{"id":19758,"date":"2018-11-29T00:01:12","date_gmt":"2018-11-29T05:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/?p=19758"},"modified":"2025-05-14T15:29:22","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T19:29:22","slug":"childrens-librarians-are-experts-at-homework-assistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/childrens-librarians-are-experts-at-homework-assistance\/","title":{"rendered":"Children\u2019s Librarians are Experts at Homework Assistance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One of the most satisfying parts of being a children\u2019s librarian to me is helping children reach their academic goals. My branch has a Homework Center, and they directly help students complete their work and learn new skills. However, the part I<\/em> really enjoy is when a child comes up to me on the floor with an assignment and needs to find research materials to complete their work. I remember being a kid myself\u2014always being a little leery to ask an adult for their assistance. I love being able to take a task they find overwhelming and help them learn how to find books, articles, and websites that will give them an overwhelming sense of relief. I so enjoy the happy look on their faces when I send them off to write the report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Non-librarians may believe that the above is a folly\u2014who needs a librarian\u2019s help with the internet? Indeed, many school districts unfortunately have gone the route of only one, or maybe zero, degreed librarians in the district total. Aides that fill those gaps, many of whom are very adept at their positions, are often asked to focus on other projects rather than teaching research skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Public librarians can also try to work with schools to fill in the gaps. I did so\u2026and stumbled upon an experience that proved the importance of teaching research skills to youth. All the students in my branch\u2019s district were assigned Black History projects in February. I set up a time in our computer lab where I would help students research their projects using library databases and offer free printing. Some middle school students entered and asked if I could give them guidance on their Greek Mythology assignment as well. Since I had a small group, I agreed. I set them up on the Theoi Greek Mythology website<\/a>, and then went to help other students. By the time I came back, several students had decided that \u201cGoogle\u201d was easier and had started writing their reports based on search engine results. The child who had Poseidon as his god had written that Percy Jackson was one of his children. I had a long discussion with him about why that would not be true for this report and why he couldn\u2019t take everything he searched on the internet as automatically correct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students still need librarians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do they need us to do? Teach them how to use the catalog\u2014how to search by title and author, but also by subject. Teach them how to leverage a keyword search into something more meaningful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I find that databases are wonderful\u2026and woefully underused! If you are lucky enough to be at a library with the means to subscribe to these, make sure you suggest them. For the Black History Month assignment, I depend heavily upon Biography in Context<\/a> and African-American History Online<\/a>. Culture Grams<\/a> are wonderful for state and country reports. And who knew that one day World Book<\/a> and encyclopedias in general would be considered top-of-the-line research (back in my day, we were often told NOT to use an encyclopedia as a resource for some reason).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, going back to my Percy Jackson example, librarians are truly experts at teaching students how to evaluate what is on the internet: what .gov, .edu, and .org mean compared to .com, when Wikipedia is okay to use and when you need more, etc.   I would be remiss not to mention that ALSC hosts Great Websites for Kids<\/a>, which has a curated list of kid-friendly websites for both homework and fun. I encourage you to check it out when you have a chance, especially when helping students complete homework on animals, the arts, history & biography, literature & languages, mathematics & computers, sciences, social studies, and general reference (yes, these ARE the topic headings). Some of the most helpful sites I have used with students are Animal Diversity Web<\/a> from the University of Michigan\u2019s Museum of Zoology, Ben\u2019s Guide to the U.S. Government<\/a>, and A&E\u2019s Biography<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Happy Helping!!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

This post addresses the Core Competency of Reference and User Services.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the most satisfying parts of being a children\u2019s librarian to me is helping children reach their academic goals. My branch has a Homework Center, and they directly help students complete their work and learn new skills. However, the part I really enjoy is when a child comes up to me on the floor with an assignment and needs to find research materials to complete their work. I remember being a kid myself\u2014always being a little leery to ask an adult for their assistance. I love being able to take a task they find overwhelming and help them learn how to find books, articles, and websites that will give them an overwhelming sense of relief. I so enjoy the happy look on their faces when I send them off to write the report. Non-librarians may believe that the above is a folly\u2014who needs a librarian\u2019s help with the internet?…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":297,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[1474,1639,1604,1606],"tags":[1658,1657,1656],"class_list":["post-19758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogger-maria-trivisonno","category-childrens-librarians-are-experts","category-competencies-for-librarians-serving-children-in-public-libraries","category-reference-and-user-services","tag-databases","tag-homework-help","tag-reference"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/297"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19758\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}