Wallis, 2005) http://www.scholastic.com/content/collateral_resources/pdf/s/slw3_2008.pdf Williams, N. (2012, November 05). What is Inside Government? Retrieved from Government Digital Service: http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2012/11/05/what-is-inside-government/ ![]() Last night, I decided to have a look at the next text book for my course - Reference and Information Services: An Introduction By Kay Ann Cassell, Uma Hiremath. I am sure it is not supposed to be a humorous read but I had to smile at this advice. It says that as a customer approaches you at the desk you should… raise an eyebrow, then lower it, maintain eye contact, nod and smile. I know we sort of do that anyway (I'm not sure about the eyebrow bit!) but I just had an image of us all ending up looking like this man as we try to move our faces in the right way to make our customers welcome!!! It must have been the mood I was in but another part really made me giggle… It was talking about examples of poor customer service and one was "the librarian leaves the desk and does not return"!!! Yes, I think it is safe to say that is not very good customer service, I can just imagine a customer standing at a desk all day waiting for the disappearing librarian!! (Source: http://dekedickerson.tumblr.com/post/37848389618/demonstrating-a-fine-facial-art-known-as) [I'm not sure if gurning is something you will have come across in Singapore! It is a strange English competition where the person who pulls the funniest face wins! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3670504.stm] ![]() Yesterday, on one of the forums that I follow OZTLNET.COM, a librarian posted a description of her day. I found it a really interesting read so I decided I would have a go, so here is “A day in the life of me!”… I arrive at work at 7.45am, I’m in the workroom this morning so I make a cup of tea and spend the first fifteen minutes checking emails, there are only a few today. I have a quick look at the links on this morning’s ‘The Day’ email and come across this interesting information which highlights the class divide in UK education: “A privately-educated pupil is 22 times more likely to win a place at a highly selective university than a pupil on free school meals. Private schools educate only 7% of the UK’s children but account for 32% of students at top universities.” Source: http://www.theday.co.uk/blog/blog/reasons-to-be-cheerful I spend a few minutes creating a revised rota for the Reference Team for Monday as I won’t be around to do my reference desk duty. Jacqui and I are going to spend all day planning Information Literacy for the senior school in preparation for the first meeting of a whole school ‘Information Literacy steering group’ next Wednesday. Information Literacy is one of the key focuses for Tanglin next year and the aim is to embed information literacy in the curriculum, from Key Stage 1 right up to the Sixth Form; an exciting and vital task in making sure all our students have the skills to succeed academically, socially and in the world of work. A librarian from UWCSEA Dover has contacted me to ask if I can recommend any useful PSHCE resources. She is UWCSEA’s primary librarian so I send a quick email to Celeste to see if she can help. We are updating our non-fiction book collection so I spend the next half an hour or so sending emails to a number of teachers asking for recommendations of non-fiction books for us to purchase. I reply to an email from a dance teacher who is interested in us creating a libguide to support her subject. I suggest we meet next week for a discussion and, as I’m in contact, I sneak in a request for book recommendations for dance! Our new library website will be launched on 3rd June so Atiqah is creating a video to promote it to our students. I write a bit of the script for the video, about the ‘How to’ section of the website, and send it to Atiqah. All the reference team have enrolled on an online training course through the School Library Association on the Extended Project Qualification. I am gradually working my way through the course when I get chance and I spend some time looking at module 3 which covers ‘Time management, Choosing a topic and the Production log’. One sentence makes me smile; it says librarians are ideal people to help students learn about time management as we are “experts in this field since a key requirement for a librarian is being able to multitask” – how true!! Before I know it, the morning has gone and it is time for lunch. ![]() After lunch I take over from Joana on Reference Desk 1, out in the library. As I log in to the computer I find I have received an email from a year 12 IB student asking if she can arrange to see me next week for advice on sources of information for her Extended Essay research and an email from a teacher asking if we have a particular philosophy book in the library. We don’t have the book in our library but it is available as an e-book through the NLB so I send details on how to access it through their e-resources collection. Over the students’ lunch-break I decide to see how many people are in the study zone and on the decking. I count around seventy people, with students from year 7 to year 13, one teacher and one parent all busily focussed on a wide variety of work. Looking in the interactive zone there is another parent using the library and around forty more students working in groups, reading, looking at magazines and chatting. In between helping students with photocopying, dealing with printing issues, shelving books, monitoring behaviour in the library (which is easy as all the students are very focussed on revising for their exams) and sorting out all the other general enquiries that crop up (remember the multi-tasking comment!!), I spend the afternoon working on a revision of our Extended Essay libguide. The original libguide was created a couple of years ago so it needs to be updated and I want to add some new features to make it more appealing to the students. I am going to work on creating a new version over the next few weeks then I will update the Extended Project Qualification (EPQ) libguide too. I hear back from Celeste about this morning’s PSHCE enquiry, she has been really helpful and contacted the primary school head of PSHCE for suggestions and Mui