Media Coordinator Interview for LIB 5050

I interviewed Kathy Moore, librarian at Blowing Rock Elementary School, about her job and her use and experience with technology. She finds that she primarily uses technology to facilitate cataloging, the Follett resources, the school network (including Microsoft products), the internet, and the SmartBoard located in the library. She also uses software for book transactions (circulation). Mrs. Moore finds that she uses the cataloging technology, the internet, and the Microsoft products during her “planning” time, when students are not actively using the library, to aid with locating resources needed for the library (either per a teacher’s request, or to fill needs in the collection) and grant writing. She most often uses the SmartBoard when she is teaching classes or faculty. Some lessons she commonly teaches are on plagiarism, copyright laws, bibliographies, and paraphrasing. Google Earth and maps are other ways that Mrs. Moore uses the SmartBoard to introduce these tools to students for research that supports classroom learning and projects. As a future librarian, I would love to become more adept at using the SmartBoard and tools such as Google Earth to facilitate student learning, both inside the library and at home with their own computers.

One of the ways she finds that students use technology in the library most frequently is through the use of United Streaming, a service paid for through library funds. United Streaming offers students the opportunity to view video clips that pertain to what they are learning in the classroom. Students can use the computer lab located in the library to view the videos, each having his own computer and set of headphones so that the experience is more personal and students are less distracted than they can be watching a video in the classroom on a single television.
Mrs. Moore finds that teachers are most likely to use the technology that she suggests in her regular emails listing new resources that are curriculum based. She often includes web links and new subscriptions to resources that are web based, such as United Streaming and World Book Online. Teachers also make use of audio book talks that Mrs. Moore makes available that are found on various websites, such as audio book talks about some of the Caldecott books. Both of these seem to be tools that I could easily use in my first year of being a librarian; they are already tools that I am familiar with and could provide some professional development opportunities to show teachers how to use audio books in their classrooms, aside from reading along with a text.

Technology has its benefits that far outweigh its drawbacks, Mrs. Moore stated, but she does spend a portion of her day, usually half an hour to an hour, trouble shooting technology for faculty and staff. Often, this is as simple as getting a new cable for a television or hooking up a DVD player, but it is a part of her day that she finds that she can support teachers in other ways besides curricular. Some faculty members want to learn how to fix things, such as broken overhead projectors, while others would rather have someone else do it. She finds this to also be true of circulation in the library. I would like to improve my skills with technology outside of using the computer in order to be able to better help teachers trouble shoot problems as they arise. As a classroom teacher now, I know how frustrating it can be to have a TV that is not working and not be able to find anyone who can help fix it. I would like to be able to train faculty and staff to find solutions to their own technological problems, so that they do not always have to rely on someone else.

Kathy Moore finds the school website to be a tool of value to both faculty and parents and would like to increase the presence of library resources and announcements there. Currently, the library newsletter is found on the website, but there are other resources that could be there as well. I could see the school website being an excellent place to post links to online podcasts, interviews, and audio book talks that would be helpful and interesting sources for students, faculty, and parents. If the school library catalog were online, this would be an excellent place to post that as well.

Perhaps our most interesting area of discussion was surrounding Mrs. Moore’s wish list for the library with regards to technology. She would love to have the school library catalog online so that faculty, students, and parents could access it from outside of the school network. Additionally, she would like to have a new media retrieval system to replace the Ducane system that we currently have, so that teachers could use it all at once for the school news broadcast or other functions. Photoshop is also on her wish list, as it would help her with the photography exploratory course that she teaches for middle school in conjunction with doing the yearbook.

Overall, I learned a great deal from my interview about the daily life of our school librarian. I knew what she did in bits and pieces, but gained a greater insight into what my future career will look like on a daily basis. It made me excited, and somewhat overwhelmed, to think of all of the possibilities for the use of technology within a school media center. Ultimately, I will have to find a balance between my vision for the use of technology in the media center, and what can realistically be accomplished in a day.