Critical Reflection of ETL505

ETL505 was a challenging subject. Not just because of the rules that accompany cataloguing, but because I am naturally not a “detailed” thinker. My default setting is “big picture” thinker. Up until this subject, I had been dealing with mostly the "front of house" issues in the school library. I had used the catalogue as a searcher, but had never gone into the back end.

When I did my reading about Cataloguing systems, I couldn’t help but think of Information Systems and the organising that occurs within them. Within schools there seems to be a separation of library and ICT, but really they are so very similar. The Schema's that the ICT faculty deal with are very similar to the schema for working out a RDA description or using Web Dewey to ensure that a catalogue call number is accurate.

If you can google it, why should we organise it?

It is important for Teacher Librarians to promote information organisation.

The ease in which students can just "google it" and the frequency with which teachers encourage them to use this search engine is frightening. The efficiency and speed of the search engine lulls us into a false sense of security that we have found the answers we are looking for. Upon greater inspection, often the answers are shallow and they don't encourage rigorous research habits.

I was dreading the Bibliographic Standards subject ETL 505, but I found that learning how call numbers are constructed and the technical challenges surrounding cataloguing gave me a greater understanding of how I can make the library experience better for my students. By the time I got to the end of the subject, I was sorry that I hadn't done it earlier (Lawson, 2014). It could have had far greater application for my Study Visit and Professional Placement. In fact asking lots of questions on my professional placement helped me to understand the work that I was completing!

Another reason why information is important is because within out schools the intranet is taking over as the portal for information. And yet, most of the resources stored within this environment are disorganised and don't adhere to any bibliographic standards. ETL505 has allowed me to build the vocabulary needed to challenge those people who dismiss the library as an old fashioned way to research.

References:

Lawson, M. (2014) Critical Reflection of ETL505 [blog] Retrieved from:
http://infowhelm.blogspot.com.au/2014/10/critical-reflection-of-etl505.html