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Published: March 3rd 2005
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Warm places????
The new car garage is under construction. See why we are thinking of warm places? We see TV advertisements here attempting to attract tourists to areas and places we never see advertised in the States. There have been beautiful ads for Greece, Egypt and the Maldives since we arrived in January. Today, for the first time, I saw an ad for Crotia. The ad was built around theme “Come to Crotia where the Mediterranean is the way it used to be.” I expect we will see ads beginning for other areas of Europe as spring arrives.
The Canary Islands are a popular place to visit in the winter. Several families here at the seminary vacationed there in February. No special visas are required and it is warm and sunny there. Warm and sunny are two words that sound very good just now as Europe is gripped in the coldest weather in many, many years.
Nancy, who worked all her life as a librarian in different educational settings is working on a new project helping develop a program to introduce the library, its policies, its holdings and how to use them to new students. There are already programs in place here to work on what at home would be taught in a school library setting not necessarily in a classroom. She wants to see if she can put together things that can be on the internet site as well as some classroom instruction. Going back to the 1970’s in Maryland for ideas, she hopes to make what could be termed ‘Learning Station” type materials for students to use along with self instruction on the Internet site. She hopes to develop a Power Point program for the library to use as they wish. It could be offered to teachers to use with their classes before students begin to do deep research in the library or it could be on the web site for students to use themselves. She has dreams of introducing the Big6 method of starting new students on the research process. This may or may not be something she can finish along with other work but a good start has already been made by the library staff with other ways they work with students. Since their students come from a variety of countries with different library cataloging schemes and different library policies, they face a much different task in teaching how to use the library than in a country like the US where most students come from a Dewey Decimal classification system with regular library instruction grades K-12. The variety makes a richer student experience but not necessarily one that quickly converts to understanding the set up of this library which is patterned on American classification and organization. Since this school was originally started by Americans, it still bears the stamp of American style organization. Because this library is one of the best in all Europe for materials dealing with theological topics in the English language, students from other schools all over Prague come to use it. When they come for the first time, Nancy has been trying to be the person who orients them to the library, how to use it, location of materials, how to find them using the OPAC, etc. This has helped her see what new students to the school must be like. No two persons have arrived with the same kind of understanding of library organization, rules, etc. The great thing she has noticed has been that most of these students are already very Internet aware. They often come having searched the Internet and knowing this school has the materials they need. This computer knowledge base has lead her to think teaching materials in an attractive Internet display may be the best way to go in library instruction. That coupled with some hands-on experience with the library staff may be the way to be sure all the very valuable resources of this library are well used by future students.
Bill is continuing to work on the Union List of Serials at the library as well as portions of the library manual that deal with the periodicals. Also he is contacting various publishers of state religious newsletters concerning gratis subscriptions. Fifteen minutes after sending an e-mail to the Texas Baptist Association they send a return e-mail saying the seminary had been placed on the mailing list to start receiving their monthly newsletter. He has received positive replies from other publications also. Several requests are still outstanding.
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