2.2 ¿Qué hay en la biblioteca de mi centro?

Qué hay en la biblioteca de mi centro?

I think I mentioned before somewhere in this blog that we are using Abies2 as a management and cataloguing system. Our teachers dedicate some time (one or two hours a week) of their schedule to managing the library, lending out and retrieving material (mainly bookds and DVDs) and cataloguing new acquisitions. We print out the barcodes and put the stickers on the covers. For cataloguing I sometimes use the search engine and database Rebeca of the MECD, although I find it often easier to copy the details myself.

None of my colleagues have seen much usefulness in Rebeca. We also have a volunteer working in the Library who does many of the tasks mentioned above. Our teachers cannot spend too much time in the library and never get an awful lot of practice in cataloguing.

I mentioned in an earlier task that was called 1.3 Recomendación de recursos para seleccionar los fondos that I was impressed by the Lupa del Cuento because of its crossreference system of synopsises and Key word search possibilities. For task 2.2 I opted to try and find works related to Día Internacional de la Mujer or International Women's Daywhich is celebrated on the 8th of March. I decided to check Abies2 for the possibility to create some kind of a crossreference. The most that we  can normally do is search for a title or an oauthor in the Index. However, there is absolutely NO information about the contents of the books.

No hint as to whether a novel is historical, or scary or fantastic. So, unless you know the title of a book that has to do with International Women's Day, or you know of a particular author that writes about the subject matter, there is no way to find out. I did find a way to include some relevant information during the process of cataloguing. Abies2 has a search option that is divided in normal and advanced. I noticed that there is a box that says: 

- Consulta simple

- Consulta avanzada

Within these consulting pages I saw that there is a box that says DESCRIPTORES which has a dropdown menu with lots of preset descriptors, none of which give any result for the books that are in our system. This is because when you catalogue a book, you will have to attach the appropriate descriptors to the book and tha is something none of us has been doing in all these

years. Here's the page in Abies2. It is not as COOL as the Lupa del Cuento, where you also have a synopsis of the book and an attractive layout. Also, this information is available only to the Teacher at the desk, and not to the library users (students). I feel that this topic is becoming a little bit dry and boring so I will add a clip. Yesterday was the first day at the EOI Ávila and I took some of my C1 students down to show the library. I explained the task I have to do for this course and we decided to make a small Mannequin Challenge to indicate the impossibilty of easily finding information without having to go over the shelves and look for a book. Here's the video, after which I'll conclude task 2.2

That was fun, albeit not very original anymore. By the way: That's me by the PC at the end. Recorded in the EOI library on October 2, 2017.

If we want to have a system such as the Lupa del Cuento, then we need a team of librarians to go over all the material, write or copy the synopsises or the blurbs of the books and mark the descriptores in Abies2. I guess it would be possible to involve the students.: Once you've taken out a work, an assignment could be to write a short opinion and help update the necessary information about the book to create a valid crossreference system. Otherwise, a realistic view of the capacity of our teachers in terms of time and workload is that such a system is complete Utopic.

I hope it hasn't been too long and I also hope you enjoyed our littel video clip with music by Ed Sheeran.
Signing off at 1:00 o'clock on the 4th of October
Jan Bliek