Monday, January 24, 2011

Sharing fantastic learning experiences with the students

Today the most amazing thing happened to me - I held a snake! This may not be something which is a big deal to some of you, after all many people who are reading this probably grew up in a country where there are snakes. But in New Zealand, we don't have snakes (at least not wild ones). So they are a relatively uncommon thing. As a child (and as an adult) I always thought they were something to be scared of, but I've just seen how awesome they really are.

I was so excited to see a snake - and it was great to see the children enjoying it just as much as I did. Thank you so much to Mrs Riley and Pre-KR who let me come along, and Mr Beer who let me hold Tango the corn snake.

It was nice to share an experience with the children - snakes are something I know very little about and Mr Beer had some great facts to share.
What a wonderful thing to see at school - it makes me feel so lucky to work here.

For me, this was a great chance to see more about what the children do on a day to day basis outside of the library. I have really been enjoying visiting the Pre-K classrooms from time to time. Now, I'm off to find some great stories about snakes for this weeks' library session!

Sunday, January 23, 2011

The Yes Library

Quietly, amongst ourselves, without gigantic ticks on the wall or slogans on the door, our workplace philosophy is that we are a Yes Library. Meaning, simply, that we say Yes: to book requests, to requests to use the library, to lead assemblies, to go on camp, to take extra classes, to mend someone's torn book, to put on sticking plasters, to make lists, to deliver, to join committees, to use the library for sleepovers, to do anything and everything we are asked.

Why? Because it is a constructive culture to have - library as the positive place. Because libraries are dispensable in some peoples eyes, storage units for topics loan books and computers, a job anyone could do. To get on with it, to get the job done, to suspend the prolonged use of Why. To please people - librarians love to satisfy a user's information need, and the Yes Library is an extension of that ideal. To add value to what we do, books and electronica and lessons plus, a kind of library philosophy 2.0.

This is underpinned by two beliefs: it is not my library, but the user's library - I am the caretaker; and the sense that if a user's first tangible approach to the library is met with a No, then at best they will leave with a negative perception of the library, and at worst will never come back.

There is no branding. Instead, every now and then, we discuss it at staff meetings, reinforcing that this is the library philosophy. Do staff buy in? Most of the time, sometimes with a query - sometimes it is workplace nature to want to say I have too much to do, it is not my job, this is not my beautiful life. I understand that, and attempt to encourage and reinforce through doing, by example, by passing on positive comments, by explicitly following the philosophy, by using it as a guideline when making tricky decisions.

There are exceptions. There are still rules. I won't be there at 9 o'clock at night; no you can't watch that on the library PC. But where possible, where reasonable and logical, our library mission is straightforward, positive and constructive. Yes?

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Jonathon Safran Foer's Tree of Codes

I am both frightened and stimulated by Jonathon Safran Foer's Tree of Codes. Cutting up books is, instinctively, a facist and not artistic act; making something whole and with meaning out of somebody's book is creatively challenging and interesting. He is finding hidden (or never was) meaning in a classic text; he is challenging conventional concepts of fiction and creativity; he is asking the reader to step out from the traditional one book one writer paradigm. What is fixed and finished? Who is the maker? Is there meaning in these words?



So, this video illustrating the creation of Tree of Codes stimulates the creator within me. But this only balances the sense of loss the reader within me feels. Foer's stated argument, that there are plenty of other copies of the original book that he hasn't cut up feels slightly facile, because it is not like he is cutting out the crossword from a newspaper, or doing collage using magazine photos - he is disfiguring a book, a precious container, each one that I have ever held being the original.

This is not me as librarian, asking students to use bookmarks rather than dog ears - rather, it is I as reader, a man who holds books as almost holy, almost a life source, who is torn up. If it was my tv he was tearing apart and putting back together as a transmogrifier, or the Google code as a page of scripture, I'd be thrilled. But my books (and my cricket bat and jar of vegemite) are whole, finished, complete, precious and inviolate in their original form.

That said, today my students are cutting up photocopies of Carl Sandburg and Prufrock to create their own poems. Librarian as hypocrite? Or the fine line between real, whole books and what they mean, and a faded facsimile on A3?

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Book Review: The Secret of Annexe 3

The Inspector Morse series is an interesting entry in the mystery book cannon. Morse, who lives and works in Oxford, is the archetypal detective as outsider: a bachelor, he has no identifiable close friends, listens to opera in the dark, sits alone in a myriad of pubs, is brusque with everyone else on the force, and engages really only with the crossword compiler of The Times. His Watson is a Welshman named Lewis, whom we see buying drinks for his boss, doing the donkeywork and eating a daily ration of eggs and chips; and usually one step (at least) behind Morse.

The Secret of Annexe 3 is one of the least stellar entries in the series, with an unlikely crime committed by an unlikely pair, underpinned by an unlikely psychology. The setting is low (town), rather than high (University) Oxford during a rather loveless Christmas and New Year period - all of which is rather tawdry.

But why it is notable is that Morse, in the end, does not get his man (well, not completely anyway). Which makes it a relatively unsatisfying example of a mystery book, even if the author is merely attempting to subvert the genre, as Christie did famously with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Because why do we read them, if not for the satisfaction of the murderer being caught, of the detective's triumph, and of our complicity as readers in that success?

Which leads me to my point - why do I read mystery books? Is it this sense of  triumph in the resolution that draws me to them? Partly, I think it is, because I am left feeling distinctly deflated when the murderer eludes Morse. And with that resolution comes a sense of order, and the notion that the world has been righted.

