The Smiling Search Engine

“Librarians are just like search engines, except they smile and they talk to me and they don't give me paid-for advertising when they are trying to help. And they have actual hearts.” 

Matt Haig

“Is there a book about…?”

 

As a librarian working in a public library, I often encountered patrons who came to the desk to find out where certain books were, how to look up specific information, what I would recommend about a topic for further reading. However quick and simple these encounters were, we had to demonstrate all the mentioned skills of a librarian for a successful reference interview (Riedling p.92):

Approachability – there is always a librarian or a library assistant behind the counter who seems to be waiting for only one thing in life: patrons to present their questions.

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/how-approachable-are-you-infographic.htm

Interest – librarians in general seem to be interested in everything; that’s why we were attracted to this profession after all!

https://www.fluentu.com/blog/english/interesting-facts-about-english/

Listening/Inquiring – While working at the public library I weekly encountered some unusual, even eccentric and quirky patrons, but no matter what, I was polite, genuinely engaged and appeared to be willing to spend my next twenty minutes discussing rutabaga recipes, tantric yoga, or beach resorts in Caribbean islands.

https://teachnews.gr/glwssologia-didaktikh/item/862-approaches-to-teaching-listening-skills

Searching – Finding the right balance between too few and too many questions is a real art; paying attention to nonverbal clues often revealed that the patron needed much more than a piece of information. In a small town, where everyone knows each other sometimes it’s hard for people to come to a librarian and ask for reference material on mental illness, eating disorders, divorce or cancer treatment.

https://www.womenshealthmag.com/life/a22500573/questions-to-ask-to-get-to-know-someone/

Follow up – The best feedback is when a patron gets back to the librarian and thanks them for their help, even weeks later. The occasional disappointment occurs when we find the book we just recommended in the drop bin ten minutes later: it could mean that we probably didn’t dig deep enough to find out what the patron really needed.

Flickr, Creative Common licenses

Our reality

 

In a small elementary school library, where I am working now, the reference interview may not require all these special skills on a daily basis. 

Students mostly seek information for school projects, whose criteria has been set by their teachers. Since the classroom teachers and the TL collaborate and correspond regularly, the TL is often more familiar with the project than the student. In our school the time students spend in the library is not flexible: they come for lessons when both their teacher and the TL are present. For research activities in the primary grades, we usually select and provide the resources.

It's very rare that students ask us for reference material outside of a class setting. However, students regularly seek leisure reading and came for advice on fiction books that would be similar to what they enjoyed.

What should we keep? What should we get rid of?

 

We are at the beginning of a major weeding process. Our district is buying a new catalogue system, and renovations are starting at the end of the school year, so it seems to be the right timing. Our library clerk used to work at the local public library, so she was determined to follow the evaluation guidelines that the public library set. We agreed on several points (content, accuracy, timeliness, accessibility). We are not keeping reference materials that are 

• outdated (contain politically incorrect language or illustrations, inaccurate content), 
• in bad shape (black-and-white, repaired many times), 
• not 'inviting' (content is arranged in a dry, matter-of-fact manner, without text features or illustrations)

Flickr, Creative Common Licenses

The library clerk (who is a trained administrator, but not a teacher) used one other criterium that I disagreed with: how frequently a book was taken out. She pointed out that we have hundreds of books that nobody borrowed for years. As a teacher I felt that I don't think that borrowing data should be used as a rule. Our staff members regularly use books from the collection in their lessons that students do not borrow - and sad, but true: teachers don't always sign out the books they borrow for a couple of hours! I use various resources daily that students would be not interested in, but they are excellent for a teacher to build a lesson with, or to use as an example, to quote, to reference. Teachers regularly decide to do units that they haven't done for years. Students choose topics for curiosity projects that nobody has done before. 

I would instead use a rule of thumb: is there a newer, more practical resource that would successfully replace the old one? Is this a resource that a student might not find exciting enough to borrow, but would be quite useful for a teacher?

In a small library like ours, I think it's not an unreasonable request to examine closely every book that has been for weeding. We might find useful, hidden treasures.

 

Information = Technology?

When the word information is mentioned, we often associate it with data, which evokes the feeling that it's almost not possible to obtain information anymore without the use of technology. These days, when our  students - who are truly digital natives - encounter a question, they immediately want to "google" it. Some of them have the habit of typing entire questions into the browser, others don't even bother typing, just ask Siri. 

https://medium.com/@miacrnfrska/digital-native-and-digital-immigrant-how-can-these-groups-work-together-592fff906fb1

As a teacher-librarian I almost feel that one of my most important missions is to convince them that books are just as useful as digital devices, and they might even be more efficient, because you probably don't have to spend time verifying the information or fact checking the website. 

