Five Essential Reference Tools for a School Library Learning Commons (Mark Lynch, The Daily Toon) In selecting five reference tools that I think would be essential for a school library learning commons, I first considered the widely used reference tools in a school library and followed the rule that “a good reference source is one that serves to answer a question” (Riedling and Houston 17). These reference materials include, but are not limited to, almanacs and yearbooks, bibliographies, atlases, dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks, indexes and abstracts, and style manuals. I visited our current school library reference section as it was important  to consider what reference materials our students were currently and…

Dictionaries are essential tools for every library learning commons, helping us explore and understand language. These reference materials are important sources for language definitions, meanings, pronunciations, word origins, usage examples, grammatical categories, tenses, synonyms, and antonyms. Nestled in the Parkcrest Elementary school library reference section is the Young Canada Dictionary. This printed reference book is the softcover teacher’s edition, which only differs from the hardcover student edition by the inclusion of a 16-page blue section at the front of the book. This section provides dictionary games, activities, exercises, skills, and prepared worksheets intended to aid teachers in their instruction.           The Young Canada Dictionary was published…

Most school libraries hold two two types of reference materials, print reference material (in physical form in the library) and online references (available through the internet or library databases). My current school library has both. Are both necessary? Should we consider eliminating printed reference materials in favour of digital sources? These are my thoughts and musings. First, we can define a resource as “any material, regardless of form or location, which provides necessary answer(s)” (Riedling and Houston 3-4). Printed reference resources are found in the library in tangible form and are repositories of information. The videos below provide examples of the types of print references my school has in it’s…