SJSU Library Resources for Education

An Immodest Proposal

2011-11-20T19:11:00.000-08:00

Does anyone remember what happened to summer? Or September for that matter? Your Bookcharmer zoomed through Fall Semester with few spare moments. It is true that whatever spare moments that happened were snapped up with a new bit of digital wizardry. Yes, I joined Twitter. If you'd like to see what I say in 140 words or less, I'm @Bookcharmer on that service. I caution you, it is an addictive little website, one that constantly updates, presenting your computer or phone screen with tidbits of info, links to larger sites, photos from all over the world.

Meanwhile, whilst my personal libraries, home and work, are in disarray from the usual daily discombobulations, I have no trouble listing the books I'd like to add to my personal haul! I am motivated to be immodest in listing my desires, because a very good cause might benefit! One of my favorite publishers, San Francisco's own Chronicle Books, if offering a generous giveaway:

http://www.chroniclebooks.com/happyhaulidays

So, if I'm reading the page correctly, I list 500 dollars worth of Chronicle titles I would like to have; I entice people to read my blog and comment on this post, enabling said lucky reader to also get the haul from Chronicle, AND a charity I designate gets the loot as well!

So, let's make ourselves winners! The charity I would support is the much deserving Partners In Reading at the San Jose Public Library, a fine organization that is in fact holding a book drive for its learners.

One of the hallmarks of my childhood memories is that books were like air in my home, they were everywhere. Parents who unstintingly read to me and my sister and gave us that intangible and miraculous gift: a love of reading. We had books at home, at school, at the library. We talked about books and went to places we had read about. I don't like to imagine a home without books, or try to imagine a life where books are an unaffordable luxury, but that is the reality for many.

Have a look at the Partners in Reading website to learn more about this organization: http://www.sjpl.org/par

Now, let's get serious about winning me, you, and PAR a fine load of books!

1. PANTONE: The 20th Century in Color. Leatrice Eiseman and Keith Recker. 2011
ISBN 9780811877565. $40 I'm certainly more aware of the powers of color lately, and even more interested in how people have used and perceived color at different points in time. Will this tome pantone for Harvest Gold?

2. The Art of Instruction: Vintage Educational Charts from the 19th and 20th Centuries. Katrien Van der Schueren. 2011. ISBN 9781452101118 35.00
Doesn't this sound interesting? Reproductions of 100 vintage posters? Yes, please!

3. Practice Makes Perfect: Sketching and Drawing. Matt Pagett. 2011. ISBN 9780811877527 25.95. Oh, how I would love to be able to draw. I never got past learning more than the few scribbly figures I was able to master. Even casual doodlers, I envy. Could this be the text that teaches me how to capture shapes and scenes?

4. The Book as Art: Artists' Books from the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Krystyna Wasserman. 2011. ISBN 9781568989921 $34.95
This is not simply recreational, this would count as professional reading, as my very next conference is the College Book Arts Association in January. How could I present myself there without being well acquainted with this title?

5. 1000 Designs for the Garden And Where to Find Them. Geraldine and Ian Rudge. 2011. ISBN 9781856697033 30.00 Now that I have a proper space for gardening, garden information is most welcome. And 1000 designs! At 30 dollars, how much is that for 1000? Let's see, divide by 30, carry the one...yup, a bargain!

6. American Trademarks: A Compendium. Eric Baker,and Tyler Blik. 2010.ISBN 9780811872201 29.95
A combination of whimsy and history, all those trademarks pulled together. Which business will be next to each other? Is it organized chronologically or alphabetically?

7. The Mythic City: Photographs of New York by Samuel H. Gottscho, 1925-1940. Donald Albrecht. 2011. ISBN 9781616890155 29.95
Now, this, this book I would really like to see. 1925-1940 are the years when my research subject, Clara Laughlin, was often in New York, and I always eager for glimpses of her world.

8. New York Changing: Revisiting Berenice Abbott's New York. Douglas Levere. 2004. ISBN 9781568984735 40.00 A perfect companion piece to Gottscho's photos.

9. Denyse Schmidt Quilts. Denyse Schmidt. 2005. ISBN 9780811844420 24.95
My beloved heirloom Singer sewing machine is in fine form these days, so new patterns are always welcome!

10. Amy Butler's In Stitches. Amy Butler. 2006. ISBN 9780811851596 24.95
25 charming projects, could I make them all?

11. Lettering: A Reference Manual of Techniques. Andrew Haslam. 2011. ISBN 9781856696869 50.00
This looks luscious.

12. Bibliographic: 100 Classic Graphic Design Books. Jason Godfrey. 2011. ISBN 9781856697651 29.95
Desirable simply for the title alone! And definitely a title that an Art and Design librarian should know.

13. Mysteries of the Rectangle: Essays on Painting. Siri Hustvedt. 2005. ISBN 9781568985183 24.95
This is the author of the bestselling novel What I Loved, which is currently on the top of my pile of 'to read' books.

