Ideas for scholarly publications

This blog post will definitely evolve and I really don't have much time today.  One idea that I would like to publish on is partnerships (dare I say collaboration) between public libraries and school libraries.  last year I advocated this in an assignment and the response it received was, shall we say, not very productive, especially because after Skyping the lecturer I got the impression that the lecturer had confused collaboration between libraries and librarians with joint libraries.  As I later found out when researching joint libraries for the placement report you either love them or you hate them passionately.

Nevertheless, the issue of joint libraries aside, the impression I have received from public libraries, such as the Parramatta City Library, is that main-branch or large public libraries are already supporting the teaching and learning of many schools, through technology learning centres, a blizzard of HSC resources and so on.  Accordingly, public libraries would love to collaborate with school libraries in order to better serve the needs of school students, including through information literacy.  They really have to want this because unlike schools, students are not a captive audience, they will go where-ever it is best for them to go. On the other hand, school libraries tend to be insular.  Yes, to save money they will tell students to use databases freely available at the public library but other than this I have not seen much reaching out to public libraries.  In the literature I found an article in Scan about the cooperation between a public school and the Fairfield City Library.  I also found an article about the cooperation between a public school in Mackay and the Mackay City Library (ahh, my home town!).  This is not much.  Consequently, it would be good to explore this when I have time.

Another idea I would like to pursue through, initially I think, a Slideshare PowerPoint, then a conference paper (this does not to be referreed) is the school library as a shopping mall.  It is an interesting idea and having done much research on shopping malls I have research.  I know I will get bizzarre reactions and alot of obstruction but this is par for the course when talking about shopping malls.  But, maybe by doing this more as a public than an academic work I will be able to reach out to a non-academic and a younger, more open-minded audience.  I may actually see practical thinking and constructive feedback rather than prejudice and theoretical abstraction used to mask a personal prejudice.