•Media+Specialist+as+an+Information+Specialist

Media Specialist as an Information Specialist


__Completely Process 15 Print and Non-Print Items __ On Monday, October 5, 2009, I visited High Shoals Elementary School’s media center. Nancy Miller is the media specialists for HSES, and she has been an excellent teacher throughout my program.

Under her supervision I had the opportunity to process and catalog approximately 75 books and non-print materials. I was a little worried about my accuracy at first, but I soon realized that HSES uses the same program as my home school – Destiny. Destiny made the process so easy! The search procedures were simple, and the process of “adding new copies” was a cinch. I then created spine labels for the materials and placed a pre-printed barcode on each piece of cataloged material.

The large number of cataloged items was primarily due to the fact that HSES had recently sponsored a book fair. 

__Evaluating the Reference Collection __

Before evaluating a section of the reference collection, I spoke with the HMMS media specialist in order to get her input on the area in need. Ms. Conley stated that her budget has been frozen, but that she luckily is able to use her profits from this year’s book fair in order to purchase supplemental materials. After purchasing books from Scholastic, $949 was left. Since this is the size budget the media specialist currently has access to, I have decided to take these funds and use them as a guide to purchasing book for the reference section.

I also had a chance to speak with Ms. Conley about needs in the reference section. Being a middle school, we do have a small reference section, so there is definitely room to add to the collection. Ms. Conley quickly stated that the social studies collection needs to be increased, and that that would be the area she would add to if given the opportunity.

I took the remainder of my time and looked through the section. Ms. Conley said that she could print a report that listed the resources in the section; however, I chose to sit down and look through the materials first-hand.

I discovered that most of the resources covered American and Georgia history. The following list is a breakdown of the available materials/topics:
 * 1) Britannica: 15th Edition (2005)
 * 2) The World Almanac & Book of Facts (2006)
 * 3) The World Book Encyclopedia (2005)
 * 4) Compton's by Encyclopedia Britanica
 * 5) People of the Ancient World ~ 8 Volumes
 * 6) American History - 6 Resources
 * 7) Flags - 1 Resource
 * 8) Presidents - 1 Resource
 * 9) Ancient Maya - 1 Resource
 * 10) Ancient Aztecs - 1 Resource
 * 11) Native Americans - 1 Resource
 * 12) India - 1 Resource
 * 13) Vikings - 1 Resource
 * 14) WWII - 10 Resources

After reviewing the Georgia Performance Standards for grades sixth through eighth, I developed the following order of materials to be added to the reference collection:



I also developed an annotated wiki of websites to supplement the reference collection:

Annotated Wiki

__Complete the Inventory for One Section of the Media Center __
 * November 10, 2009**

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I had the opportunity to inventory the language section (400s) of the Haymon-Morris Middle School Media Center. In order to complete the inventory I used a Falcon Scanner. The Falcon Scanner allows users to scan the barcode on each book. The barcode information is then uploaded to Destiny, the circulation software used by Haymon-Morris. ======

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The scanner was very user-friendly, and the inventory process was competed in no-time. Once I finished scanning the language section, the media specialists showed me how to connect the Falcon Scanner to a computer in order to begin the uploading process. Once the information was uploaded, we examined the data and found that the section was complete with no missing records ======



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After I completed this task, I interviewed the media specialist about the usefulness of completing inventory each year. She finds it to be very useful because it gives you an accurate account of what your media center offers. She also barcodes and inventories items other than books – she has found it to be very useful to barcode computers, televisions, carts, and teacher materials. This also allows her to quickly find materials. ====== 

__Weed One Section of the Collection __ I had previously spoken to Mrs. Conley about weeding a section of the media center, and she suggested weeding the science section – the 500 section. She suggested the 500 section because science often changes – new discoveries are made all the time and previously published information quickly becomes outdated.
 * November 5, 2009**

I mistakenly thought that this would be an easy task – maybe I could do it during my planning time…I quickly found out otherwise. Mrs. Conley suggested that I remove books that are tattered and/or have a copyright right older than 2000. She said that we needed to go back at least 8 years since her budget did not allow the purchase of new books at this time. Two hours later, I had finally finished checking the copyrights of each book in the 500 section. Several times the copyright was buried in the back pages of books. I removed 44 books from the shelves. Tomorrow Mrs. Conley and I will examine each book and decide if they can be returned for student use or if they need to be retired.

Today I returned to the media center in order to review the weeded books with Mrs. Conley. Of the 44 books I pulled with the copyright date pre-2000, Mrs. Conley chose to weed 3 books. Two books focused on Pluto. Since Pluto is now classified as a planetoid, we needed to remove books that provided information in regards to it being a planet. Mrs. Conley also removed a book that discussed inventions. Although the book is still accurate, it had begun to yellow and other books in the collection will be able to meet student needs. The HMMS media center is only entering its fifth year. Based on this information, I was not surprised that we weeded so few books. The 500 section is also typically used for research; since students are not carrying the books around like they would non-fiction novels, their wear and tear is limited. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">
 * November 6, 2009**

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