How do you solve a problem with users finding what they’re looking for in the digital space?
by Joseph Jeffery
“When I took over in 2020, the pandemic was in full swing. Our physical space was sound, but not being used due to curtailments on gathering. We had thousands of beautiful kits filled with learning materials that weren’t able to move because there was uncertainty over whether COVID-19 transmitted on surfaces. The virtual space was suddenly a much more important part. All that groundwork that had been done paid off, yet it wasn’t set up for so much of our work to move online.” ( Joseph Jeffrey).This paper outlines the transformational journey for a District Learning Commons leader in Prince George B.C. when pandemic realities hit.
Joseph Jeffery is the District Learning Commons Teacher-Librarian in School District 57 - Prince George, BC where he supports teacher-librarians in creating and maintaining information literacy rich library learning commons programming, designing participatory and flexible learning spaces, and developing culturally responsive library learning commons. Beyond teacher-librarians, he is in charge of digital resource acquisition and training for all teachers, as well as building and advertising the many physical kits and novel sets housed in the District Learning Commons. Outside of school, Joseph is an avid gamer of all types from card to tabletop to video games and enjoys being transported to imaginative worlds of science fiction and fantasy as a reader.
I am so impressed by how you used the pandemic's negative effects on LLCs as a springboard for positive change. We struggle with convincing staff to use our online resources here and I think you hit the nail on the head - it relates to ease of use. There needs to be as few clicks as possible, and as much information available as possible to ensure continued use. I am also very interested in the system you set up for lit circle menus - this is so innovative! Do you have students accessing your VLC as well, or just staff? What do they think of the changes?
ReplyDeleteWe do not have a lot of students accessing the main VLC.
DeleteWe have links that take them to specific parts - E-Resources and the Enterprise Catalog search. The rest of the site is more oriented to adults. HOWEVER, every school does have it's own Virtual Learning Commons. We looked at shared platform and had some issues, so everyone in Elementary is on their own platforms (usually Wix or Weebly) and all the high schools use LibGuides as a shared platform.
I have a background in Computer Science and Web Design, which makes for a different skill set to many TLs. We have a lot of accomplished web folks in our district who learned as they went and are far better at the aesthetics, but being able to hand code solutions does mean we can do neat things, but again, isn't necessarily something we can support after I go.
I appreciate how a primary goal was to make the search process more successful for teachers. When we don’t spend everyday with a library management system (as TLs do) it’s easy to forget the nuances and tricks. Creating positive interactions between teachers and the LLC/ resources is critical. The less cluttered look is ways a win, too!
ReplyDeleteJust a friendly reminder to identify yourself when commenting.
DeleteI think that as the primary distributor of learning resources for the district we always try and come at things from a teacher lens. At least, that's how it has always been in my experience. I had it drilled into me as a TL that it was important to get teachers to connect and help them rather than doing the ordering for them as it build engagement.
DeleteSo when the pandemic hit I was coming from that mind set. I think if we had not been so driven by teachers as patrons, this wouldn't have happened in the same way.
Sorry!
DeleteThat was me, before I figured out that we had to change our names.
Joseph,
ReplyDeleteSome of my favourite quotes from your paper include:
- "The pandemic did not lessen our commitment to Truth and Reconciliation." > great point and I liked that it inspired you to get resources that used APTN frequently
- "giant-web-store-that-shall-not-be-named" > thank you for not naming them! They already get too much publicity as it is, even in the disguise of "news" (their sale does not count as current events!)
- "We trialed removing different sections from view and saw quick responses for some disappearing and crickets for others. This gave us an immediate sense of what was being used and what was not as we lacked analytics to know what parts of the site were being clicked on. " (page 6) > That's a creative way of immediately knowing what's working, bravo to you and your team!
Diana M
Thanks Diana!
ReplyDeleteWe are proud supporters of local bookstores in our district. We do use Saunders, CrossCan, United Library Services, Strong Nations, TinLids and other Canadian book sellers, but we also do a lot with our local store. Yes things can be got cheaper on The Big Ones store, but it doesn't keep jobs local, it doesn't come with them helping us with author visits or promoting local authors, or any of the myriad things we get from our local store.
Finding good e-resources is a challenge, I don't think we would have been able to find how amazing Can-Core was if we didn't get to use it for so long. 30 day trials are okay, but they don't let you see as much as we got to during the pandemic when things were opened up for use for months AND our teachers had to use them by necessity. It was a terrible time, but also has opened new avenues.
Fantabuous!!!!! What you are learning is of international importance.I would encourage you to probe the idea of a conversational OPAC among both staff and students. It is another step toward school wide learning commons and embedded teacherlibrarians. Keep us posted!
ReplyDeleteDefinitely going to explore conversational OPACs. That's something I would love to get to. There's conversational features built into Libguides, the platform that our high schools and district learning commons utilize, that I have always wanted to explore and not figured out how to do it.
DeleteGreat initiative, Joseph. With my intense involvement in the multi-sector Ontario Library Association, for many years I felt like I had a great opportunity to learn from other library sectors. Website usability has been a major concern in other sectors - indeed there are whole professional library positions dedicated to the concept. Where I could, I have tried to apply usability principles myself. I love David's comment about the conversational OPAC, too - another frontier for fostering collaborative learning and conversation.
ReplyDeleteProblems do present opportunities! Looking forward to continued reporting on your initiatives. Love the menus for Literature circles.
ReplyDeleteJoseph I so appreciate how a crisis can be a catalyst for the role of digital spaces. I would love to hear your opinions of my paper from 2017 https://researcharchive.canadianschoollibraries.ca/2017/11/21/school-libraries-and-elearning-answering-the-call-for-access-and-equity/ which had, I think, similar intentions to yours in terms of access and equity. I was voluntold to manage ebooks for our remote secondary school students over the last 2 years but had no capability of developing the interface as I was also teaching full-time English online. I simply dropped the book into Overdrive on each student's shelf and they read from there. Many students had to read an ebook for the first time and this newness was at first an additional barrier. Lots of adult assumptions needed to be massaged as well -- why doesn't an ebook just read to the students aloud if they want to? What do you mean it expires after 26 reads or a year? The cost was almost insurmountable at first but I held my ground. We did try literature circles in my classes with enormous success -- some of my students saying that this was the first book they've ever liked....because all the others were chosen for them. I managed to gently nudge our emergency teachers away from the stale (if not irrelevant) canonical texts they were comfortable with, and adopt at least new whole class texts but still wrestled with breadth of diverse voices. I know that we would fail our diversity audit and that having a meaningful embedded librarian would have made all the difference -- but that is not this story. Thank you for provoking such a meditative moment for me and for allowing me to unpack it here. I hope to hear more from you.
ReplyDeleteAlanna, I so love that you used this opportunity to move some teachers away from "stale, canonical texts". From crisis to invention! You also encountered so many of the barriers that libraries face with ebook licensing. But what I REALLY love about what you say is the concept of the embedded librarian. Back when I was actually employed, I tried very hard to have an embedded librarian role included in the board's e-Learning environment. Unsuccessful, but at least got the virtual library that we had created embedded.
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