How do you keep your page?

How do you keep your page?

I cannot stand it when people fold the page to keep where they're up to.

I cannot stand it when my bookmark falls out (or gets pulled out by my cat).

I love my book thong, which is a pretty ribbon that hangs out each end and can stay in my book while I read it. I do have to rearrange it though, and do tend to lose it sometimes. Also, said cat attacks it sometimes if it's moving.

These new Albatros book marks look pretty clever. You don't have to take them out at all the whole time you're reading the book. I wonder if they would actually be as easy to use as they look to be in the video: http://www.indiegogo.com/Albatros-bookmarks-1 

How do you keep your page?

Library challenges

I am not sure if I have mentioned in a previous post, but I have recently started working two days a week in the library of a small school (approx 85 students, four classes). I am learning a lot very quickly, and there are plenty of things I want to change if I can only find the time to do so, and can prevent my day from disappearing with me on the phone to IT with OASIS problems...

My big question at the moment is to do with overdue books. Nearly every student has overdue books. The students of this school are not keen readers, nor keen borrowers in a lot of cases. Many avoid the library at all costs. I am not sure what I should do to encourage them to borrow, and increase the amount of borrowers, but to encourage them to return and respect the books they borrow/have borrowed at the same time.

I am thinking that I will turn it into a bit of a class competition, counting how many borrow each week and displaying the results. I am wondering whether to allow students to borrow but only count that in the tally if they have returned all their overdue books, or to not allow them to borrow at all if they have overdue items.

I will try to decide and get it organised in the next couple of weeks - let me know what you think!

Cutter's objectives of a catalogue, rewritten for today

To enable a person to find a resource of which either:
- the author
- the title
- the subject
is known.

To show what the library has access to
- by a given author
- on a given subject
- in a given text type/format
- in a given series

To assist in the choice of a resource
- as to its edition (bibliographically)
- as to its character (literary or topical)
- as to its reliability

"resource" and "access to" indicate that we are no longer just dealing with print resources, but digital ones, many of which are online.

Based on the objectives by Cutter 1904, p. 12, cited in Hider, 2008, p. 10.

Summarising the quote by Hensen (2001), information is starting to be classified by its content and substance, rather than where it is stored, and this is how it should be. Well, I agree with this to an extent. I think as far as retrieving items there is still a place for sorting by author in regards to fiction items, not just because it works, but because it means if you find one text that you like, you can then immediately find others by the same author. But as far as sorting digital items, it makes sense to do it this way, as it can be retrieved without going somewhere in particular to find it. The way non-fiction print texts are currently classified (Dewey Decimal system) does this to an extent, but each item has to be allocated to one particular section, even if it has elements that fit within others (although it must be noted, other elements of the text can still come up in the search). Digital resources do not have this problem. I do believe that we have done the best we can with the things we have over the years, and this method of classification would not have been viable before the digital age.

References:

Steven L. Hensen … in a post to the Diglib online discussion list. Quote of the Month, American Libraries, 32 (1, Jan 2001): 86.

Hider, P (with Harvey, R) 2008, Organising knowledge in a global society, rev. edn. Wagga Wagga, NSW: Centre for Information Studies.

'Why the Net Matters'

Still slowly working my way through the first module for ETL523...

The video of the presentation on this website is interesting (though long). It discusses how the presenter, David Eagleman, thinks the Internet will save our civilisation - he gives six reasons why.

The video embedded at the bottom of the page (and below in this blog post) shows the potential for interactive books. This is one he has written just for the iPad, looking at the same topic - 'how the Internet will save civilisation'.

I think it is a very clever concept, and look forward to seeing this sort of thing as resources in schools in the long term, but I do hope that children continue to be able to be entertained purely by the written word and their imagination... I hope that our future generations are able to problem solve, and use their imaginations, and do not solely rely on technology for amusement.

Do check it out, and see what you think: