The Link - Summer 1998

There is a very interesting program on offer for librarians and teachers alike at the ECIS Annual General Conference in Hamburg, Germany. Many of you may already have seen the preliminary program on your faculty bulletin board or downloaded it from the ECIS Web site at www.ecis.org. The committee decided to gear the library/information service offerings in Hamburg toward the theme of "The Role of the Book in the Electronic Age," and invited speakers have been asked keep this in mind when preparing their presentations.

Once again the Libraries Forum is scheduled during Friday of the conference, when an entire block of library sessions has been scheduled back-to-back. During this afternoon of sessions you will have the great opportunity to hear Karen Coyle (IT Manager, University of California Digital Library) speak on the place of the Internet and libraries. Later in the conference program she will be looking at the question of universal access and ownership rights of information retrieved from the Internet. For those of you who feel more at home with the good, old-fashioned book, Laurence Anholt (noted British children's illustrator and author) will speak on the place of children's stories in today's technological world.

The committee has changed the format of the Libraries Forum slightly to allow more time for social contact during the conference day with a lunch sponsored by Follett. Friday's Libraries Forum will conclude with the Open Business Meeting, at which time we will be looking forward to taking nominations for a committee member vacancy (see below).

In other parts of the program, we also look forward to notable contributions from Carol Gordon, Director of Information Services, Frankfurt International School and Barb Bumgardener, University of Seattle.

As there is the lunchtime spot this year, an informal evening Librarians' dinner (remember the India Palace last year?) has not been planned, therefore giving conference participants more unscheduled time to try perhaps a genuine pils at a Hamburg Kneipe or Kaffee und Kuchen at a German Konditorei.

This is just of sampling of the highlights at the Annual General Conference in Hamburg -- there are many more sessions in other interest areas which will appeal to librarians as well. Check out the preliminary program and start planning your conference experience in Hamburg now!

There's More on This Year's Conference Plate Than Just Hamburg!

There are two exciting ECIS events in store for librarians during this academic year: The Annual General Conference in Hamburg and a special subject conference in Belgium! Both are unique and will feature different speakers and a different approach to professional development. We hope that it doesn't have to come down to a choice between the two. Start pleading now with your administrator to go to both.

The second event will be billed as "International School Libraries: Beyond the Year 2000." This three year event is planned by and for librarian/media specialists and will consist of a whole weekend of activities, emphasizing workshop style sessions, where practical hands-on tips will be shared among our community of librarians/media specialists. Details on this conference which is scheduled in the spring of 1999 in Waterloo, Belgium, can be found on the following page.

ECIS Committee Membership - How to Apply

Would you like to contribute to the ECIS Committee on Libraries and Information Services? Would you like to lend a supportive voice to your international colleagues but have been too shy to ask? Are you an elementary/primary school library worker? Please consider joining the committee this year. You do not have to make speeches or be a fount of all knowledge, but should be willing to add your invaluable experience and cooperative spirit to the committee. The term of service is two years so it is easier for your school administration to budget for your attendance at the relevant conferences. However, you must be at the ECIS Conference in Hamburg in person and attend the Open Business Meeting of the Library & Information Services Committee. For further information, please contact Vivienne Locke, committee chair, e-mail: vlocke@dds.nl or by phone: 31 70 3281450 or fax: 31 70 3282049 at The International School of The Hague.

IASL in Israel

The persistent ringing of cellular phones, state of the art universities, and multi-lane highways are among the memories of a summer visit to Israel to attend the annual conference of the International Association of School Librarianship, July 5-10, 1998. The Holy Land is definitely not a museum buried in time, but a bustling, modern,

traffic-filled place. While some conference attendees made time to view the Dead Sea Scrolls in Jerusalem, presentations at the university conference venue always emphasized a thoroughly modern approach to school librarianship. Presenters included Robert Berkowitz (of Big 6 fame), Ken Haycock, and many other names known in school librarianship. Participants hailed from 25 different nations.

International in perspective, IASL offers a golden opportunity for international school librarians. There's more than just the annual conference -- there's a host of professional publications, a listserv for members, and a newsletter. If you would like more information on IASL, contact Rick Barter at rick@idecnet.com or check out the homepage of IASL on www.rhi.hi.is/~anne/iasl.html.

