Final Thoughts

Information services--what a vast topic! Although at times I felt overwhelmed by the seemingly innumerable reference resources available online, this course introduced me to several excellent free sites, including ipl2 and National Geographic's MapMaker Interactive, and provided me with additional tools for evaluating online reference sources.

I also now have a better idea of what types of print reference sources should be part of a collection (depending on the school, of course), and I have Katz's and Riedling's criteria for evaluating potential purchases.

At the beginning of the course, I felt that I should be using and promoting more online references sources, not only the online encyclopedias and databases purchased by our school district, but also new websites I was discovering. Part of this feeling came from a push within our local teacher-librarian association to increase schools' use of new products, such as World Book Kids and World Book Discover, and part came from my enrollment in this course, which addresses reference services in K-12 schools. As a secondary-trained teacher new to library and to primary and intermediate students, I was too ambitious. I was relieved to see Anne's comment in response to a previous post: "Looks like you need to be building subject directed web pathfinders to augment the non-fiction books that your colleagues already like. In a K-5 setting, there is nothing wrong with kids using books - a lot!" I was also reminded, after reading about CBAM, that new approaches to instruction take time, and that I would have more success with colleagues (especially those not as comfortable with technology) if I introduced one tool while providing a lot of support, than if I introduced several tools in one year.

Unfortunately, I have been laid off and will not be returning to this elementary school. Fortunately, having completed this course, I feel much more confident about my ability to assess the reference services in a new library, and to supplement the print resources with useful online references sources, particularly if I am placed at a middle or a high school.