But I feel that it is more than that. I also identify with the detectives in mystery books and possibly, subconsciously, want to be them - all seeing, all knowing, clever, fearless, confronting death and killers. But I also do not want to be them: odd, finicky Poirot; the alcoholic Dave Robicheaux; the divorced, slightly slovenly Inspector Wallander; Matt Scudder, alone and observing questionable morality on New York's mean streets. In isolation, I don't want to be any of them, but as a reader, I love all of them.

Is it the puzzle, then? The superior intellect that can untie the Gordian knot? Again, I'm not convinced. I'm not sure how most people read mystery books, but I am a somewhat passive reader of them: I don't try and solve the mystery as I go along, although I am glad when the solution is announced.

Am I Watson? Do I feel like Poirot's confessor, or Scudder's companion down the Deuce? Not really, because as much as these books take me to a different place, exotic, troublesome, I am able to remain grounded in my more prosaic reality: on the skytrain, in the library, between the sheets early on a Tuesday night, nothing on the telly.

Which leaves, I feel, murder, and human fascination with it. I can't do fantasy, struggle with comic novels, and like my literature best in the form of Dostoyevsky, underpinned with a good psychological killing or two.

Which is why I'll keep reading the Inspector Morse books, despite the anti-climatic entry that is The Secret of Annexe 3. Yes, I'm annoyed by the lack of resolution, yes I admire Morse's intellect and wit, yes I wish I was Lewis, yes Oxford sounds like an interesting place, yes there is a puzzle, but mostly yes, blood has been spilt, crime has been done, and the game is afoot: great stuff, as long as its only between the pages of a book.

Library Events

This Thursday we will celebrate Secondary English Week with cut-up and stick-it-on poetry, at lunchtime in the Secondary library.

Reminder: Making Stuff Day is each Wednesday at lunchtime, and the Storyteller is on Fridays. Both are in the Primary library, and everybody is welcome.

Also, it is not long until World Book Week, which will be in the first week of March. We will have a number of special events and guests during that week, as well as the book fair.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Storybird and Xtranormal

Storybird and Xtranormal are two open source sites we have been using as presentation tools lately.

Storybird is a site that allows users to select from a range of artists, and then write words to accompany the pictures. We used this as a straight story site during Creativity Day, but also with a Year 6 class who were doing research about famous people. They wrote a narrative incorporating their famous person - it was successful both with advanced students, who wrote complex narratives, and with less focused students who were the most interested they had been in class all year!

Xtranormal is not completely open source, but it does have a free component. It allows users to select animated characters, read text for them, and then will create a short film using those characters - again, a great literacy and creativity tool. I have only used it at home so far, but will use it as an option for my Year 9 classes as a presentation tool for their Leaders study.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Copyright on the internet

Each year, I incorporate a component into classes for Y6-Y9 students instructing them about how to create bibliographies, why they are important, and why they should present information using their own words, not (notably) by cutting and pasting. This is an essential part of leading those students towards being information authentic - finding the right source is great, but so is presenting completed work in an original and honest form.

The project where students struggle most is when classes work together to create a wiki. Each group researches a topic of their choosing and then posts their findings on a wiki - a project that will be replicated in most schools in some form or other. A requirement of the project is that students must use books as two of their sources - I want students to utilise the collection and to develop their skills as users of non-fiction. But they can obviously use the internet for other sources. I point them towards EBSCO, Britannica, CIA World Factbook and other authoritative resources, and they will use those, but they will also by default almost universally eventually head back to Google, their comfort blanket.

And often, information they find using Google will end up cut and pasted into their final posting, sometimes attributed, but not always. Images and videos they have found decorate their postings, again sometimes but not always attributed.

Partly this is my fault. I discuss attribution, forms of bibliography and copyright with the classes, but often the overwhelming urge for these students is to discard the rubric and accept the gift the internet is offering them - attractive, easy to use information and images, that makes it easier for them to complete their work.

My point is that this ease of access and copying has created a generation of users who have come to view the internet as a catch-all resource - the information is there, it is attractive, and easy to use. It is difficult, often, to determine an exact author, or the origins of a photo or video. With a book, an author has their name on the spine label; a website has a coded address that means very little to a 10 year old.

I feel, then, that the onus, yes, does lie with librarians and information professionals to ensure that their students are information authentic; but because our contact with users of the internet is fleeting and our advice not always adhered to when we are not present, some of the onus also lies with the internet itself.

Which means, to my mind, that for copyright to have any lasting meaning on the internet, the internet community needs to support a from of copyright regulation that extends beyond the opt-in philosophy of the Creative Commons - all sites should have a universally recognised symbol indicating the level to which they can be used by internet users. If the symbol is not evident, the posting should be regarded as not being bound by copyright.

The last point is the biggest change and the most important, as it means that people who post information of any type are equally responsible (with the user) for ethically managing the copyright for that posting.

Why? Beacuse the internet is a different container than a book, or a newspaper, or first-run Hollywood movie. It is instantly accessible to billions of people, some of whom use the information they find on there ethically, some of whom don't, or don't know what that means, or don't care - or just view all information on the internet as theirs. It is not like they are taking a videocamera to the cineplex - they are just copying a photo of Hitchcock into their email, after all. The overwhelming sentiment I identify in users is that there is no owner of the information, so they can do what they want with it.

To some extent, the toothpaste is out of the tube, and it would take some expert stuffing to get it back in. But if there was a regualtory site (or if Creative Commons became universal) offering three options for internet posters (1, no use  2, use with credit  3, free use without attribution), it would be clearer how that site could be used.

The internet doesn't want to regulate, but it does want rights management. These positions are irrenconcilible, and until there is a shift, copyright on the internet will continue to be ineffective and confusing for the vast majority of users.