Week 10: Maintaining the Collection and the Catalogue

Week 10 discusses what happens in "postcataloguing activities." Our notes provide an accurate diagram of what this entails. The steps outlined below are what I have learned mostly on my own. The District IT and the District library technician (as I mentioned previously), are a tremendous support, but as the teacher-librarian in an elementary school, there is no other person to direct or assist you in these duties on a daily basis, especially if you are new to the job. You do get one day with the IT coordinator, but there is so much to learn that your head spins and before you know it you are on your own!


Nevertheless, the best experience is practice and after one year in the Library, I am happy to say, I have a good grasp of the activities involved in processing the books after they have been catalogued and entered in the OPAC. I have been vigilant in trying to maintain a "healthy" and vibrant library- from shelving, repairing and weeding. I have weeded exactly 2,642 items and acquired exactly 1496 new resources (due to unspent money from previous librarians, gifts, book fair and a readathon fund-raiser). The school library was in need of an over-haul. My library courses have assisted me immensely in making these decisions.

One helpful tip from our course notes was to set up a schedule for shelf-reading. Establishing a schedule for each section would ensure consistency. Posting the sections read and providing the date the shelf was read is a good routine. This is something which I will include for Assignment #3.

Doing an inventory is mandatory, but this year I did not do it and I will undertake this task next year. This year my learning curve was steep. Next year when my course work will be done, I will take an inventory.

The course notes gave me another idea for Assignment #3- keeping the school library catalogue in good order. This would entail an analysis of my catalogue and making alterations and improvements in the areas of headings, notations, and subject headings. I know for a fact that this has not been done. The job would be easier because of all my previous weeding!

Chapter 13, entitled, Managing the Catalog Department, did not apply to me as much in a practical sense, since I am the department. The section in the chapter that applies to all librarians is concerning the Metadata, which coincidentally, most of my article summaries dealt with. The "Metadata protocols differ considerably from library cataloging" (Intner, 2007, p. 229). In the near future schools will include this information in their catalogues in some way. This will involve major changes and it will be interesting to see how the district will adapt. While searching various library Websites, there were a few districts that provided links and websites for all the students within the district from a central location.

At the moment, for my school I have provided some wonderful documents filled with electronic resources for various aspects of a given theme or unit of study pursued by a particular class or grade in my school. Electronic sources have a habit of vanishing, but if these were to be maintained at a district level, then this could be minimized since that individual would manage and update the data. My hard work would be shared and in turn, I would benefit from the hard work from others who researched other areas, etc.. There are some exciting possibilities.