I have to start out by saying that this was by far, the BEST CLASS I have ever taken.

I admit that I was warned by one fellow classmate to avoid Oakleaf's classes and other classmates told me her classes were a lot of work. So when I was put into her class after registering for another, I was at first skeptical. I now realize that the first student I talked to (in my opinion) just didn't want to have to work hard, and the other students I talked to were right. This course was a lot of work, but it was in no way 'busy work'.

Here are a few reasons I really appreciated this class:

1. Homework was designed to let us practices specific skills.

This class offered us real life experiences, in safe environments (i.e. online reference with fellow classmates) and pracattical work, such as evaluating reference materials, which I could specifically see why I need to know and how I could apply it to real life work situations.

2. Professor Oakleaf used best practice in teaching methods.

It is not often that I have had a professor or teacher who "walks the walk". By this I mean that she set clear expectations, and was available to us if we ever needed clarification. I could tell that she cared that we learn the material and not that she was just teaching the material.

I'm very appreciative to have another class that is clearly applicable to the field I am interested and taught by a professor who wants us to learn.

Today was my last observation with Barbara and unfortunately, it was another very uneventful one (unless you count the little birthday party we had for the library assistant which was wonderful!). Because it was another slow day, we had the chance to talk about the needs of the library. As the Head librarian for the school, she has requested that an additional assistant be hired for the elementary library.

Currently there is one elementary  librarian who teaches 18 different classes on a 6 day rotation. As Barbara is new at the school, she brings a fresh eye to the way things work and has realized while the school has grown from 2 sections of each grade to 3 sections of each, they have not increased staffing for the library. They did increase for all the other specialists, just not the library. She believes that if there was a second assistant to assist in the behind the scenes things like processing books and helping with miscellaneous reference questions from students and parents, the elementary librarian will be able to focus more on the teaching piece.

I find this interesting, because of lot of what takes up her time, or should take up time is her teaching and/or preparing for teaching. This means that many of the reference questions in the library are answered by the assistants. If nothing else, seeing them work in the Elementary has given me a great appreciation for the assistants (not that I didn't appreciate them before).

Through my observations with Barbara and the other time I have spent in the elementary school, I have realized that reference in a school library can be very different then a public/academic library. Although reference librarians do have some of these responsibilities in the public/academic library, their job title/responsibilities are reference. Therefore in school libraries a huge piece of reference does fall on the assistance, so that school librarians, especially elementary, can focus on teaching.

Going back to my time with Barbara, it is a little different for her. She does have a LOT of other work to do besides reference, but she is able to do much of it while being available to people. She is always at the circulation desk and will drop just about anything she is doing, so that she can help a student, parent or staff member.  I think this is part of the appeal of being a school librarian; that you are always busy with something.

Today I interviewed Barbara Kieran, Head Librarian at ASB, about reference services.

One of the most important thing that we talked about and that kept coming up over and over in the interview was the importance of knowing your library community. The purchase and use of different types of resources depend heavily on the users. For example, when I asked what were "Must Have's" for the library, she automatically said "It depends on the library". She mentioned public libraries needing genealogy resources and school libraries needing curriculum specific resources, which can also very from school to school.

Also, we kept coming back to physical copies vs. online or database copies of resources. She mentioned that although encyclopedia's, dictionaries and thesauri are all must haves, much of this is moving online. Barbara metnioned specifically about the currency of online versions. I asked about how often things like the encyclopedia's should be updated, especially considering their cost. She explain that it use to be they were replaced every other year, but now she waits up to five years to replace them. However, again she emphasized the importance of the online resources and making sure she updated and payed for those every year, which can also be expensive.

And on a final and funny note, when I asked what kinds of reference questions she got she said everything from "where is the Bathroom to complex research questions". Ah, the life a reference librarian!

“We need books for our world history class.”

This was an interesting interaction. The students have a research paper they are doing for their World History class. Last week, I observed in the classroom as the Barbara went to show the students some databases to look for information about their topics as well as to help refine their topics. This week the students are looking for information, so Barbara sat down with them to show them how to use the catalog to find appropriate books. 

