A task shared between the library and school

 

Jakobstad-Pietarsaari is a bi-lingual city of roughly 20,000 inhabitants on the west coast of Finland. The city library has carried out various information search projects with young people.

The goal of the Idefix project was to
promote concrete forms of cooperation
with the primary school and the library.
The emphasis was on information
searches with fifth- and ninth-grade
students. Monica Borg-Sunabacka,
director of the library’s children and
adolescent section, and Anne Unkuri
(BBA), acted as project managers.

“In daily library work, you notice that
the pupils, those seeking information,
need a lot of help in finding information.
Few teachers are aware of the
pupils’ abilities in finding information,
the actual processes in obtaining information”.

The teachers’ motivation was closely
linked to the project. A total of over
one hundred teachers took part. Idéfix
was implemented with the pupils by
doing information searches for specified
subjects. The objective was to make
both teachers and students aware of
the different phases involved in obtaining
information.

“The project leaders went through a
description of Dr. Carol Collier Kuhlhau’s
information search process with
the ninth-grade class.”

The teachers gave much positive feedback
about the project. All of them had
learned something new. Obstacles to
learning were, for example, a selection
of subjects, which were too difficult, or
the presentation of too much information
in one library visit. Library employees
also learned much during the
project – including the ways in which
librarians are different from teachers.

“The approach and methods of
teachers and librarians are different,”
says researcher Louise Limberg. Unkuri
and Borg-Sunabacka explain, “Students
communicate with a teacher in a different
way from communicating with a
librarian. Librarians go forward in an
information search and think about
different search methods and possible
alternative answers together with the
pupil. Teachers seldom see the whole
process of obtaining information, they
want to control what the pupil is
doing. These different methods can
cause misunderstandings between
librarians and teachers, but they can
also complement one another.”

“In instruction on library use and
information searches nowadays, we
note how important it is to teach the
basics over and over again,” Anne
Unkuri and Monica Borg-Sunabacka
comment.

According to them, a prerequisite of
teaching about information searches is
that teachers and librarians maintain
trust and respect for one another’s
professional skills.

Mervi Heikkilä

Library Director
Nurmo municipal library
mervi.heikkila@nurmo.fi

Translated by Turun Täyskäännös