Lost in the Audience

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              I started my career as a high school English teacher looking to go into Library Services. I am now in an elementary library and absolutely love it. I think I have adapted to the elementary setting and mindset quite well overall. However, introducing online databases to elementary students has tested the very limits of my patience, and judging by my very patient and competent elementary colleagues’ disdain for online research projects, I assume this goes beyond my own lack of abilities to properly communicate with the tiny humans.

               While it would be so much easier to just print off what they need, and pull the books of the shelves, it is more important that students begin to learn online research skills early. This is why I want to make things a bit easier for myself and my colleagues by creating a video tutorial that can be available online so students and parents can access this at home as well. I would like these online tutorials to be useful to a variety of audiences, but I am not sure the best way to go about doing this.

               The main issue I am anticipating is how to get around the most basic step that also seems to be the biggest stumbling block, logging in. Students are automatically logged in to ERAC databases when accessing from school devices, but from home they need the username and password. I would like parents to be able to learn how to use these databases with their children from the posted videos. In the past, I have printed up bookmarks with the websites for access and the user information on them, but they have not been very successful at encouraging use at home. I don’t want to broadcast these access codes on a video, yet I know this will be less valuable for parents because the chances of the bookmark or other paper products making it home are slim.

The other point I am contemplating are what databases to choose that would help the most students, teachers, and parents. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough time to do them all. Though, if they are well received eventually I would like to. Originally I had planned to do three or four short videos on the databases. Upon reflection this may not be the best use of my time. Instead I would like to start with two databases, one for primary and one for intermediate. This way I can see how useful these videos will actually be to students, teachers, and parents and hopefully fine tune them for my future attempts.

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The final video I want to make would not be an ERAC database at all. Rather, I would like to go back to the most basic database in our library, our online catalogue. This tutorial isn't one I had originally thought of, but I feel may be the most beneficial to my school community. By demonstrating in this tutorial how to do the most basic functions of our online catalogue such as performing searches, and placing books on hold I am hoping students can become more independent with these library skills. Providing this online will again reach a wider audience and hopefully encourage students and teachers to utilize our catalogue system more independently and thus more frequently.