This is my first posting regarding the course I am taking LIBE 467. This is the 6th course that I am taking towards my diploma in Teacher Librarianship.
Tonight I started module 1 lesson 1.
I was surprised by how many of the definitions in the glossary of References Skills that I am familiar with. In my own school library our reference section is the most under utilized section in the library. Most of my students or in fact the students in my class would have no clue about a majority of the definitions that I would refer to resource materials. A thesaurus, I am not even sure that I could find one in the school if I would want to introduce it to the students. The same goes with the encyclopedias, the ones at the school I teach at are very outdated and have become dust collectors. Our library program has been very neglected both financially and in staffing. The current librarian is employed one and half days a week, which he sees 13 divisions and tries to maintain the library. Financially our library as many others has been hit by budget cutbacks. Collections are barely maintained with fiction and nonfiction books and the resource area of the library has not been added to in years.
On Friday I chatted with the teacher librarian at the school that I teach at in regard to the state of our reference collection in the library. He said that it is not an area in the school library that he tends to direct funding to. Simply no one uses that section in our school and the cost is too much to build or replace books in that section. The meager budget that the school library receives is put into the books that receive the most traffic: fiction and non fiction. I wonder if the same is to be said about the middle and high school libraries. I teach in a K-5 school and we do not do many research based projects that would require reference books. However from my own recollection from high school I remember spend hours using the reference area of the library. Is this still the case? Or is the reference area of high schools also dwindling?
Unfortunately budget seems to be such a restriction in most libraries these days. I know it is for mine but the little bit of money I do get I put towards quality fiction and non-fiction. The reference section is mostly an online one for our elementary (k-5) library. It seems the only way to keep it up to date with the funding we get.
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