Reflection - The Future - ETL 505

As we move further into the digital age, with an ever increasing amount of digital resources to sift through and search engines to navigate, the need for organising information effectively and efficiently has become extremely important. As students rely more heavily on the Internet to find their information 24/7 we, as Teacher Librarians (TL's), need to be constantly mindful of the way we describe and organise our collections to ensure that they are easily accessible and user friendly. This accessibility relies, to a large extent on an effective, consistent Library catalogue. According to the Standards of Professional Excellence for Teacher Librarians (ASLA, 2004), TL's must have a comprehensive understanding of national standards for information retrieval. We must be able to teach our students and colleagues how to access the information that they seek successfully and quickly, not just on the Internet but through our school's OPAC.

Metadata, according to Hider (2012, p. 6) supports the effective access to information resources by identifying resources, grouping resources together, and helping the user determine if that resource can and should be obtained. O'Connell (2013, p. 4) notes that Resource Description Access (RDA), the International cataloguing standard implemented in 2013, "is the new standard for metadata description of resources". She goes on to explain that the power of the RDA comes from the fact that it takes into account the Functional Requirements of Bibliographic Records user tasks find, identify, select and obtain and the Functional Requirements for Authority Data user needs of find, identify, contextualise and justify. These models focus on the user and their needs as the starting points. For our students, we need to ensure that our metadata, its elements, values, format and transmission are managed with what works best for them. There are many questions surrounding RDA, its implementation and its future success. As more and more libraries begin to use it, it will be interesting to see the research that is carried out, especially in regards to Bibliographic control.

But how will metadata be used for information retrieval in the future?  What will description and organisation of resources look like in the future in school libraries? Are we heading down the track more towards digital libraries and what does that mean for our students? Budgets may be shrinking, library facilities may be changing but one thing is clear, information is a necessity in the school environment and so it is up to us, the TL to ensure that we provide our students with the skills they need to navigate, find, assess and use information responsibly. After all, providing the lifelong learner with information is what we do.
 


Australian School Library Association (2004). Standards of Professional Excellence for Teacher Librarians. Retrieved from http://www.asla.org.au/policy/standards.aspx

Hider, P. (2012). Information Resource Description: Creating and managing metadata. London: Facet Publishing.

International Federation of Library Associations (1998). Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records. Retrieved from http://www.ifla.org/files/assets/cataloguing/frbr/frbr_2008.pdf

O'Connell, J. (2013). RDA for school libraries: the next generation in cataloguing. Retrieved from http://heyjude.files.wordpress.com/2006/06/jocrdasept2103.pdf