14. My final selection: The Ocean at Home: An Illustrated History of the Aquarium. Bernd Brunner. 2005. ISBN 9781568985022 24.95 Now, the online site says the title is not available, so this one is my "bonus" title if I win and I a. didn't do the math right and I was already over the 500 limit or b. someone has to scratch me up a copy. With any luck, I will be the winner and this tome on aquariums will also discuss terrariums.

So, that's my entry! Comment away, readers, so that you might be a lucky winner too!

New SJSU Library Liaisons for Education

2009-06-25T10:14:00.000-07:00

It has been my pleasure to serve as the liaison for Counselor, Special, Elementary and Secondary Education and Child and Adolescent Development. With the fortunate hiring of new talent, these departments have now been reassigned to other colleagues in the library. Please find their contact information below. My efforts will now be focused on serving as the liaison to the School of Art and Design at SJSU. I will now just be updating my personal blog, bookcharmer.blogspot.com and my Art and Design blog, sjsuarlibrarian.blogspot.com.

The liaison for Counselor Education is Bernd Becker. He may be reached at (408) 808-2348 or Bernd.Becker@sjsu.edu.

The liaison for Child and Adolescent Development, Special, Elementary and Secondary Education is Shannon Staley. She may be reached at (408) 808-2349 or Shannon.Staley@sjsu.edu.

Susan Kendall, who is also the Collection Development Coordinator, is back from sabbatical and continues as liaison to Education Leadership. She may be reached at (408) 808-2039 or Susan.Kendall@sjsu.edu

It was my pleasure to work with students and faculty in the College of Education during Academic Year 2008-2009!

Teachers College Record

2009-03-30T15:03:00.000-07:00

The journal Teachers College Record http://www.tcrecord.org/ has a very nice web presence that is useful for topic selection and development. Have a look!

Online access to NCTE publications

2008-09-17T17:46:00.000-07:00

I recently discovered the key to getting to the electronic version of journals from NCTE, the National Council of Teachers of English. These journals are:

Language Arts

English Journal

College English

Research in the Teaching of English

You can access the link to the journals from the library catalog by conducting a title search, or by going to directly to this website: http://www.ncte.org/

When you get to the above site, look in the center of the welcome screen. Beneath a orange box labeled My NCTE, you'll see in grey: Institutional IP Access

Click on those words to access the journals. This link is not very obvious, and since it is in grey, not blue like usual links, I think it is harder to notice.

Encyclopedia of Educational Psychology

2008-09-02T13:39:00.001-07:00

In getting a lesson plan organized for EDED 102, I began where I always begin, the reference collection. In this case, lazy me hasn't yet gone down two floors to the reference section of Education and Psychology, but I am taking advantage of the university library's subscription to the online Encyclopedia of Educational Psychology.

If you want to experience this source, go to the Library Catalog and conduct a title search for Encyclopedia of Educational Psychology and choose the online version.

I decided to start with a browse, since I didn't have a topic in mind yet. I was rewarded with this entry: Private Speech.

In this essay, we find an intriguing bit of information:

"Vygotsky believed that private speech was a qualitatively distinct type of speech directed to the self and provided specific functions to individuals rather than a communicative function with others. This self-talk was a mediational means by which young children are able to collaborate with themselves to solve tasks, motivate themselves toward attaining goals, and regulate their behavior. Vygotsky argued that egocentric speech was actually a tool for thinking and represented the point in development when two functionally separate systems, developing parallel with each other, converge, thus allowing our thought system to become verbal and our speech system to become rational. Vygotsky also believed that this new qualitatively distinct form of speech was essentially overt inner speech. Private speech is the precursor to covert verbal thought and, with time, goes “underground” to form inner speech."

Atencio, David J. "Private Speech." Encyclopedia of Educational Psychology. 2007. SAGE Publications. 2 Sep. 2008. .

Yowza! The concept of "verbal thought" interests me as well. Verbal thought vs inner speech, particularly.

So I say aloud to myself (funny, yes?) how does this aspect of intellectual and language development influence, or should influence, classroom dynamics.

I am further cheered to read, "Although it was once thought that private speech would disappear after the age of 7 or 8, current research on older children and adults has shown that it emerges relative to task demand and individual's need to self-organize and self-direct thoughts, motivations, and actions."

Whew. Kind of a relief to know that "talking it out" is actually a form of problem solving!

State Adopted Texts: a collection and a process

2008-08-12T15:37:00.000-07:00

An important collection here at King Library is the state adopted texts for K-8 instruction.

An inquiry prompted me to look up the current status of the review process for selecting a new set of curricular materials for Language Arts. This led me to a very interesting website detailing the process for how this decision is made. I encourage you to look at this link:

http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/rl/im/rlaeld2008adoptime.asp

In a word, wow. This two year plan for "Reading Language Arts/English Language Development Primary Adoption Timeline adopted by the State Board of Education" is daunting!