"International School Libraries: Beyond the Year 2000"

Hosted by St. John's International School, Waterloo, Belgium 14-16 May 1999

The constantly changing world of information presents the librarian/media specialist with the new challenges which require innovative solutions. On the eve of the new millennium, this conference will provide useful seminars dealing with specific aspects of this technological change, as well as address some of the traditional issues which are constant in librarianship.

Our invited speakers are James Herring (Queen Margaret College, Edinburgh, UK) and Ann Riedling (Spalding University, USA). A host of seminars led by our invited speakers as well as expert librarians from ECIS schools will cover a variety of topics including:

The conference will be hosted by St. John's International School, Waterloo, Belgium (Please note that this represents a change from previous publicity). Waterloo is located eighteen kilometers south of Brussels. Brussels, known as "the capital of Europe," is centrally located with excellent traffic connections to all the major European cities. High speed train links from London and Paris have their terminus in Brussels, and there is frequent service from other points as well. The airport has a direct rail link to Brussels Central with hourly connections to Waterloo.

Every effort has been made to keep costs low, in order to attract the largest possible number of participants. Program details and registration/accommodation information will be provided on the official conference web site at www.stjohns.be/library/libconf.htm . This internet address will serve as the primary source of information for conference participants as the program develops and additional information becomes available. For those who do not have reliable access to the Internet, please complete the information request below and mail, fax or e-mail to:

Ken Vesey, Librarian
St. John's International School
146 dreve Richelle
1410 Waterloo (Belgium)
fax: (32) (2) 352.06.20
kenneth.vesey@ping.be

Libraries Take Cue from Megabookstores

Megabookstores such as Borders and Barnes & Noble have been one of America's major retailing success stories in recent years. Just a decade ago unimaginative chain booksellers were flogging trashy novels, videos, calendars -- almost anything but good books it seemed. Now these newcomers to the field have reinvented themselves in the style of attractive old-fashioned libraries with extensive stocks, oak shelving, and comfortable seating.

The counter-reformation is now underway. Libraries have taken notice and are beginning to take some good advice from their profit-making counterparts. One new suburban public library in a major US metropolitan area sent their staff to Borders during the planning stages of their new facility. Now the new branch has incorporated illuminated shelving, neon signage, attractive displays, plastic "shopping" baskets, and even a corner for gourmet coffee! The patrons love it.

We librarians shouldn't be afraid to market ourselves. If bookstores can learn from us, then we can certainly learn from them!

Focus on Internet Search Engines

Librarians are quick to see the similarities between their own library's subject catalog and those clever little devices on the Internet called search engines or subject trees. We like the intuitive classifications used by such hierarchical listings as Yahoo!, and appreciate the flexibility that engines such as Alta Vista give us with Boolean combination key word searching. But are we really getting all that we think we're getting? A recent article written for the European (Simon Reeve, "Extra Poke for Search Engines", 31 August 1998, p. 30) indicates that major search engines index only a fraction of the available information on the Internet. The author quotes a Princeton study in which the performance of six major search engines was studied. It was found that the best performing search engine in the study, HotBot, indexed only 34% of the available information on the Internet, Alta Vista 28%, Northern Light 20%, Excite 14%, and Lycos 3%. Directories such as Yahoo! performed even worse, since they depend on a human indexer to classify web sites.

What does this mean for librarians? Well, one obvious answer is not to depend on one search engine exclusively. Recommend that students approach Internet research by submitting the same research request to several search engines and choose the best information from duplicate searches. Also, why not try meta-search engines? These are essentially all-in-one search engines which will submit a request to several search engines simultaneously, frequently merging and ranking the hits on a single results screen.

It is doubtful that indexers (even robot indexers) will ever catch up with the cataloger's backlog that exists on the Internet. It is essential that we librarians teach our patrons both the benefits and shortcomings of the Internet, and suggest suitable strategies for teasing out the best information the net has to offer.

Wired Librarians

Last year I asked readers of The Link to send me their e-mail addresses in an initial attempt to create an electronic directory of international school librarians. Many did so, and during the course of the school year participated in a mini-listserv, sharing advice and information periodically with each other.

I'd like to continue this effort by asking for e-mail addresses of readers who have not yet sent in their information. Also, I suspect there have been some changes since last year. If your e-mail is different, please send me news of the change. I, for one, have changed mine to what I hope will be a more reliable electronic contact address (after a multitude of problems with the school address last year). Please make note of it at the end of this newsletter.

