Make the web work for you – new VicPLN course

Posted on March 9, 2015 by Linda Angeloni

Many of you are part of the community that has grown out of the VicPLN series of online courses. With your feedback in mind, we’ve created a new course for 2015 which integrates the best of two previous courses into one: Make the web work for you.

Make the web work for you introduces key concepts and skills in digital and information literacy, and models the use of simple and free web tools, enables people to join or create personal learning networks, and encourages everyone to play and explore online. But it’s also designed to give participants the chance to apply their learning to an authentic research task in a guided online learning experience.

The course is designed for people hoping to get more out of the web and build their confidence using technology in the workplace.

This six-unit, self-paced program covers:

advanced searching and information evaluation skills
social media for professional learning
web tools to help find, manage, store and share information
digital publishing including ebooks
online collaboration and networking.

We hope to keep challenging ourselves and our community to think differently about our work, how we learn and share ideas. As part of the work of a new team at the State Library Victoria focusing on learning design, we’ll be beginning to talk more about our professional learning model, Connected Inquiry.

Our new course Make the web work for you is based on the principles of Connected Inquiry, a great deal of thinking, evaluation and research. We’ve tried a few new things, we’ve done in-depth research in partnership with AITSL, and we’ve gathered really helpful feedback from course participants.

So what is Connected Inquiry about? It’s in part a series of principles to help shape professional learning experiences that mirror the best of what we do as educators. Can an after school PD, online course or conference be built on the same principles we would an inquiry project for students – real life applications, personal relevance and curiosity? We think yes and we look forward to sharing our learning with you.

So if you’re interested in the course which begins April 20 or have any questions, you can contact us at learning@slv.vic.gov.au

Make the Web Work for You: an introduction to digital learning for school library teams and educators, 6 units over 8 weeks starting 20 April 2015.

And we’ll continue to be part of your personal learning networks: online, at SLAV conferences, and as part of the professional development program here at the State Library Victoria.

Image credit – State Library Victoria

Congratulations – Dromkeen Librarian’s Award

Posted on November 14, 2014 by SLAV Connects

Congratulations to Melbourne High School Head of Library, Pam Saunders, recipient of the 2014 Dromkeen Librarian’s Award presented at the State Library of Victoria (SLV) on 12 October. The award ‘is presented to a teacher, a teacher librarian or a children’s librarian, working within or outside the education system, in recognition of the important role played by this person in introducing young people to literature and encouraging an enjoyment and love of reading.’ Pam has a long involvement with libraries and adolescent reading having previously worked as a librarian in schools and public libraries, as well as managing the Centre for Youth Literature at the SLV. In her interview with Tania Scheko, teacher librarian, she speaks of the development of her love affair with reading, saying..

I was fortunate to have become a reader on the lap of my father as he read to me. I remember walking as a very young child to the shop to buy the new magazine Playhour and then my father reading it to me, especially the comics. This was further fostered by a dynamic school librarian, Mrs Cecilia Stubbs, who ran the library at Burnie High School in the 1970s. She encouraged students to use the library, to be involved and, best of all, she challenged my reading, pushing me to read titles which I would not have discovered myself. Titles like Black like me by John Griffin. I hope I have emulated her as a librarian.

Pam’s award shines a spotlight on the role of library staff in the development of a culture of reading within the school and individual students. We know that to instil a love of reading is to give a student the passport to seeing the world through a different set of eyes. At the forthcoming School Library Assoc of Victoria (SLAV) conference to be held 21 November, author Leigh Hobbs and others will explore the importance of the school library, and the primary school in particular, in “Building Community Through Reading”. Reading is a skill for life. Congratulations Pam, you and others like you in our libraries are a positive influence on our students’ futures.

The Dromkeen Medal, this year awarded to esteemed editor and publisher, Helen Chamberlin, and Dromkeen Librarian’s Award have a distinguished history of over 32 years, with previous Medal recipients including well-known children’s book illustrators and authors such as Shaun Tan, Bronwyn Bancroft, Roland Harvey, Ruth Park and Graeme Base.

What was there – historical photos and Google Maps

Posted on June 5, 2014 by Linda Angeloni

What was there uses historical images and Google Maps to look at how places have changed overtime. You can add photos to specific locations and then using Google Street View, overlay images from the past and present.

A particularly nice feature of the interface is the option to fade between photographs and the street view image. Anyone over 13 can register with the service and add images, tag by location and year, save locations, and position images to overlay with street view.

There are some great examples of cities that have thousands of photographs pinned to different locations, including New York which has around 2000 images. Closer to home, the Victorian regional town of Bairnsdale has around 60 historical images pinned to shops and community buildings.

With so many cultural institutions digitising collections and making images freely available online, tools like What Was There give students and teachers the opportunity to connect to local history in new ways. The State Library of Victoria has thousands of out of copyright images of regional towns around Victoria that can be used freely for educational purposes.

