December 2011 - Palos Verdes High School

Library News
College Freshmen Information Literacy Skills:
As part of my professional development, I was at three-day state conference hosted by the California
School Library Association (CSLA) and the California Library Association (CLA) held in
Pasadena. In one of the many workshops that I attended, one was called “Postsecondary Perspectives
on Lifelong Learning Essentials: Skills High School Students Need When They Go to
College,” a presentation by three academic librarians—a UC librarian, a Cal State librarian, and a
community college librarian. I felt great affirmation that what we are doing here at PVHS in
preparing students for research is exactly what we should be doing. We are exposing students to
subscription databases and trying to teach them that the Free Web is not the ideal place for finding
authoritative articles and information. Students are learning how to cite their sources in a
Works Cited and how to use in-text documentation in their papers. We address the topic of plagiarism
through PowerPoint presentations and an informative DVD series. Our English teachers
and a few content teachers are requiring research papers and essays be submitted through our
subscription Turnitin.com service, a plagiarism detection-deterrent program. Many community
colleges and universities across the nation subscribe, too, so our graduates who go on to higher
education are quite familiar with the paper submittal process. The emphasis on technology was a
huge topic at the conference, and the PVHS library and the English department will be collaborating
on further improving our curriculum to address additional skills necessary to educate our
students in Web-based research. Further affirmation that we are on the right track is when
PVHS alumni return to our campus to share their college research experiences, and it is not uncommon
to hear our former students tell us that their high school senior research papers, their use
of our databases, and their ability to properly cite sources has given them an advantage over most
other incoming college freshmen who have not had the same opportunities. And particularly
with budget cuts, many high schools are not staffed with a credentialed (teacher) librarian and do
not subscribe to electronic databases. A Loyola Marymount University librarian once said that
she could recognize which students in her library came from high schools with a credentialed
librarian. So, big Thank Yous to the Ed Foundation for funding my position, to the Booster
Club and PTSA for providing all our library resources (including databases), to the district for
providing a full-time library assistant and recognizing the importance of school libraries, and to
our PVHS administrators for advocating for our strong school library. Our PVHS graduates are
a leg-ahead!
GENERAL INFORMATION:
Hours: 7:00 am to 3:30 pm daily, even on late-start days. The only exception is for minimum/shortened
days. See library webpage at pvhigh.com for more info.
Aileen Willoughby
Teacher Librarian
willoughby@pvpusd.k12.ca.us, x234
The Wave December 2011 - January 2012 Page 14