People & Places

Carol Gordon is on leave of absence from Frankfurt International School. She, no doubt, will have a busy schedule as a consultant and plans to make frequent conference appearances. Chris Siegfried retired in June from the American School in London. We wish her and her husband all the best in their retirement. Carrie O'Brien has assumed the position of Upper School Librarian at the American International School of Luxembourg. We wish her the best of luck with her new responsibilities.

The recipient of this year's ECIS/Winnebago Progressive School Library Media Award is Susan Lissim, Librarian at The Dwight School, New York. Congratulations. We look forward to meeting you in Hamburg, at which time the award will be presented. The committee hopes that many more of you will take the time to enter this and other awards in the coming year. It is always worth entering -- you never know when YOU could be successful!

Point Counterpoint: Librarian, Media Specialist, or Cybrarian --
Does it matter what we call ourselves?

Librarians in educational institutions have forever been trying to distance themselves from what they consider the stuffy image of "librarian" by taking on the title of first "media specialist" then "information specialist" and now "cybrarian!" (What a concept!)

In contemplating what school librarians should be called and if it makes any difference, I think the most important consideration should be what the young students themselves, the future clientele of our public institutions, envision. This is especially true in view of the fact that as school libraries have vastly improved in their support of the curriculum in the past few decades, the public libraries see less and less of students coming to them for help in their schoolwork. An adult coming into the public library, perhaps for the first time in several years, has only his remembered image of the person who helped him in a similar school situation as his expectation.

At the same time, public librarianship, of necessity, offers a wider and more general breadth of services than does the more curriculum attuned library attached to a school. Certainly the public librarian needs to be familiar with the various kinds of media and what satisfies the needs of various age groups, and certainly the public librarian currently needs to be savvy in providing information by means of the latest technological advances. The changes in these fields will surely continue after the student graduates, and he has a right to expect his new provider to be conversant with the very latest sources for information. At the same time the public library places an equal amount of effort into providing recreational reading, listening, viewing, etc. for the newfound leisure time supposedly resulting from these same technological advances.

It seems to me that it is important that the term that students use to refer to the person who satisfied their informational and occasional recreational reading needs in their school situation, should be applied to the person who takes over these same roles as they enter the work force. And because there are so many different aspects to public library service, not just media or information oriented, the title should be a general one. Perhaps the term "librarian" should be redefined, but for now it seems to be the only one that is broad enough to encompass all the various roles that the public librarian tries to fill.

Lois Claspy
Associate Librarian Emeritus
Cuyahoga County Libraries, Ohio

I am fortunate in writing this opinion for "Point/ Counterpoint" in not having actually seen the "Point" that I'm supposed to be refuting! This might seem to be a handicap, but it actually makes my job here easier. Maybe because there is no disagreement, there can be dialogue. I'm actually sometimes embarrassingly "politically correct," and I honestly believe that people can call themselves whatever they wish. If someone wishes to be a "Media Specialist", that's what I'll call them. Ditto for a "Cybrarian." I, on the other hand, have always been proud to call myself a "Librarian." Sure the profession has moved a long way from where it originally started. Surely, as well, we are in a time of enormous change and flux, as digitalized information threatens to swamp us in a flood of bits and bytes. On the other hand, librarianship has always been about the collection, the storage, and the dissemination of knowledge. It could be papyrus scrolls, hand-written illuminated manuscripts, commercially-printed books, or electronically stored and reproduced information. The formats have changed, but the vital role of intermediary between information and users hasn't. I like the term "librarian" because I think it binds us to our historical traditions, to the work of the millions of librarians who came before us -- and to the millions who will come after us. Being a "librarian" is nothing to be ashamed of. Of course, I could be wrong. Perhaps the profession has been fundamentally altered in such a way that a new term is needed (although I should point out that physicians no longer use leeches, but they are still called physicians!) -- but I'll stand my ground and wait and see. As Bill Bryson points out (in his book Mother Tongue): "One of the undoubted virtues of English is that it is a fluid and democratic language in which meanings shift and change in response to the pressures of common usage rather than the dictates of committees. It is a natural process that has been going on for centuries. To interfere with that process is arguably both arrogant and futile...."

Rick Barter
Head Librarian, International College, Beirut
Coordinator for International Schools, IASL

Hosted by St. John's International School, Waterloo, Belgium 14-16 May 1999

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