Harte Loves Books

The readings around the role of a teacher librarian have been especially pertinent to me, as a new teacher librarian, in the middle of my diploma. I have been evolving and grappling with this identity question over the past few months. Like Alice, in the video below, I don’t even know myself some days! Schools in Alberta do not include teacher librarians, and my school has not had anyone been staffed in the learning commons in any capacity. The role more commonly found (if at all) is that of a library technician. I attended a meeting this week of librarians, looking to build community and connection. Out of the group of eight, three were teachers, one had a library technician diploma, and just myself has been working towards becoming a certified teacher librarian. Many expressed that they sort of fell into the job. The culture and climate to who teacher librarians are and what they do feels different here than I imagine it does in BC.  Since the role...

The maps and atlas section of my elementary school collection is one that is in need of a review and refresh. The section is small, with five items in total. The average age of publication date is 2005.  Although Rieldling writes that “age need not be the primary criterion when weeding geographical material,” (p. 76) I believe it is important to have some current material in the print collection to balance some of the older resources. To begin this analysis, I’ve included a brief snapshot of the atlas reference collection as a whole to better understand the larger context. From here, I’ll move into the exploration of the resource, Usborne’s Essential Atlas of the World before finally looking at some potential replacement resources.   Collection Snapshot  The stats from above indicate that atlases are not signed out regularly. I am left wondering if this is because students and teachers are not aware they are part of the collection, if it is because they a...