Gone are the encyclopedia's!

Often times while talking with friends or family I get the question, "You're a school Librarian....so what do you do?" While some think it's merely a circulation job, the topic of job relevance in the digital age often comes about. To which I now reply that Librarians have always helped students search for information, yes it used to be in books or Encyclopedia's (or dare I say microfiche?) and yes now things are much more digitized, but the job description remains the same. 

 

Photo courtesy of American Association of School Librarians

As discussed throughout this first theme, the foundation of any research model is information or reference material. It seems quite evident that with the digital shift happening exponentially in the world around us, reference works are no exception.  Much print information is outdated, sometimes even by the time of publishing, including even reference books on reference books as is evidenced by our text book, Reference Skills for the School Library Media Specialist: Tools and Tips (Riedling)! In my opinion the authors examples of reference materials are outdated, including CD-Roms and several of the few links I explored are not even existent anymore. So why not shift wholly to online sources?

One reflection piece in this theme asked if we possessed bias for either digital or print sources, which made me pause and consider. Ultimately I lean heavily towards online research with most of our intermediate students and think many formats of physical reference work are no longer relevant. We have no VHS, very few DVD’s, most of our maps and physical pieces have been discarded and our Encyclopedia’s need to be, but I believe we still have a very solid reference section; it just looks much different than in the school libraries I grew up with.

Much of the reference work I purchase is now in a more relevant and accessible format. We have a large collection of non-fiction picture books and readers, series of books about force and motion or animal adaptations all in graphic novel format, multi-lingual dictionaries and picture dictionaries. I’m trying to ensure that the reference material we do have is used, which means it must be as appealing as going online, and it must be at levels that our young and highly ELL population can actually understand. 

Photos courtesy of Worldbook.com

I probably won’t ever purchase another set of Encylopedia’s. I believe they’re just too expensive and limiting for student needs. But that doesn’t mean that print references are obsolete, they too just need to be adapted!

Works Cited

Riedling, A. Reference Skills for the School Library Media Specialist: Tools and Tips, 2nd Edition. Linworth Books, 2005.