Competency 9: Internet

Using Google, I found LibraryInstruction.Com, The Librarian's Weapon of Mass Instruction. This site contains lesson plans, articles about library instruction, a bibliography, and links to other resources. It is an interactive website in that the webmaster, Michael Lorenzen, asks for librarians and teachers to contribute lesson plans, articles and links to other websites. He also has a link to his blog where he posts his own articles on library usage, librarianship, education, etc.

I chose this website because it gives access to up-to-date lessons and ideas from librarians and teachers who know that they work. This can be a great tool to use to start collaboration between teachers and librarians, if collaborating with the librarian is a new concept in the school. I also liked this website because it is free. Some of the links may take you to third-party websites where you can buy products, but there is no fee to use the information on this website, or for access to the lesson plans and articles.

Competency 8: Research Visual/Multimedia

Collaboration between teacher and librarian before assignments are given is an important part of the collaboration process. In order for a research project to be successful, both teacher and librarian must be involved in the process and have common goals for the students. The article that goes with this image discusses a program called the Big6. This is a six-step problem-solving process that takes students from figuring out what the problem (or task) is, through the actual research, to the final product and self evaluation.

In order for the process to work, both teacher and librarian must commit to planning time and class time to ensure the success of the student. Also, with both the teacher and librarian involved, the students have a higher student/teacher ratio with a higher student achievement.

I selected this image because it gives a good visual image of collaboration between teacher and librarian. It also shows the steps needed to have successful project completion. I found this image by searching for teacher/librarian collaboration on Google images. The image can be found at http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/technology/gallaher.htm

Gallaher, Deborah, and Sue Roberts. "Harnessing the Best of Technology for an Exceptional Information Literacy Library Program (Part 1)." New Horizons for Learning (2002) http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/technology/gallaher.htm (19 July 2009).

Competency 7: Image

I found this image by searching for library research on Google images.

I chose this image because it shows the importance of including the librarian in the research process. In fact, above the picture on the website it says "The most important thing to remember when doing library research for an assignment, paper or project is..." This image comes from the Indiana University Library webpage found at http://www-lib.iupui.edu/subjectareas/tcem&usg.

This is a great example of a library website, especially for research projects. It has a picture of the librarian, hours of operation, "how to" helps about writing, and other links to other helps such as style manuals and research starters.

(If you go to http://www.shipbrook.com/onnotice/, you will see the same picture, but with different words. You can change the words to whatever you want it to say.)

Competency 6: Specific Facet

For this competency I chose the LibLit database. For this database, I started with three keywords: library research skills, technology or computers, and teacher. Technology and computers had the most records at 35257. Teacher had the second most with 5610. Library research skills had the least number of records at 588. When I put them all together, the database came up with 14 hits. Several were about the importance of teaching teachers (at the college level) how to use technology in the classroom. The one I found most useful for my blog is "Taking the Lead in Developing Learning Communities" by Violet Harada. The article focuses on building learning communities in the schools by involving teams of people to work on curriculum. Specifically, it references Loertscher's taxonomy to "flesh out the degrees and levels of collaborative involvement specific to school library media centers" (Harada 1). Loertscher's taxonomy is 10 levels of involvement of the librarian. Level one is no involvement, level six involves gathering material in advance at the teacher's request, and at level ten, the librarian is involved in curriculum development as part of a team. Basically it says that more collaborative efforts on the part of teachers and librarians relates to more successful students.

I thought LibLit was a user-friendly database. One interesting feature it has is once you find an article, you can choose to hear it in an audio file. You can even chose to have a male voice or a female voice read to you.