One of the students was aware that the library is ordered by topic and she just wanted to know the “number area” where she could find information. As they sat down, Barbara asked again what the student’s topic was. She replied that her research question was “What is behind police brutality”. The other student who was also there looking for books on her topic told her friend she didn’t get the question and Barbara also wanted to explore this issue a little before she could point her in the right direction. A long conversation then followed where the Barbara tried to help the student explain more clearly what her topic was and how she was going to do research on it. What arguments could be made about the topic and what viewpoints could she look at. Barbara tried to get the student to show her the original assignment, which the student didn’t have available and couldn’t explain either. It was actually a bit painful to watch, as the student obviously needed to flesh out the topic a bit more, but was really just interested in finding books. Finally after discussing the topic for about 10 minutes they started searching the catalog and the student typed in Police Brutality and to her surprise, she didn’t find anything. Again Barbara tried to clarify what the research question was to help find other keywords or topics to search for. After about 20 minutes of this back and forth conversation and a little bit of searching, the student who was sent to find the appropriate section on her own, found a book on “Dealing with Anger”. The student then had to leave for class.

While I found the encounter very educational, I also was a bit frustrated with the process. It seemed like the student was not really willing to consider what Barbara was trying to show her about her topic and about how to search,  however, she kept pushing the point and the student ended up walking away with one book that was mildly helpful. I’m not sure she would be encouraged to come back for more help.

On the other hand, the other student who had questioned her friend originally, also wanted help, and so I stepped in and followed in Barbara’s footsteps. I didn’t really question her topic (Global Warming, Pollution and the Indian Government) and so we were able to jump right in to finding books. We did a couple of catalog searches, which lead to the reference section. I showed her where the references were, walking her over and helping find the book she looked up in the catalog. She pulled it down and found a small section on Pollution related to Asian. I then told her it was often helpful to keep looking in the section where she found one book as there might be related topics. I also pointed out the encyclopedia’s where she could find more general, starting information about India. She put one book on reserve and decided to come back after school to look at it and find more.

Both of these situations were very different but I think in general, although Barbara’s approach was correct in helping the student to think more critically at her question, it may have also been drawn out a bit too long. I felt that after a while, it may have been more helpful for the first student to have actual started searching and then been guided through finding helpful starting resources, since she was obviously not ready to hear what Barbara had to say. Letting her search and find or not find her resources would have just been another approach that may have been more helpful to the student in the long run.

As part of my Reference Class at SU, we will be observing and interviewing a reference Librarian and blogging about it. This week, I had my first observation session with Barbara Kieran, the Head Librarian at the American School of Bombay. I spent one hour with Barbara from 1 to 2 at one Wednesday, which turned out to be a pretty good time as I was able to observe several interaction of varying types.

1. Two students came up asking where they could find books about countries. Barbara did a great job of clarify what they were looking for, asking what class it was for and what the project was. Once she had narrowed down that they were doing research on countries for their Spanish class, she asked if they knew how to use the catalog to help them find what they were looking for. Both said they didn't know since they were new at the school. Barbara then took the opportunity to have the students come around the desk and walk them through how to find our catalog and how to search for books related to their countries including using the subject search. Although the girls seemed a bit in a hurry, the did get to learn the basics as well as find a book before they headed back to class.

2. One of the school secretaries came and was looking for Psychology books. She said she remembered seeing new books that had come in at the end of last year. She didn't remember the exact title, just a few key words and she knew what they looked like. Barbara was able to point out a few sections to look in while she looked up in the catalog a few specific titles based on the keywords. Once she narrowed down which section they were in, the secretary was quickly able to find what she was looking for.

3. An English teacher stopped by to ask if we had access to a specific database. Barbara said that we currently didn't have it, but she would be willing to ask the vendor for a trial period to both help us decide if it was worthwhile as well as help the teacher out. He was excited to hear that we could potentially get the trial. This interaction also lead to a conversation about literary resources as well as an upcoming author visit.

For my first observation timeI thought it was great. It had a nice variety of patrons and questions. I was able to see a good reference interview and one on one instruction with the students. It was also really great to see how as a teacher-librarian, Barbara was able to connect with the teacher about literature and authors and begin a collaborative relationship with the teacher.

One thing that I did notice while I was there that seemed to be a challenge was that both Barbara and the library assistant sit at the same desk. Being new to the school, people are more use to the assistant and her presents and help than the Librarians. It is often confusing for Barbara, the assistant and the patron when they walk up to know who is the most appropriate person to ask for help. If it's simply checking out a book, it's often the assistant, but if it's more a reference question, there are many things the assistant can help with as well. This can lead to some awkward pauses, but hopefully with time, everyone will learn how to best respond to a patron.