Thinking about IL Standards and Assessment (and my ongoing love of refworks)

2008-08-11T11:58:00.000-07:00

You'll often hear me talking about the value of process based assignments, which I define as assignments that give students credit for performing research. Sure, maybe this is like getting credit for doing something one should be doing anyway, but the complexity and intensity research requires deserves credit. I had an "ah ha!" moment of my very own today when getting back into RefWorks and digging into a folder I hadn't worked with in a while, my folder of a short literature review on creating effective test items. One of the citations I had imported now has greater resonance for me as I begin my work as the liaison for four departments in the College of Education:

Development and Validation of the Information Literacy Assessment Scale for Education (ILAS-ED)
Author(s):Beile, Penny
Source:Online Submission, Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (Montreal, Canada, Apr 12, 2005). 26 pp.

The title had me gunning for full text faster than you can say "assessment." I also noticed that wherever I had been when I imported this citation, I hadn't paid attention to the fact that the database had listed the source as "Online Submission" which, using my librarian superpowers, I immediately knew was not a correct title.

Hopping into ERIC, I quickly found this conference paper by Penny Beile is available as a full text pdf in ERIC. Happily, Refworks also allows me to upload a copy of the paper, so I don't fall into the hopeless trap of printing it and then never finding the print out again.

So why is this process based?

1. I reviewed a citation I had gathered previously and found it applicable to ongoing work. Excellent.

2. In chasing down this citation, I also found reference to another article by Beile about her ILAS-ED test instrument, and also I learned about this organization: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE)and this organization: Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education

To my mind, process based research is valuing the learning that happens while the research is happening--process based learning is an essential skill for librarians, as you have to learn how the information tool works to get the most out of that, and to do that, you must learn something from the source at the same time. So in my case, just tracking down this citation has lead me to two professional organizations as well as learning about a researcher who is the expert in developing an instrument for assessing pre-service teachers information literacy skills.

Now for the patience--I've got to get that conference paper from interlibrary loan!

When in doubt, turn to bibliographies!

2008-07-31T10:38:00.000-07:00

While I have some "home-grown" knowledge of education (Mom's an elementary school principal, Dad is a university professor), I need to turn to the professional tools for building knowledge of the literature of the field of education, how it is structured and organized. Of course, I am a long time user of ERIC in its many incarnations, from the print index to CD-ROM and now to web access. But refining my knowledge of the disciplines of education will require some hands on (or screen time) work with bibliographies. I hope by writing about my experiences in using these sources, it will be useful to education students in their journey through learning how to access information in the field.

So, how does one locate the major sources in a field? I will start today with Child and Adolescent Development, as this poses the interdisciplinary challenge. Do I begin with psychology resources, education resources? I chose to begin with education resources, and in seeking to find recent publications addressing the literature, came up with this wonderful resource:

A report from NCATE and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, "Child and Adolescent Development Research and Teacher Education: Evidence-based Pedagogy, Policy, and Practice."

From page 1:

"This report captures only a portion of the discussions and presentations during the two roundtable meetings and reflects merely a starting point for this collaboration. The following are highlighted in this summary:
• The state of practice in teacher education highlighting the ways in which child and adolescent development research is currently integrated into teacher preparation curricula;
• Ongoing investigations of child and adolescent development from selected research studies, and how aspects of these studies may be applicable to teacher preparation;
• Issues and challenges in translating research to practice; and
• Applications and action steps for linking child development research with teacher preparation practices."

All very useful background for me, as I start internalizing the terms and concepts, making mental notes about the two organizations, then I hit the bibliographic jackpot: the survey reported in the study asked respondents to supply answers to this question:

"In your informed opinion, what is the most authoritative text/source which focuses on child/adolescent development"

As the kids say, OMG! Why, expert recommendations on authoratative sources? Yes, please!

Now I have a list to check against the collection, so voila, I'm off to search the catalog...

Here's that link again if you want to see the whole study:

http://www.ncate.org/documents/research/ChildAdolDevTeacherEd.pdf

Research Connections

2008-07-28T16:37:00.000-07:00

This is the inaugeral posting for my new role as librarian for several departments at the College of Education, now that my fine colleague Sue Kendall is assuming the responsibility of serving as the University Library's Collection Development Coordinator. I look forward to meeting and working with the faculty and students in the Connie E. Lurie College of Education!

I'd like to highlight a resource I recently learned about on Child Care and Early Education: Research Connections. Below please find the link and a description from the site:

http://www.childcareresearch.org/discover/index.jsp

What is Research Connections?

Research Connections is a unique resource that promotes high quality research and the use of that research in policymaking. We reach our audience through our web site: www.researchconnections.org.

Through a free, easy to use web site, one can quickly search the full text of thousands of resources relevant to the field of child care and early education. Interactive tools allow users to refine their searches, download full text documents, build customized tables on state policies, compare state demographics, and analyze research data online.

This comprehensive and unbiased collection includes scholarly research, policy briefs, government reports, data, and instruments from a wide range of disciplines and sources, including multiple federal agencies. Research Connections compiles and distributes bibliographies, develops issue briefs, and synthesizes research on key topics.

Research Connections offers public access to child care and early education research data, some of which have never before been publicly available. Researchers can download analysis-ready data directly to their desktop or analyze selected data online free of charge. Data training workshops and an archive for research projects serve the entire field.