Sin is putting together a list of PSHCE resources in the primary school library. A member of staff has a daughter who is looking at studying Geography at Leicester University, which is the department where I used to be Map Librarian so Jacqui has suggested she should speak to me. It is almost twenty years since I worked there but I’m happy to tell her what I know and it brings back some good memories! A teacher comes in to the library to look through our collection of old Tanglin year books, he’s trying to put together a history of names of all previous house captains as there doesn’t appear to be a record of them. I search the internet (using all the search engines I can think of!) and find the names of two house captains on Linked In but I would have liked to find more. I’ll have to think about where else I could look. And so, another interesting and varied day has flown by and already it is time to go home… ![]() n 28 March I attended an interesting talk by Ingrid Parent (President of the IFLA) in the National Library building. The title of the talk was “Ride the global wave: trends affecting libraries and librarians”. The future of libraries is something I'm really interested in, partly because I'm studying it as part of my course and partly because it is going to affect our careers now and in the future. From the notes I jotted down, some of the things covered were: Change: There are very fast rates of change happening in libraries and in society as a whole, change can be difficult but it needs to be done in a balanced way. ( Source of picture: https://www.facebook.com/wlic2013 ) Economics: We are seeing the rise of the knowledge society. Economics depend on society to innovate and develop an informed population but there are challenges involved in educating citizens. Technology: There has been tremendous change over the past ten years. Mobile technology is being used as an information exchange and access tool. It is not just the young who are adapting to new technologies but also older people and it is happening globally. Power has shifted from institutions to the individuals and the impact this has had on democracy movements has been profound. We are just at the beginning of a digital revolution. Information is no longer controlled by the few. Impact on libraries: Users want 24/7 access to information. People now start a search for information on Google, not in the library catalogue. The ACRL 2012 report of ‘Top trends in academic libraries’ states that library users want convenience (ACRL Research Planning and Review Committee, 2012). Users are requesting libraries to move towards digital resources but they still need to serve those who want physical resources. Libraries need to keep pace with how people are acting, with cloud computing, social networking etc. David Attis (2013) says of academic libraries, “Our users will meet more than 90% of their information needs from sources that are not directly connected to the library”. Ingrid Parent said, “The mission of libraries is to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities” Three trends in libraries - from the PEW 2013 report (Zickuhr , Rainie, & Purcell, 2013): 1. Outreach – libraries must go out in to communities, don’t wait for people to come to you. 2. Embedded librarianship – librarian goes out of the library and into another setting. This is a service that is going to grow, eg. Academic librarians moving out into faculties etc. 3. Collaboration – the digital world has enabled much more collaboration. Libraries have always collaborated but can now easily collaborate globally. Digitising, for example, can be shared between libraries around the world. The future of libraries depends on collaboration. Libraries are becoming more of an interactive learning space, offering leading edge technology, interesting programmes are being developed and they provide a welcoming, safe, commercial free space. Access to computers is almost as important as borrowing books. Libraries must keep up with trends. The IFLA has commissioned a report to look at what society will look like in 2020 so that libraries can adapt and make sure they will still be relevant. The report will be launched at the IFLA conference in Singapore in August. The theme of the conference is ‘Future Libraries: Infinite possibilities’ (and I’m looking forward to it already!!) References: ACRL Research Planning and Review Committee. (2012, June). 2012 top ten trends in academic libraries: A review of the trends and issues affecting academic libraries in higher education. College and research libraries news, 73, 311-320. Retrieved from http://crln.acrl.org/content/73/6/311.full.pdf+html Attis, D., (2013, March 1). Redefining the Academic Library: Managing the Migration to Digital Information Services. Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/lookingforward/1 Zickuhr , K., Rainie, L., & Purcell, K. (2013, January 22). Library services in the digital age . Retrieved from http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2013/01/22/library-services/ ![]() I'm feeling happy to finally have my own blog, I often read other librarian's blogs (I've added some of my favourites in the sidebar) so I'm looking forward to having my own. Anyway, as I'm feeling happy, I thought it would be appropriate to begin with a short blog about smiles! My daughter, Roz, and I spent the day studying at the National Library yesterday. As we left we were approached by two students who said they would like to give us a smile. They gave us a piece of card which contained our 'smile' and a positive saying. We were then asked if we minded being videoed for their Facebook video, I had to say "Hi, I'm Suzanne, I'm smiling and I'm passing on my smile!!" As a thank you for taking part we were given a free kit-kat and we did go away smiling. |
Suzanne Parfitt
I recently worked as Assistant Librarian at a British International School in Singapore. I've now relocated back to the UK and I am hoping to find a job that I enjoy as much as the one I've just left! Searching the ShelvesThis is my blog for interesting things to do with my work, my Continuing Professional Development (CPD), my studies or just anything that catches my eye relating to libraries, technology or books. Archives
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