Imagine students finding images of their town or suburb’s main street a hundred years ago and comparing it to today? Or even their own house or school? Try searching for your town or suburb name in the SLV catalogue and see what you can find.

Ebooks at the State Library of Victoria

Posted on February 14, 2014 by Linda Angeloni

Libraries in all sectors are working to provide access to ebooks. Vicki Nelson, Redmond Barry Collection Librarian at the State Library of Victoria, describes the process from the perspective of a collecting institution with millions of items. She talks about developing processes around acquiring ebooks on a large scale.

The State Library of Victoria (SLV) has been working hard to increase access to our collections so Victorians can use material from anywhere, not just within the building. This in part comes from the ongoing process of digitisation, as over 600 000 heritage pictures, newspapers, manuscripts and out of copyright Victorian books are now available online. We also provide home access to subscription databases for Victorian registered users and have moved many of our print serials online, so ebooks was a logical next step.

Initially we ran an ebook trial in 2012 where patrons selected books for acquisition. The success of this trial fed into a working group which identified suppliers and streamlined selection, acquisition and cataloguing processes. As a result, SLV made ebooks available for general use in July 2013.

We made the decision to use two suppliers as it gave us the opportunity to choose from a greater range of books. SLV currently uses EBL and EBSCOHost as our ebook providers. Both link to our normal overseas book supplier’s selection and acquisition process. Both are for a single user, although EBL does have the flexibility of multiple users viewing the same book at the same time, but limits the overall number of times a book can be looked at in a year.

SLV has chosen wherever possible to purchase rather than rent ebooks, so they are permanently accessible. Of the titles we select, there are still only about 40% of overseas books available to us as ebooks. Australian publishing is even less ebook ready – we purchase books as they are published and the ebook version may not be available for months after this date. At this stage we are not ready to move to an Australian ebook selection process, so we will monitor the Australian situation until there is a change.

One of the main reasons we moved to ebooks was so that we could make them available to our Victorian registered users. Ereaders require you to download free software onto the device but once that is done an ebook can be downloaded and used for up to 7 days. We have created a guide to help new users access ebooks from our collections and there is a link to this on every ebook record in the catalogue.

If you want to find out which ebooks we have available, the quickest way is to search for a topic and add the word ‘ebooks’, eg ‘History ebooks’ and then refine your search using the filters on the left hand side.

You can also filter your search by ‘Genre’ and select ‘Electronic resources’.

Like print books, the general model is one person at a time but this varies depending on where we purchased the ebook. For example, EBL ebooks allow more than one person to access the same item at the same time, but limits the total number of times the ebook can be looked at during the year.

Whatever the number of ebooks in your collection, the process for selecting a provider is the same – trial as many as you can, test the platforms based on your needs and make a checklist of titles you want and see which companies provide them. If you can, test systems with your users and see how books work on their equipment.

Even though ebooks cost more to provide, there are a number of advantages for patrons. Ebooks can be used immediately by users inside your library and from anywhere they have web access. Ebooks are also ready to use as soon as they are purchased without the need for processing or shelving.

SLV has over a million print books and is continuing to add to this collection. Not all books are available as ebooks or on the platforms that the library is using. So at this stage, the State Library of Victoria will continue to be a hybrid library of print and electronic resources.

PLN Plus March 2014

Posted on February 4, 2014 by slvadmin

In March the State Library of Victoria will begin a new kind of PLN program, PLN Plus.

PLN Plus is designed for teacher librarians and educators who want to find out how to effect change in their schools and learning communities. The program will run for four weeks and will involve a group project where participants work with like minded people on a passion project – what is the one thing you would change if you could? It could be a practical endeavour like getting your school blogging, or look beyond to setting up TeachMeet-style programs and community building.

Each week participants will be introduced to relevant new tools and online environments and also have the opportunity to engage with inspiring educators and librarians who have made change happen in their schools and broader communities. We will also discuss theories and research that inform the concept of networked learning and key trends in education looking to the future.

You can register to take part in this course, but numbers are limited. For more information visit the State Library of Victoria website, PLN Plus page.

Welcome 2014

Posted on January 31, 2014 by slvadmin

Hopefully you’ve had a restful and rejuvenating holiday season and are ready for a new cohort of students in your classrooms and libraries.

Here at Bright Ideas we’re looking forward to introducing you to new topics and voices this year to help inspire you and your students as you engage with thinking and technology.

As always, we love to hear your feedback and ideas, so let us know if there’s an issue or subject you’d like us to look into or if you’d like to write something for us.

We’re looking at some fascinating projects in the next few weeks, including details of the upcoming PLN Plus program in March, so stay tuned and welcome back.

Image credit © Red Letter Press

New Libguides from the State Library of Victoria

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Linda Angeloni

Librarians at the State Library of Victoria answer complex reference questions for patrons everyday, whether it be onsite, via email or on the phone.

After years of experience with the questions people bring to the collection, reference librarians have developed over forty library guides looking at specific research topics.