I almost feel that I have to prove to them that information existed before the digital age! We, who are now defined as "digital immigrants", were just as information literate twenty-thirty years ago as our students are becoming - thanks to our media skills projects - in 2022. Information literacy is a student's "ability to locate, evaluate and use information in a variety of formats to meet their information needs. " (Riedling, Ann, Reference skills for the school librarian: Tools and tips, Fourth Edition. p.6) Maybe we didn't have a variety of formats (Internet, databases, online tools, apps), but we found what we were looking for, in books.

The greatest difference would be that students before the digital age would not have been able to conduct a search without understanding the difference between printed reference sources, such as encyclopaedias, almanacs, fact books, bibliographies and such; they had to know how they are organized, what their primary function is. When students search online, they might think these skills are unnecessary, but "it's important to think strategically about which electronic information resource to use for a particular information need, because each one provides different kinds of information and involves different types of search strategies." (Riedling, 2019. p. 101)

In my SLLC I don't think I have seen students voluntarily picking up reference books in the last five years. Oh yes, actually they did, just last week. A group of grade 7's needed some heavy weights to balance a camera when filming a green screen scene. 

from Pinterest

The dogs may bark, but the caravan...

My takeaway from Lesson 2 was mostly thinking and rethinking the ways how we do inquiry projects in our school; what steps we follow, how students synthesize the information they collect. 

Regarding reference materials, I see a major switch around grade 4, probably because that's the age when children gain access to devices at home and get more familiar with them. While elementary students happily pick up nonfiction books while researching a topic, intermediates would rather choose the internet. If they have the choice, by grade 7 all their reference material would be digital. When a grade 6 class was working on Canadian provinces and territories for a virtual cross-Canada trip, the pile of brand new, beautifully illustrated "a Trip Through Canada" series was lying on the counter for weeks, untouched. The books would have been perfect for the project and would have saved them an enormous amount of time and effort. Still, they were only attracted to online resources, and the the selection and evaluation of these took probably twice as much time - not even counting the wasted minutes (or hours) that they spent on websites that had nothing to do with the topic, but distracted them while surfing on the world wide web. 

Image Credit: Angela Waye / Shutterstock

Crops and Weeds

"The fertile field cannot produce good crops as long as the weeds are not cleared away." The Taoist quote might be about clearing our minds from temptations, but it might as well describe a good selection of reference books in a SLLC. Reading the criteria for weeding our library materials in Riedling's book (p. 17-19) made me more determined that we will need a serious evaluation of the nonfiction materials at the end of the year, when we do our inventory. Here is an acronym to help the process: 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Old_book_bindings.jpg

Misleading and/or factually inaccurate 

Ugly and worn beyond mending or rebinding 

Superseded by a newer edition or by a much better book 

Trivial with no discernible value 

Your collection has no use for this material, irrelevant to the needs of your clientele

(Allen, M (2010) Weed 'Em and Reap: The Art of Weeding to Avoid Criticism. Library Media Connection, 28 (6), p. 32-33.)

It's time to get rid of musty books!

Opportunities to Learn - for Students and Teachers

Lesson 4 made me think of my own bias about electronic resources. I am not sure if I should call them bias, or "pet peeves", or "times when I get suspicious"...

• During research student chooses to watch a YouTube video: "But it's about my topic!"
• Student types one single word into the search engine and clicks on the first link that shows up
• Student is enthusiastically reading a website that has nothing to do with the topic -all because of a misspelled word in the browser
• Student spends twice as much time on choosing a Power Point template with a certain colour scheme and fancy animations than on the actual presentation
• Student googles pictures about the topic and chooses the cutest one, but with a huge watermark across it
• Student copies and pastes a sentence from a website, but failed to highlight the whole sentence and it makes no sense
• Student looks up a picture, and chooses the one that doesn't have anything to do with the topic
• Student doesn't understand a word, looks it up and chooses a definition that has four additional words in it that he doesn't understand

What did I miss? What did I do wrong? ...I ask myself in these situations, and we go back and explain it over and over again. Because "opportunities are like sunrises. If you miss them, they are gone." (Riedling, 2019. p.105.)

The Metropolis Project

I used Benoit Tardif's books as the model for the project: Metropolis and Sport-O-Rama.

Source: Amazon.ca and Okanagan Regional Library orl.bibliocommons.com

The concept behind the books is that by using very simple pictures or icons in bright, contrasting colours with minimal text, each page describes the most important features of a city or a sport.

When we looked at the books together, we all agreed that the author probably knows much more about each city or sport then what we see, but after a research he probably chooses the most essential (fundamental) and the most interesting (trivia, fun facts) pieces of information that make it to the final pages.

When students have done their research, they prepare their "Metropolis poster" by selecting the features they would like to showcase about their project. We all start with a clean sheet, which we divide into 32 sections by folding it into half again and again.

Then each student decides about how many features of the topic will be represented on the sheet, how it will be arranged and how large those sections will be. They make a sketch. We suggest that the size of the sections should represent the importance of the feature. They decide about pictures, symbols and other representations. We ask them to include minimal text. 

