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Colleagues:
I wanted to quickly punch in on the magazine discussion:
Certainly, I've seen the role of periodicals shift over the past 15
years. Obviously, we no longer need to rely upon an in-house collection
as our main base for research fodder as full-text databases keep us much
better covered than would have ever been possible back in the print-only
day.
Our magazine collection remains vital to us though, just in different
ways. We've shifted a good portion of our magazines toward popular
pastime sorts of titles as well as comics and manga and that's been very
positive for business. There's always demand for new subscriptions.
My main point, though, is that I still have a well stocked, old-school
periodical room--collapsible shelving and all--and I have, in fact,
rediscovered the value of having access to original hard copies in the
past few years. I wouldn't want to lose my magazine storage and am
always disappointed when I see new school libraries designed without
them.
One of the best benefits of having back-issues quickly accessible is
purely instructional: When you're introducing sources for a research
project, point to a must-have, super-relevant article reprinted in a
database and ask your students if they know where that article came
from. In my experience, this'll puzzle lots of kids; you'll get that
deer-in-the-headlights response, and a few might, despite the fact that
they're staring right at the citation, venture that --duh-- the article
came from the Internet. That's your cue to whip out the original in its
full color, pro-layout, splendor and let the kids see them side by side.
I find that sort of visual info-literacy demonstration to be the only
effective way to make kids aware of the origins of what they're
accessing. I do tons of that when teaching bibliography since
determining the origin of a source is a prerequisite to citing it.
I also have, driven by teacher demand, begun to assemble lots of "packet
projects." This grew organically from research projects I co-taught.
Sometimes, teachers would discover that they, in fact, didn't really
want to spend lots of time on having their kids FIND stuff.
"I just wish I could get my students to read and understand a couple
relevant articles on their assigned topic and then summarize their
discoveries," they'd tell me, "not spend two days pointing and clicking
their way to nowhere."
Comments like these were especially common coming from teachers of
younger classes, so, in response I began assembling folders of topical
information, much of it copied from our magazine collection, and
converting research projects to reading and writing projects.
Unfortunately, teachers LOVED it, and now I'm stuck assembling packets
of informational text on a wide-range of subjects and doing so pretty
often. Seriously, though--if it works for classroom teachers, it works
for me.
The interesting thing is, when stacked side-by-side in a folder, kids'll
chose a copy of an article--or an original bookmarked mag--over a
reprint every time.
One last point: Since I write for publication a little bit, I sometimes
get to see my own stuff in reprinted form. I won't mention any
particular databases, but take it from me: errors in digitizing content
are extremely frequent. My prose is murky enough in an unadulterated
state; toss in a few strings of misscans and it becomes positively
runic.
Jeffrey Hastings
School Librarian
Highlander Way Middle School,
Howell, Michigan.
hastingj@howellschools.com
-----Original Message-----
From: School Library Media & Network Communications
[mailto:LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Steven Patnode
Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2006 9:10 PM
To: LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: Re: [LM_NET] Do we really need magazines?
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I have several years of TIME and Newsweek, but have gotten rid of most
others. I keep these for those times when the technology goes
down, and this year it has been worse than ever. I've had teachers
bringing classes in for research who couldn't get on our databases due
to server crashes, so we've put the kids into the print magazines for
some topics. This helped keep the teachers (social and science) on
schedule. I would be glad to get over the paranoia of technology
going down, but our system just isn't reliable enough at the moment.
So the print magazines will stay until I know I can access information
on our computers at any minute of any day...and I don't expect that
to be a guarantee anytime soon, unfortunately. Be grateful if you
have
reliable technology and expert tech staff that allows you to throw out
print resources...these don't exist everywhere yet.
Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles,
discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things
distinguishes
the strong soul from the weak. Thomas Carlyle
Steve Patnode, MLS
Grades 7-12 SLMS
Chazy Central Rural School
Chazy, NY 12921
sun85@aol.com
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