Knowledge+of+Library+and+Information+Management

=**  1.4    **** Have a specialist knowledge on information, resources, technology and library management **= = Excellent Teacher Librarians. . . =

**//  1.4.1    //****// Understand that professionally managed and resources school libraries are crucial to the achievement of the school community //** **//  1.4.2    //****// Have a rich professional knowledge of national standards for library and information management //** //** 1.4.3 **//  //**  Have a comprehensive understanding of national standards for informational retrieval **// It is essential that library systems are managed professionally and maintained accurately. A library management system needs be robust enough to be able to cater for the requirements of the clientele and for the accurate management of resources. It needs to be user friendly and function consistently at a high level. Library administration software automates many aspects of the management of resources and it should include the following functionality:

(Learning for the Future, 2005)
 * Acquisiton of resources
 * Cataloguing and authority control
 * Circulation of resources
 * Budgeting and finanacial managemenr
 * Reporting and statistics
 * Searching by autor, title, series, subject and keyword.

Learning for the Future (2005), produced by the combined forces of Alia and Asla and published by the Curriculum Corporation is considered a 'bible' by most teacher librarians. The section on **Facilitating Access to Information** outlines the minimum standards for current systems and the factos that need to be considered if users are to benefit from developments in technology.

While much of the hard labour of cataloguing has been reduced by subscribing to SCIS (School Catalogue Information Services) where universally accepted library standards are consistently applied to the cataloguing, classification and indexing of all information resources, both print and electronic, the teacher librarian still needs to be well versed in the national standards for information management and retrieval.

The introduction of Learning Management Systems, Learning Content Management Systems and Virtual Learning Platforms provide a new challenge to the teacher librarian. The advent of digital repositories require the same attention to detail in regards to metadata as do the traditional resources catalogued in the library. Explaining this to those uploading data at a great rate into these repositories is a challenge in itself, but one that will be needed to be addressed in the very near future, if these systems are to be able to maintain any standard of functionality.