Harada, Violet H. "Taking the Lead in Developing Learning Communities." Knowledge Quest 31, no. 2 (2002): 12-16. http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/jumpstart.jhtml?recid=0bc05f7a67b1790ea6d588b6d0aa3367b523a65f238a7deeb242741dc9a8ed65a25cbf913f64c86c&fmt=H Harada, V. H. Taking the Lead in Developing Learning Communities. Knowledge Quest v. 31 no. 2 (November/December 2002) p. 12-16

Competency 6: Successive Fractions

For the successive fractions search I chose the WorldCat database. This database is very user friendly. I checked out the help function to see what it would have and it gave a lot of good ideas. One idea is to use the index to check or verify your spelling. Another idea is to use the Library of Congress Subject Headings to find additional terms to refine your search before you begin. It even had a link button on the website to do this. I did use the LC Subject Headings to find additional terms. This is a useful tool for anyone who has a broad topic to search.

I began my search with the term "library research skills." This resulted in 2194 hits, which most of the top 25 applied more to teaching skills in a classroom than a library. I then refined my search by adding "technology OR computers." Results were narrowed to 266. Last, I added the term "teacher." Thirty-five hits came back for this search. The number one hit from this list was in the top ten from the previous search. I chose this hit because it is a book made from a library conference that contains ideas presented by a lot of different librarians on using technology in the library. The name of the book is The impact of technology on library instruction: papers and session materials presented at the Twenty-First National LOEX Library Instruction Conference held in Racine, Wisconsin, 14 to 15 May 1993. It is authored by Linda Shirato. The link to this information is http://online.twu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_13_1. Some ideas were about teaching the students and others were about teaching the teachers. Here is a brief list of presentations:

Impacts of electronic reference on instruction and reference / Carol Tenopir -- Guidelines for creating user-centered instructions for novice end-users / Diane Nahl -- Cooperative learning : a guided discovery workshop / Lizabeth Wilson "Striking it rich with the Internet" : an interactive workshop for teaching faculty the Internet / Donna L. Miller and Michael C. Zeigler -- Teaching the teachers in an electronic environment / Sandra Duling and Patrick Max

Overall, it was a good database to use and had a lot of helpful tools to make the search easier.


Shirato, Linda. The impact of technology on library instruction : papers and session materials presented at the Twenty-First National LOEX Library Instruction Conference held in Racine, Wisconsin, 14 to 15 May 1993 . Ann Arbor, Mich.: Learning Resources and Technologies, 1995. http://online.twu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_13_1.

Competency 6: Citation Pearl Growing

For this competency I chose to use the Lexis Nexis database. After an hour of fruitless searching, I changed to the Jstor database. I began using the terms technology or computers and library and research and student for my search. 34343 results were given. I searched through the first few pages, and most articles were about research at a college level, or at a strictly research school. I changed my terminology to include high school library. This also resulted in a large number of hits, 24193. I then put high school library in quotation marks. 109 hits were shown with more relevant articles for my search. I clicked on the article A Librarian's Perspective on Research http://online.twu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_13_1 which was about a college librarian who helped a middle school student in their research. I then chose the link to related articles which led me to Helping Students Weave their way through the World Wide Web http://www.jstor.org/pss/821223. This article is about an English teacher who had to devise lessons to help students find accurate and credible articles on the internet as not everything on the internet is accurate. I could not read the whole article without signing up for access to the specific database this article was in. Overall, the Jstor database has a wide variety of information, but seems to have a controlled vocabulary because I had to be very specific in my search to come close to the information I wanted.

Competency 6: Building Block Search

For the building block search, I chose the ASC database. I wanted to find articles about using technology to perform research in the library. I first put in the terms technology or computers and research or explore and library. This search resulted in 8872 hits. Way too many. I narrowed it down by changing the search parameters to subject terms. 330 hits were produced. Better, but still too many. Next I added the term student. This time, 20 hits came back. Much more manageable and almost every hit seemed usable. Building block search was overwhelming at first with all the hits that it gave me. However, by narrowing it down only two times, I got a manageable list of possible resources. The hit I looked at is called Improving the Student Experience-How Can the Library Help? by Jean Sykes at http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2057/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=27394902&site=ehost-live