When Kadri Tomson started working at the International School of Estonia (ISE) about 12 years ago, the school library didn't even have a card catalog system. Kadri automated the library with Mandarin in 2003, and ISE upgraded to
Mandarin CMS earlier this year, giving their library a digital voice for the digital age.
Kadri started working in early childhood education at ISE, but after returning to university to earn her qualifications as a teacher-librarian, she returned to ISE in that capacity for grades Pre-K through 9. Kadri also manages an information studies curriculum targeted to each grade, starting with reading appreciation and general organization in the earlier grades (Pre-K through 2), then moving into information evaluation by Grade 3, and full-fledged research projects by middle school.
"[The program] has worked quite well," Kadri says. "We are looking into integrating information studies into other curricula so it wouldn't be so much a stand-alone subject as something developed collaboratively with classroom teachers for every grade level."
ISE follows the International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Program, which adheres to an inquiry-based curriculum requiring strong collaboration between homeroom teachers and specialized teachers. ISE looks for one specific unit in each grade, "finding meaningful ways to collaborate, not just for the sake of doing it." And without any assistants in the library (ISE is a small school with only 140 students Pre-K through 9), this task has fallen mostly on Kadri.
"As a librarian I have to know the curriculum taught throughout the school," she explained. "I have to know what resources to purchase, I'm already familiar with what's being taught in classrooms. So I start by approaching the more willing teachers and identifying specific units that lend themselves to collaboration."
As that is underway, ISE upgraded from Oasis to Mandarin CMS earlier this year. Kadri says she is excited by the potential to centralize more school information in one place. She has already launched an ISE Library blog -
http://iselibrary.blogspot.com/ - and hopes the
Newsstand feature of Mandarin CMS will help her drive more school traffic there.
"I also like that I can display students' work, little projects, writing and pictures all in one place [with the
Gallery and Video Stream features]," Kadri added. "Also, being able to add school events and promote library events all in one place [Calendar], it seems like it will be a great resource to get information out there." (Reminder: all CMS features can be managed directly from the CMS homepage using
Easy Edit Mode)
"Parents, teachers and students all come into the library pretty often," she added. "Still I think nowadays it is important for us to be visible online as well, for people looking from the outside. It's nice to have a more centralized and professional look and layout."
Like many librarians throughout the world, Kadri is working to meet the digital challenge of getting her students to select quality information.
"Middle schoolers especially tend to look first to Google and take the first link to Wikipedia," she said. "We can't fight it, we can just educate and inform, and hopefully help lead to a shift in their minds. With academic research, students need to think a bit differently. There are so many resources; it's important to improve critical thinking and analyzing skills. So we try to make research as hands on as possible, incorporating the research cycle more collaboratively in the classroom."
Kadri says the school's information studies curriculum has helped, but also hopes that a stronger digital presence through CMS will help guide students to good information.
To wrap up with a fun example of international, cross-library collaboration, Kadri also produced
a short slideshow of her library, using a catchy tune
Gotta Keep Reading produced by Ocoee Middle School outside of Orlando. Enjoy!
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