A school library homepage is essential at our grade 8 - 12 secondary school. I use the library homepage to show students how to access the catalogue and the databases. I have links to the College of New Caledonia, the University of Northern BC, the Prince George public library, the BC Virtual Library, and the District Resource Centre. I have links to BibMe and Knight Cite, Copy Right Matters, and Plagiarism tutorials. These are all lessons that I use at various stages of the students' research. I also have links to YALSA, Teen Reads, Teen Space, and other teen sites. I also have a list of MUST Reads. After looking at a number of library web pages, I would like to add some book trailers, some teaching You Tube videos, and photos. I don't know how to add photographs yet. My web page is very simple; it is not cluttered. I added a little to it last year because it only had a few very basic links. I added more to it this year, but it is very time-consuming. It takes me awhile to remember how to add links and make changes. Our district has to follow a certain web page template. I don't think it is that interesting, but it is consistent for the whole district. Another area in which my library web page needs improvement is to provide the means for students who have a visual impairment or other challenges to use the web site.
The most important elements of an attractive, usable school library homepage is:
-simple, keeping the audience in mind
-few images as a lot of students have dial-up in the outlying area surrounding our school and do not want to wait for the images to download
-audio for print and visually impaired students
-do not rely on colour alone for students who are colour blind
-consistent design and navigation
-include photographs of events happening in the library
-consistent structure
-welcome page, library hours of operation, personnel, and mission statement
-OPAC link
-links to databases
-links to teaching and learning resources
-new resources
Reflection:
When students come to the library to do a research project, I have arranged a pattern with most teachers that the students will use books on the first day of research, databases on the second day, and the Internet on the third day. This works out well because I can show students how to use the basic skills that they need for research. The students access a variety of resources and develop their critical analysis skills. Students are taught about scholarly papers and web site evaluation, and suffixes of certain good web sites. Students are also taught to check the references on Wikipedia and back up the information they find on Wikipedia with other scholarly resources as Wikipedia is the first place most students go to when they begin their research. As one can see from my Assignment #2, digital access was a challenge when I started because we did not have the means to run many digital lessons. Since adding more computers to the lab, I can run more lessons, get more students and teachers into the labs providing access to many more students in the school. Since Blogging, Tweeting, Wikis, are becoming more popular, it would be fun to design lessons that incorporate the students expertise with social media and combine these lessons with researching digital resources.
One thing I find frustrating is when I show the students how to search the databases and then they cannot find their topic. Today, a student tried to use the Biography database to fine Mathew Bailie Begbie; he searched in EBSCO, as well. Luckily, I had some information photocopied and in folders from Canadian Biographies web site.
Another health related issue is coming up with setting up WiFi in the school. There are many articles saying that it is a health risk. This creates a dilemma because the students really want access to the computers, but at what cost?
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