Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Technical Services: What they do, Why they do it, How it's changing

The webjunction class I took was titled: Technical Services: What they do, Why they do it, How it's changing. I found the course to be informative. It took the technical services area and broke it down into several sections like acquisitions, classification and collection maintenance. You looked at one section at a time which helped you focus on the topic. At the end of some of the sections there were activities. After the classification section the activity was to match Dewey numbers with the subject written on about 12 books. There was also an activity on collection maintenance where it gave you an item description and you had to say what you would do with it, like digitize it, destroy it, replace it etc... The course was in easy to understand language. I found it helpful as it reinforced what we learned on our "field trip" plus added some new information to the technical services area. It consisted of a pre-test, the lesson and then a post-test. I'm glad to say that my LTA knowledge helped me pass the pre-test and the lesson gave me new information to increase my grade on the post test. All in all an informative and fun course to take!

5 comments:

  1. That sounds really informative to put the technical services department into perspective. I have really enjoyed the WebJunction activities so far. They really help me with the subject at hand. The way they test you on the Dewey numbers would be informative for someone who would be a shelver or just anyone that uses libraries. The collection development activity also sounds kind of fun. It sounds like a really great supplement to our trip.

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  2. The Dewey number matching activity sounds really helpful, as does the collection maintenance exercise. I tried to listen as best as I could to the explanations given during the field trip, but this course seems like it could help reinforce the parts that I missed.

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  3. I like the idea of the Dewey shelving exercise. I could really use help in remember the different classes of where things are found, so when a patron comes up to you looking for cookbooks, you can take them to the 630's (I think) :)

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  4. Very cool! This sounds like it was a great follow up to the field trip. The activities, like the Dewey shelving, sounded super helpful too. I know they definitely were in the class that I took. I'll have to add this to my list of courses to take. :)

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  5. This course is one I signed up for and never got the login. The collection maintenance activity sounds like it would be helpful.

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