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TL 16.22.indd The Teaching Librarian volume 16, no. 2 23 Julie Hannahford Getting to Know the Ontario Educational Resource Bank make changes to a resource, we encourage you to return your modifi ed version back into the OERB. Th is allows resources to be enhanced over time. Teacher-librarians are in a particularly strong position to contribute valuable content to the OERB. Teacher- librarians have crucial skills in the area of information literacy and research; many of you have created resources intended to teach students these concepts. By sharing resources that you have personally used to teach these skills in your libraries and classrooms, you can build on the wealth of knowledge that is available in the OERB. Rose Burton-Spohn, an e-LO staff member, has adopted the phrase, the "power of one." If each teacher and teacher-librarian contributed just one resource to the OERB, the number of quality resources available would be truly amazing. As a teacher-librarian, you can teach your colleagues, as well as your students, how to use the OERB, advancing awareness of a valuable electronic resource and tool. By integrating the OERB into your teaching practices, you can instruct students on how to search it to fi nd relevant content, and how to critically evaluate the content they fi nd. Th is can only serve to enhance their research skills. How Do You Search the OERB? To fi nd content in the OERB, you can either search or browse for content. Searching is a straightforward process. You enter your search terms into the search box and the search engine retrieves results if it fi nds your terms in one of three fi elds: title, keywords or description. Results can be sorted by date, title or relevancy. If you are trying to fi nd a resource that relates to a particular level of the curriculum, it may be easier to browse. You can browse by grade, subject/course title, strand and expectation. How Do You Contribute Content? Th e contribution process is structured so that there is an easy and logical workfl ow. An interface has been designed to make it as simple as possible for you to share your resource, with minimal time and eff ort required. Th e fi rst step is acceptance of the release form. It is important to know that this form does not mean that you have waived copyright to your own content. What it does mean is that you are requested to: a) confi rm that you have copyright over all content and b) acknowledge that other users of the OERB may use your resource and, in the process, edit or adapt it. After you have completed the release form, you are asked to upload the fi le(s) that make up your resource. Following the fi le upload, you are asked to complete a template in which you provide basic descriptive and pedagogical information regarding your resource. On this template, you can link to multiple strands and expectations, allowing you to make cross-curricular connections to your resource. You can also link your resource to multiple learning styles and teacher-learner strategies. After you have completed your submission, the resource is passed to a cataloguer who completes a full catalogue record for the resource, including providing subject access via Library of Congress Subject Headings. Once the cataloguing is complete, your resource becomes searchable in the OERB. Evaluating Success Back in the days of OKNL, focus groups and consultations were conducted across the province to fi nd out from Ontario educators what was required in order to satisfy their needs related to online learning. Th e reports that resulted from that communication all refl ected the wish for an online resource that was both searchable and directly linked to curriculum. Th e consultations were an excellent starting point: they directed our developmental team's energies towards a project that was clearly needed and requested by the educational community. Th e Power of One