Blog 3: Debbie Easler, Spring Valley High School

 

 

Librarian Debbie Easler in her office at Spring Valley High School. She is one of two librarians there.

Introduction

Debbie Easler is one of two librarians at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina. She graduated from USC's MLIS program back before it was virtual, before there was even internet, and before the iSchool merged with the JSchool. She fondly recalled doing research projects using the beloved card catalog. Debbie has been a librarian for 32 years and has worked closely with our school's Technology Learning Coach. She just recently returned to the library space and runs a club where students make arts and crafts project out of goods that could have been recycled or thrown away. Because of her history and experience, I chose to interview her about the AASL Standard "Curate.A.2. Designing opportunities for learners to explore possible information sources."

Takeaways & Reflection 

Debbie does much research on what teachers are teaching; she looks at their syllabus and their lesson plans to see if the collection is matching the school curriculum. This helps her determine where they need to buy and where they need to weed, which helps her curate the resources effectively. 

The most useful part of this interview were the resources Debbie discussed for curating resources for teachers and students. Those resources include Noodletools for citations, Google spreadsheet, Destiny collections, Chrome browser with bookmarked digital sources, Sora, DISCUS, Salem Press Online reference materials, Infobase books online literature/criticism, and Mackin via class sets of e-books. This is a good list of resources I want to keep in mind when I am curating resources for students and teachers.  

Debbie talked about how putting things into collections or lists of information can help curate information that easily accessible to teachers. Destiny Collections and Adobe Express are two tools she uses for this purpose. 

Time to work with teachers and the schedule are some challenges to working with teachers. One possible way to help curate sources for teachers is to give them curated sources and keep them in a central location or list them on a monthly newsletter so teachers can access those resources when they can. Video tutorials will likely be helpful as well. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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