Children’s Book of the Year 2009 shortlist announced

The Children’s Book Council of Australia have just announced its shortlist for 2009. It includes titles such as

• Tales from outer suburbia, by Sean Tan
• Perry Angel’s suitcase, by Glenda Millar
• The wizard of Rondo, by Emila Rodda
• How to heal a broken wing, by Bob Graham
• The big little book of happy sadness, Colin Thompson
• The word spy, by Ursula Dubosarsky
• Simpson and his donkey, by Mark Greenwood

It’s very pleasing to see Sean Tan listed, who was our invited speaker at last year’s children’s author talk. We will be ordering items on the shortlist not held currently.

Updates to Informit

Informit is one of the providers/platforms for quite a few of our Australian databases, including the premier database for Australian education, A+Education. Their latest bulletin includes some updates and enhancements.

It is now possible to set up alerts based on search criteria for databases like A+Education.  As new records are added to the database, Informit will automatically email records that match your saved search query.

Informit e-Library have just added access to the following journals:

• Educating Young Children: Learning and Teaching in the Early Childhood Years
• Journal of Distance Learning 
• Journal of Educational Leadership, Policy & Practice 
• The Monthly 
• New Zealand Research in Early Childhood Education 
• Teaching History 

Informit e-Library have just added access to the following monographs:

• Better Schools Better Teachers Better Results: A Handbook for Improved Performance Management in Your School
• Cultural Diversity in Music Education: Directions and Challenges for the 21st Century 
• Education, Science and Public Policy: Ideas for an Education Revolution 
• No Time to Lose: The Wellbeing of Australia’s Children 
• Reading and Learning Difficulties: Approaches to Teaching and Assessment 
• Seven Steps to ICT Integration 
• Spelling: Approaches to Teaching and Assessment 
• Stepping Stones: A Guide for Mature-aged Students at University 
• Supervising Doctorates Downunder: Keys to Effective Supervision in Australia and New Zealand

A+Education now includes selective or comprehensive coverage of and access to:

• Parent & Citizen Journal  (selective)
• Quest  (selective)
• Australian Educational Leader   (selective)
•  Christian teachers Journal   (selective)
• Australasian Journal of Educational Technology  (comprehensive)
• Australian Journal of Teacher Education  (comprehensive)
• Social Educator   (selective)
• Learning Difficulties Australia Bulletin   (selective)
• Eingana   (selective)
• Australian Journal of TAFE  (comprehensive)
• Victorian Journal of Music Education  (comprehensive)
• Dissent   (selective)
• Education in Rural Australia  (comprehensive)
• ACHPER Healthy Lifestyles Journal  (comprehensive)
• Queensland Teachers Journal   (selective)
• Australian Journal of Reading  (comprehensive)
• Connect   (selective)
• Nurture   (selective)
• Psychological Test Bulletin   (selective)

We will create catalogue entries for many of these listed items but for the moment they can be accessed directly via Informit e-library and A+Education (Informit).

Good reads for children

Allen and Unwin have just published some of their list of top titles for schools. Some of those held by the library are below with links from their covers to the catalogue entry. I will also place orders for items we don’t currently hold. If you look at the information about each of the books on the publisher’s site also has links to information about the author as well as teacher notes and reviews.

Newspapers via ProQuest ANZ Newsstand

We’ve had a subscription to Factiva for some time for searching and accessing newspapers throughout the world. I often teach the TAFE groups, such a the ESL or the Further Education students, how to use this resource. Since there is a limit to the number of people who can access Factiva simultaneously we now have access to ProQuest ANZ Newsstand, which will give us extra access to newspapers in Australia and New Zealand. Browse the newspaper list to see what is available.

Erika-Mann Elementary School II – Berlin

From thecoolhunter website (via The Design Librarian at QUT),  a revamp of the old authoritarian buildings of the Erika-Mann Elementary School in Berlin. As thecoolhunter tells us:

The kids who are using the space participated actively in the design process, giving the architecture students their views on how they will actually use the space, how it should function and what they’d love to see in their school.

Class for the new B. Ed at Brunswick

I gave a catalogue and citations class to the new first years doing the B.Ed at Brunswick today.  We asked students to identify different citations and then work out how to look them up in the catalogue. They came to understand the catalogue not only as a means of looking up the new  teacher education books we are collecting at Brunswick, but also as a way of  holding the Bundoora books and having them transferred across. The catalogue is also, of course, a means of accessing online journals and ebooks, as well as e-reserve material. This will be important for Brunswick students while we are building the teacher education collection there. We also asked them to cite books using the APA referencing guide.

Photo by Nomad Tales

New library guides

We have just created a new tutorial called Library skills for TAFE education, which is listed with our other tutorials. Like our other education tutorials these cover the kind of skills students learn in their information skills classes.

We also have a new subject guide for Teacher education. This comes from a suggestion from Rachel to incorporate some sections within a guide focused on teacher education generally. The guide also features resources for the different discipline areas, a page for the new B.Ed at Brunswick and a list of e-books that feature on various course reading lists.

Latest issue of Library News now available

The latest issue of Library news is now available and reports on new resources that have com eonline over the summer break. These include the major citation database Scopus, new newspaper resources via ProQuest, further acqisition of backfiles for Taylor and Francis education journals (via Informaworld), new e-journal packages from Brill (science, history and social science) and Berg (culture and visual arts).

Are you finalising course reading lists?

Don’t forget to ask the Library to place items that are likely to be heavily used on Reserve. This will enable as many students as possible to access them. Find out more information about Reserve and how to add material to the Reserve collection.

[Source: Carmen Riordan, RMIT University Library]