Doug Johnson

Focus on Library Skills
St. Peter School Hilites, Mar 1990

Until recently, the focus of “library skills” has been on just finding information. And it has often been a pretty tedious process:

• learning the card catalog,
• searching the Reader’s Guide,
• figuring out the Dewey Decimal system

And too often the result of the “research” was a hastily scribbled paragraph or two copied directly from an encyclopedia.

But technology is helping change that focus, and the St. Peter school district’s new K-12 library/media skills curriculum reflects some of the new skills today’s information users need.

About a third of the skills and objectives have stayed fairly traditional. Students will still learn how to identify and use parts of a book, how a thesaurus works, the difference between fiction and non-fiction, and how the biographies are arranged on the shelf. These “finding skills” have been expanded to include knowing what a function key on a computer does, how to operate a micro-form reader, and how to access an “on-line” data base.

But even these changes are not as great as those which are being brought about by the “information explosion”. In the past researchers have had a tough time finding enough information to “fill up a term paper.” But now the situation is reversed. By using computerized catlogs, CD-Rom encylopedias, and modems to access the holdings of other libraries, the problem is no longer too little information, but too much.

So the second third of the media skills curriculum outlines the skills students (as life-long learners) will need to have when organizing, analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating information. They will need to be able to ask and answer such questions as: Which medium would better fit my needs, a book or videotape? What do I do when sources disagree about basic facts? How can I limit and organize the material I have to make it fit my purpose? What new conclusions can I draw from putting together ideas from a variety of sources? Exactly what information do I need?

As a result, students instead of writing a report on “bats” or “presidents”, will be using research to answer questions like “Why are bats active at night rather than during the day?” or “What qualities make effective presidents?” Information not just gathered, but processed makes it personal, meaningful, and interesting.

The final third of the curriculum specifies communicaton skills students need to present the information and ideas their research has produced. Again technology requires that students not only write and speak coherently, but be able to preserve their findings using word processers, tape recorders, photography and video productions. Presentations made to their teacher, classmates or community groups help young people realize that the reason we look for information is to explain, persuade and make informed decisions about issues which affect our lives.

The final major change in teaching library/skills is how and when it is done. Imagine teaching a child to play baseball by giving him 15 minutes of batting instruction and a few practice swings when school starts in the fall, and then expecting the child to play a good game when the season begins in the spring. This is how library skills have been traditionally taught. The library/media specialist teaches a skill - like using the index to the encyclopedia - during a weekly “library-time”, but the students may not use that skill to do actual research for months in their regular class.

The state department of education is trying to eliminate this ineffectual practice by mandating that media skills be “integrated” with the classroom curriculum. Integration means the library/media specialist and classroom teacher team-teach units which have both content and media skill objectives. And this has the happy effect of making the subject area content personal and meaningful, and the libarary skill immediately practiced for a purpose.