All education subject guides now in the new format

We have now transferred the last of our guides to the new Libguide format. You will see that each guide is divided into different pages or tabs for different types of resources. I’m happy to take requests to link any of these into your online course, to add resources or links, or even create new guides. The latest guides include:

Foundation studies resources
Tertiary teaching and learning
Educational leadership
Education

The general “Education” guide might be a good place for staff and postgraduates to start if they are looking for an overview of some key resources.

New interface for Project Muse

Project Muse have just released a new searching interface. Project Muse is one of the many collections of online journals we subscribe to as a package and has a particular focus on the humanties and social sciences. In some ways it complements the kind of journal archive content we have on JSTOR; ie Project Muse contains current issues of journals whose backfile can be accessed via JSTOR.  

You are able to browse Project Muse for the different issues of journals as well as use the search function to search across the collection. One of the new features, includes the ability to limit to subject areas such as Education, Mathematics, Gay and Lesbian Studies, Cultural Studies, Music and so on. They also have a good alerting function for new issues of your favourite journals as well as RSS feed options.

New titles

The Library has just added a new titles tab to the catalogue. It sorts by campus and then by call no area. So as you are browsing titles for a particular campus you might for example go to 370s for education.

I will no longer be using LibraryThing for new titles. We hope to be introducing further improvements to this function, including a primary sort by subject and RSS feeds.

UPDATE: Here is a link to new 370s (education) across all campuses.

Children’s Book Week, August 16th-22nd

This week is the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book Week, August 16th-22nd. See their website for a list of winners and honourable mentions. See also our children’s literature subject guide for catalogue links to the shortlist and winners.

Q&A — Julie Faulkner

Many thanks to Julie Faulkner, senior lecturer in the School of Education, for being this month’s Q&A subject. See the complete series here.

What are your teaching/research interests?
Learning and identity, which incoporates popular culture, Web 2.0 and anything else young people use to make sense of their worlds.

Website/online resource you regard as indispensable?
Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

A favourite educationalist/author/theorist and why.
James Paul Gee – he makes complex theory accessible and elegant.

Where do you do most of your teaching preparation/research?
At home, usually late at night.

How do you find out about newly published research?
Usually via the ‘live’ network, subject associations, and conferences.

Are professional networks important to your research/teaching? How?
Yes, for the above reason and the necessity to remain on top of research in popular culture and ICT – it changes every hour!
 
Describe your personal library.
Hhhmm, it burnt in the Ash Wedensday fires and I had to begin again. It comprises a complete wall of a large room at home and two bookshelves at RMIT, and contains a mixture of adult and adolescent fiction, picture books, old and new textbooks, professional books and journals and books on words and language use. One of my most used is my two volume Shorter Oxford Dictionary – if I could afford the 20 volume Oxford, I would. Then again, perhaps I’ll wait for the CD… *

Wikipedia or Encyclopedia Britannica?
Both!

Something you’d like your students to know and understand about the Library?
It’s a place where you never need to feel lonely.

Favourite journal?
English in Australia

Something you’d like to change about the Library?
I appreciate the care taken by librarians to order in valued books – I’d love to know when they come in! **

* If anyone would like to bookmark the 20 volume OED online just use this link.
**  The Library is currently testing a new books tab for the catalogue where you should be able to generate lists of new items in different subject areas. In the meantime some of the new titles coming in can be seen from this LibraryThing account. There is a feed from this into this blog (scroll down and see on the right hand side) as well as in the home page of some of our libguides eg see primary education guide.

Shaun Tan talk at Bundoora Library

Last Friday we had the fifth annual author visit put on by the Library and the School of Education. We were very privileged to have Shaun Tan this year. Shaun’s books and their wonderful stories and images will be known to many. His work has included books like The Lost Thing, The Red Tree and The Arrival. He is also the recipient of many awards, including Children’s Book Council of Australia awards, various premiers literary awards and so on.

Shaun’s book The Arrival traces without words, but through vivid images, a story of immigration and refuge to a land familiar enough to be recognisable but which is also strange and unnerving. It is a remarkable achievement that has us as readers follow the main character in sifting through the signs and wonders to find understanding and connection.

His latest work Tales from Outer Suburbia continues that vein of his work that makes the familiar seem decidedly odd, the common sensical seem deeply mysterious. Like the best and most original works Shaun’s work is hard to categorise and pigeon hole and speaks to people of all ages. You suspect that it connects profoundly to the child’s point of view but also reminds us older folk to think and above all to “see” anew.

Shaun spoke for about an hour, showing and speaking to some of the images within his work. It was clear to everyone that these images were anything but mere decoration; they evoked meaning and associations that added new layers and texture to stories and narratives. Shaun took questions from an engrossed audience and then signed books and chatted, drawing individual pictures in the front of books. We had about 140 people in attendance (a record), including RMIT staff and students, teachers, librarians and members of the public.

See also this other impression of the event.

Trial of ebooks and Britannica online

We currently have a couple of trials going.

My iLibrary provides ebooks from some major publishers, including Pearson Education, Palgrave Macmillan and Wiley Blackwell. This looks like quite a good collection of ebooks for the education area.

You will have heard of Encyclopedia Britannica . This is the online version.

I would encourage everyone to try My iLibrary especially and give feedback using the online form at the trials page. The library wouldn’t usually proceed with a subscription unless there is positive feedback from the RMIT community.

Google releases Wikipedia rival

So Google have now announced their release of their Wikipedia rival, Knol. It is clearly intended to address some of the authority and accuracy issues that arise with Wikipedia. Knol apparently means “a unit of knowledge” and the Google Knols are “authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects.” Anyone can write an article, but unlike Wikipedia an article is the work of a single individual. Writers are encouraged to state who they are and something of their background. There can be multiple articles on a subject but readers will vote on the article most helpful and presumably that gives the particular article a more prominent place.

I don’t think Wikipedia is quite ready to fold its tent though. Contrary to popular misconception, Wikipedia does have standards and guidelines for the writing of articles and also allows for a kind of mutual vetting of what is written. Indeed, part of the energy behind Wikipedia is its collaborative aspect which is at the heart of web 2.0. Articles on Wikipedia also have a tab for the discussion of issues, which assists to generate a kind of shared ownership over the article. Knol is allowing readers to suggest edits, but of course it is the author’s decision as to whether these are accepted or not. Nevertheless, Knol is an interesting development and definitely one to watch. If you want to find some further information on Knol well … um … there is always the Wikipedia entry.