The guides are aimed as a one-stop shop for subjects like bushfires in Victoria, court cases in Australia, early Australian census records and more.

Each libguide gives background information on the topic and the Library’s holdings, key resources and related web links.

Recently published guides include:

And if you’re wondering what a reference librarian at the State Library does when they get an inquiry, here’s a video about the process.

Royal Society for Questions & Curiosity

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Linda Angeloni

The State Library of Victoria celebrates the one hundredth anniversary of the Domed reading room this year.

Along with events and festivities, the Education team has developed a an inquiry unit and series of activities for Early years students. The resources have been developed around the AusVELS and supports the teaching of history.

The resources are accompanied by a delightful video about asking the right questions. How do we find the information we need and still remember to explore and have fun?

The Royal Society for Questions & Curiosity features collection highlights from the Library and is designed as a pre-visit experience for students.

It also stands alone as a great introduction to critical thinking and questioning – core information literacy skills.

Watch the Royal Society for Questions and Curiosity

On my desktop

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Kelly Gardiner

In this series of posts, we ask people about the web tools and apps they use most and why. This week: the State Library of Victoria’s Online Learning Manager Kelly Gardiner, who juggles a part-time job including managing the Personal Learning Network course, plus study and writing days.

Which web tools do you use most?

I move between different computers and devices, like many people, so the tools I use most enable seamless access to my own data and files. They include:

Dropbox – this is now so integrated into my life I don’t even notice it. I store all my active files there and can access them from home or uni, or work on documents on the train.

Evernote – I use it to gather research notes and resources, divided into different notebooks and notebook stacks. Like Dropbox I have it installed on every device I own.

Chrome – We take our browsers for granted, but they are useful tools in themselves. Chrome now synchs bookmarks (so does Firefox) which is a huge breakthrough. I also constantly use the free extensions that enable clipping web articles to Evernote, Bitly for shortening links, Add This for sharing resources to social media, and Nanny for locking myself out of tempting sites like Twitter while I’m trying to write.

What’s your preferred social media network?

Twitter for professional network and a constant stream of resources and information (except during #eurovision). Facebook pages and groups are great for engaging with people, and I use my personal facebook profile for connecting with friends and family. It’s important for me, like educators, to keep a clear distinction between personal and professional profiles and audiences.

I use WordPress for my personal blog and tumblr for shorter-term project-based blogs, partly because it’s so easy to reblog images other people have posted.

And I must admit I adore Pinterest for gathering and sharing resources – it will be very intersting to see how it develops in the coming months.

Hootsuite helps me manage multiple social media profiles across different platforms such as Twitter, facebook, facebook pages. Tweetdeck does the same, but I like how Hootsuite allows me to set up a whole lot of tabs with streams, for the different compartments of my life (eg work, tech updates, conferences, etc). You can save a Twitter list, or a hashtag, or a person’s feed as a stream. You can also schedule posts and retweets which I try to remember to do before I leave home, so as to not to bombard people with ten at once.

What do you do when you arrive at work in the morning?

First, a very strong coffee. I look at Yammer, which we use for internal communications, then my email inbox. I set reminders on emails that I need to follow-up, so if there’s anything that needs attention I see to that.

We use Global2 blogs to run the PLN course, along with a facebook group and Twitter for communication. On the admin side, we use Google Reader to monitor the participants’ blog posts, and we store our shared admin tools and spreadsheets in Google Docs – we’re going to look at using other tools like Edmodo more in future. So if it’s my turn on PLN roster, I log into all of those and get cracking.

I tweet on behalf of the Library as @SLVLearn, so I also check the #VicPLN and #edtech streams early and at intervals through the day. For that, I use Tweetdeck.

Favourite app?

My favourite mobile app is Passwords & PINs because of all these damn web tools and their different log-in requirements.

ebooks at the State Library

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Yen Wong

Yen Wong, Learning Programs Officer at the State Library, explains a new Electronic Book Library service for all registered SLV users.

The State Library of Victoria has recently launched the Electronic Book Library (EBL) pilot to the public. The pilot will give the Library an opportunity to assess which books our users want to read.

This means that you will be able to download an ebook to read on your computer or ebook readers. Any downloads will be for paid by the library, thereby adding them to the Library’s collection.

The EBL collection is available to all Victorian registered SLV card holders. Registration with the State Library of Victoria is free and can be completed online.

Once a book of interest is found, users can browse the book for 5 minutes for free. After that time, the option to download is provided.

Acessing ebooks:

1. From SLV’s homepage go to ‘Research tools‘ (top right corner)

2. Scroll down to eResources and either click from the Library or from home.

3. Select Encyclopaedias & dictionaries & ebooks

4. You will be asked to login with the barcode on your library card.

5. Search away!

You can also read a full guide to getting started with the EBL at the SLV website.

School Library Association of Victoria

Tag Archives: State Library of Victoria