With the support of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU and the Russian school libraries association (RSLA) employees of the “School sector” of RELARN Association and the “School Mediateka” of ISMO RAO launched a distance training course “I learn to blog!” specially designed for school librarians.
While the Internet coverage is expanding, the course focused in raising information the librarians’s awareness and their efficiency in the blogopshere, development of territorial network representations of school libraries, organization of informal professional communication of librarians in the Internet, as well as transformation of school libraries into information centers for educational institutions.
The librarian has long discontinued to be just a keeper of printed literature. Her/his main task is to become a students’ guide not only into the world of knowledge and culture, but the one of progress as well. Today, a school library is not just a books depository, but a community sharing the same interests and from this perspective it becomes particularly important for libraries to grow interactive, because this is the most mod and common way of communication.
The course “I learn to blog!” is an important initiative aimed at giving a further boost to the Internet, among other things. That is why the Coordination Center has taken decision to support it. The issue of Internet in schools has already been discussed for long and now it has entered a new stage – training of teaching stuff and transformation of school libraries into full-fledged electronic media centers.
It was envisaged that not more than a hundred of librarians would participate in the course. However, by the time of the course launch over 500 individuals from different parts of Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia and Estonia had filled in the questionnaire, including librarians from specialized children libraries , as well as students and postgraduates dealing with issues of blogs and social services Web 2.0 in the this sector have signed up for the course. As many as 240 individuals signed up for the course and 85 of them started their own blogs shortly after wards. For many participants the aim was not to master all intricacies of the course which many pros would have find hard to complete. As many as 56 participants have successfully completed the entire course, passed tests and were awarded certificates from RSLA and the Coordination Center for TLD .RU.
Within the framework of the training course a round table was held on the libraries’ future in the circumstances of ever growing virtualization of today’s life. This subject is the most painful one for the librarians now, as they found themselves in a difficult situation die to a considerable deterioration of the state of affairs at school libraries. The issue has been passionately discussed, sometimes with a heavy heart. Issues of creation and development of information media centers on the basis of school libraries has for long been the educational community’s concern. Where there are electronic resources in schools, there emerge issues of their registration, distribution procedure, use. Moreover, any attempt to grant a library the status of information center faces undeveloped and unapproved normative documents. This is a very serious issue and at present it is the one that worries librarians most.
The Coordination Center for TLD .RU highly appreciates the librarians’ enthusiasm and congratulates the course graduates. The CC attests a high level of this distance training course and recommends continuing such practice for other audiences as well. On its part, the Coordination Center will promote introduction of the new technologies into the traditionally offline culture.
