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Stephanie
Tyson
Hello, I'm Stephanie.
My passion is public libraries.
Goal 2: Systems & services
Students understand the systems and technologies that facilitate the management and use of information resources to serve the diverse needs of users.
II.a Students identify and analyze diverse information needs of individuals and communities.
For this assignment, we were to come up with a fictional community (which could be based on a real one), and create a survey for the patrons, as well as create statistics for responses from that survey. This became the basis of our next assignment, the Collection Development Plan. This was a very difficult assignment in that coming up with fake statistics proved harder than I thought. It probably would have been much easier to pull real statistics from one of our libraries (of comparable size), and base it on that.
While this is a research plan, the main focus of it is examining a specific population, and determining how/if the library can offer programs to meet its needs. In this project, the specific population is persons experiencing homelessness, and the problem is to determine if mental health resources would be used by that segment of the population. Though the research is never completed, the project still gives insight into the process of researching what other institutions are doing, devising a means of assessing needs, and the follow-through of actual assessment.
II.b. Students evaluate and select print and digital information resources and systems to meet needs of users.
Essentially, this artifact meets the SLO perfectly. In order to best answer a patron’s questions, one must be familiar with the resources at hand - books, databases, etc and know where best to look for the answers. Sometimes, that means evaluating resources as you are doing your research. Not only does this help with future sources, but it also helps with selecting new sources in the future. If you are familiar with what you have at hand, you can diversify new resources as you acquire them, or know when information is outdated and needs to be weeded.
The basis of the project is looking at the needs assessment (the previous assignment), and creating a collection development plan, an action plan, and then actually selecting materials to be ordered. We had to come up with criteria for selection, and then find materials that meet that criteria. Not only that, but we had a set budget we had to work with. For me, it was different working within the confines of a policy. For whatever reason, when I previously did materials selection, I essentially had carte blanche on what I wanted to order.