They start colouring the picture. We soon realized that markers work the best, they make each section pop up. Students enjoy the design-element of the project: choosing contrasting colours, coming up with special features (gold and silver markers were requested).

We noticed that during this somewhat long task, the students go through a deep synthesizing process as well. They carefully choose in what order they would present the sections and what they will be talking about. The completed picture is glued to a dark sheet.

Here are some examples of student work from last year. Each student was able to talk about the topic for about ten minutes, while pointing out sections on their poster. They constantly emphasized and justified why and how they chose the topics that made into the poster and added details that were not directly presented.

(All photos taken by G.D.)

The classroom teacher and I agreed that the project exceeded all our previous expectations. She pointed out that she never saw such deep comprehension and ability to synthesize the compiled information before. Students did not get lost in details, were able to explain their choices, and truly enjoyed that they could use their own design ideas and creativity. Some of them also seemed to be in a zen-like mindset while colouring, which could have helped them processing the information even more.

Curious Geniuses

Coral Reefs - Mars Expedition - Haunted Houses

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Coral_reef_09.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arsia_Mons_Cloud_-_Mars_Express_-_Flickr_-_jccwrt.png

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:House_Cemetery_Haunted_House-2187170.jpg

What do these three topics have in common?

.

.

.

.

No, it's not a new word association game or one of last week's most difficult Jeopardy questions. And I can tell you the answer right now.

These are three of the most common topics that students chose for their Curiosity Project in the last decade in our school.

I have seen a model of the Great Barrier Reef made of paper mache and heard an extensive, detailed to do list how to save the wildlife in the ocean; watched a green screen video of "an astronaut" demonstrating the gravity of Mars and tried samples of food  that could be grown in a Martian greenhouse (I tasted little green spirulina tablets for the first time, which is apparently the "superfood" for future colonizers); got a virtual tour of all haunted houses in our area and listened to a lengthy explanation of how to operate an ouija board.... And the fact that I still remember these details proves that these projects are presented by passionate experts who find the most interesting details and communicate them with such great enthusiasm that it stays with the audience for a long time even after the paper mache structure lands in the recycle bin and the Power Point presentation gets deleted.

What are YOU curious about?

Curiosity Project, Inquiry Project, Genius Hour, Expert Hour - these are a couple of names for the same activity that we facilitate every year. In a good curiosity project the student

• chooses the topic
• shows lots of interest and curiosity towards it
• asks questions 
• researches the topic thoroughly
• stays engaged and motivated during the project
• presents the findings and a summary in a certain, pre-negotiated form
• and participates in an evaluation process.

There are various models of inquiry that a teacher can use to set up a research unit. In our school district the model that most teachers are following and quoting is the Points of Inquiry.

https://bctla.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/points-of-inquiry-poster-eng-8-5-11.pdf

Other research process models include the Information Search Process, Guided Inquiry, Gig 6/Super3 and Research Project. The steps of these models might be called differently, but "in general, each of these models guides students through the process of defining a problem, locating and evaluating resources, and forming conclusions." (Riedling, Ann: Reference skills for the school librarian: Tools and tips, (Fourth Edition, 2019). p.10)

Explain What You've Learned

In every model, and in every Curiosity Project one of the last steps is a Presentation. It can be named as "Create, Present" (Research Project - Stripling and Pitts) Presentation (Kulthau) or Synthesis (Big6 - Eisenberg and Berkowitz). There are several ways to conclude a research, and we usually give some different options to the students.

1. A presentation they create on a chosen platform (Power Point, Prezi, Sway are the most common choices). I like to set the criteria as only pictures should be part of the presentation with minimal or no text. The reason is that students tend to type in their whole presentation and read it to the audience while they are able to read it on the whiteboard at the same time - which creates a situation when nobody is listening to the presenter. I ask them to have bullet points in their physical notes, just to guide them through the major points of the presentation, and speak freely, without reading a text. This requires a lot of practice in advance, but it's rewarding. Sometimes, when the Curiosity Project is set up in a marketplace-format, students create posters or a trifold.

Grade 5 students using laptops Photo: G.D.

2. As Kulthau's Information Seeking Process model points out there are ways to emphasize the Cognitive Learning (More focused Comprehension) and Sensorimotor Learning (Completing a Report) (Riedling, 2019 p. 11) I always felt that it's good to add a physical item to the presentation: it deepens the understanding, adds a fresh layer of creativity, and it's very refreshing especially for the students who excel in hands-on activities, but not very strong in literacy.

Students present their model to younger buddies (Photo:G.D.)

3. Last year with the grade 5 class I tried a new form of presentation at the end of the project. We called it The Metropolis Project. The classroom teacher and I both agreed that it was the most satisfying outcome of a Curiosity Project that we have ever seen. When we watched the presentations it gave us the feeling that each student knows and understands exactly what they are talking about. Nobody needed notes, there was no reading of text or confused looks at question time.