Lesson 3—Building a Reference Collection

Reidling’s Approach

I couldn’t really contribute to this lesson’s discussions as I am a TOC and don’t have my own library or my own school. I decided to take a different approach and tried to learn as much as I could from my “classmates” discussions and from my readings.
Since this was my first look at any kind of evaluation process, I couldn't really give an intelligent opinion, but was quite interested to find that almost everyone found Riedling’s approach to be quite comprehensive and inclusive. It has been many years since I’ve taught research and have to admit that I did not have any model to follow.
After having reviewed the Ministry document, I found it to be much more detailed and relevant to us as BC teachers. I appreciated the inclusion of Canadian content, ESL, gender equity and Aboriginal considerations. It also included Audience considerations such as those in French Immersion and students with special needs. Social considerations need to be addressed to avoid potential controversial or offensive elements. Jenny C. brought up the ESL consideration in her discussion: “One of Riedling’s criteria is to consider if the resource material is similar to other ones the library already has. I believe that this rule may need to be “bent” a bit in order to accommodate for special cases in the school (ESL, special needs, etc.). The language used in some resources may be too difficult or complex for some students and they will need modified works so they can be independent learners and researchers too.”
Our first consideration is that the resource supports the BC curriculum. Resources can be quite costly, so we want to ensure we are getting the optimal “bang for our buck”. Frances R-C. discussed this exact point: “T-Ls could purchase resources which meet all of Reidling's selection criteria, however if the references are not relevant to student or curricular needs, then their selection would be simply futile.”

Reference Materials

Again, this was a discussion I was unable to participate in as I don’t have a library to evaluate, but I decided to follow the postings of those “classmates” that work in my school district.
The absolute most shocking revelation for me was the disparity in budgets that the schools have. One of the elementary schools of roughly 600 students had a larger budget than one of our secondary schools of 1450 students. I don’t understand how that is possible unless the library budget contains more than just library purchases. Another interesting find was that one of our “needier” schools was the absolute lowest out of the 6 schools I could compare in terms of budget. Those kids aren’t likely to have access to any other library! How on earth does that happen?
Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the only school that felt it had acceptable to exemplary standards in almost all categories from A.I.L .was the elementary school with the massive budget followed closely by the secondary school.
I also learned that our school district subscribes to several periodical indexes, such as Thomson Gale, Ebsco, Encyclopedia of BC Online, NoveList and Worldbook Online. This would certainly help us in achieving exemplary in this category.
Misty S. posted:"Our local TL association annually hosts a publisher’s display so we are able to view many reference resources and determine their: content scope, accuracy, authority and bias, arrangement and presentation, relation to similar works (providing you know your collection well), timeliness and permanence, and cost. We often get many of the popular and reputable publishers of reference materials so this is very useful to us in selecting resources to purchase.” I found this to be very interesting. It certainly would save each individual T-L a lot of time evaluating his or her own resources.