“School Libraries Seek Relevance Through Virtual Access”

Posted on February 12, 2010 by slav

The article “School Libraries Seek Relevance Through Virtual Access“, in which US school libraries are the subject, appeared on the Education Week website a few days ago and is certainly worth a read.

Some readers may know of the funding issues that have hit US school libraries in the last few weeks. This article, which quotes Buffy Hamilton and Joyce Valenza, outlines how some proactive school librarians have been changing the use and vision of school libraries and as such, how libraries are viewed by students, teachers and parents.

The advent of Web 2.0 tools and the way that some school librarians have embraced them are discussed, particularly with the view that these school librarians have kept their library relevant to their students:

In addition to teaching students and teachers how to navigate information, libraries have now become a place where students go to create and produce, said Carolyn Foote, the district librarian who works at the 2,500-student Westlake High School in Austin, Texas.

“Students are producing all sorts of products—YouTube videos, PowerPoint presentations, online slideshows, podcasts—and so as librarians, we need to have the skills to work with all those different formats and help students learn how to produce in those formats,” she said.

Consequently, it’s increasingly important for librarians to be familiar with new technologies and Web 2.0 tools, she said.

“There’s a lot of debate in the library field about whether you can even be a 21st-century librarian if you aren’t willing to embrace some of those Web 2.0 tools and be very proficient in them,” Ms. Foote said. “There’s a real need for us to be participating all the way through the [creation] process, and we need the skills to be able to do that.”

The library as both a place and a service, or a state of mind is discussed; the importance of a flexible, attractive physical space as well as the Web 2.0 tools which can connect students to the world through the library are vital. A great article advocating the excellent work many school librarians do.

Rebuilt school missing library

Posted on January 3, 2010 by slav

A disturbing article appeared in yesterday’s Herald Sun newspaper stating that one primary school destroyed in the Black Saturday fires will need to seek community support to rebuild its once wonderful library:

A SCHOOL destroyed in the Black Saturday fires has been forced to ask for community help to rebuild its library.

Marysville Primary principal Peri Dix has told a local Masonic lodge that a library was not part of the State Government’s plan to rebuild the devastated school.

“Our school once housed a wonderful library, books which provided hours of learning and pleasure to our students,” Ms Dix wrote to the lodge.

“While the (Education Department) rebuild classrooms and office space, rooms such as library and art are outside their budget.”

Ms Dix said the school would welcome support such as shelving for books.

Freemasons Victoria grand secretary Barry Reaper said yesterday his organisation would help Marysville PS with books and library equipment.

“We can understand that the Government will be doing all they can to reconstruct the facility, but we believe a library is an essential part of it,” he said.

Freemasons have raised more than $1 million for bushfire victims, with about $985,000 already distributed.

Opposition education spokesman Martin Dixon said while community donations were welcome, it was the Government’s responsibility to replace what was lost by schools.

An Education Department spokesman insisted library facilities would be rebuilt.

The Government will spend almost $20 million on projects including Marysville and two other destroyed primary schools – Middle Kinglake and Strathewen.

Bright Ideas is seeking comments from relevant people in relation to this story.

Terrific reading role model and good sports citizen for school libraries

Posted on July 11, 2009 by slav

This recent article in the School Library Journal is an example of a great idea. Got to love the way that the libraries have been consulted about wish lists, distribution has been organised and even new shelving has been factored in…

Baseball’s Kevin Youkilis Goes to Bat for Young Readers

By Rocco Staino — School Library Journal, 9 July 2009

Kevin Youkilis, an all-star first baseman with the Boston Red Sox, is going to bat for young readers with his Hits for Kids, an organization that hopes to collect 100,000 new or gently used books for Boston’s public school libraries over a two day period.

Created by Youkilis, along with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and other corporate sponsors, the goal is to receive donations at each of Fenway Park’s five entrances during the Red Sox weekend series against the Kansas City Royals on Saturday, July 11 and Sunday, July 12.

“We want this campaign to be as successful as possible, and that is why we are swinging for the fences and have set our collection goal at over 100,000 books,” says Enza Sambataro-Youkilis, the player’s wife and president of Hits for Kids. “Judging by the passion that the Red Sox and their fans have for the City of Boston, we are confident that we will surpass our goal.”

Boston Public Schools has created a wish list of close to 150 recommended titles, from Laura Vaccaro Seeger’s One Boy(Roaring Brook) and Anna McQuinn’s Lola at the Library(Charlesbridge) to Carl Hiassan’s Scat (Knopf) and Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax (Random). And students from Lesley University have volunteered to help sort the books in preparation for distribution.

“This will be an incredible shot in the arm for the 94 schools that will be recipients of this generous donation,” says Karin Kell Deyo, a senior program director for the district’s library media services. “This donation will go a long way to help us with boost our print collection for our early readers in that critical time in their literacy education.”

Youk (as he is nicknamed), 30, a Cincinnati native, was signed to the Red Sox in 2004, and last January, he inked a $41.25 million contract. In 2007, he began his foundation, which is dedicated to rallying local and corporate support for charities focused on the health and wellbeing of children.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the lead underwriter, will match each book donation and donate shelves to some school libraries in the city. “We are planning, in some instances, for a full transformation of school libraries-from empty shelves to fully-supplied libraries,” says Houghton spokesman, Josef Blumenfeld.

Valvoline Instant Oil Change will also accept book donations at all of their Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island locations.

What a terrific reading role model Kevin is as well as being a good sports citizen for school libraries. Congratulations to all involved. Wouldn’t it be lovely if some sportspeople in Australia did something similar?

Authors lobby government for statutory school libraries

Posted on July 2, 2009 by slav

An article in today’s (UK time) Guardian newspaper outlines how popular children’s and YA authors have sent a petition to 10 Downing Street asking for schools to have statutory rights to a library.

Written by Alison Flood guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 1 July 2009 12.01 BST

Reading in the school library. Photograph: Graham Turner

A high-profile group of children’s authors, publishers, teachers and librarians is calling on the government to make school libraries statutory. Signatories to a petition to Number 10 include Philip Pullman, Horrid Henry creator Francesca Simon and former children’s laureate Michael Rosen, as well as the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers Christine Blower, Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, top children’s publishers and the directors of a raft of youth library associations.

The campaign’s supporters, who also include the Carnegie medal winners Mal Peet and Beverley Naidoo, are concerned that while prisoners have the statutory right to a library, schoolchildren do not, and they believe it is essential that children get the habit of reading for pleasure. “[We] wholeheartedly support the right of prisoners to a library. It can be part of the process of rehabilitation through education. We are concerned however that school students do not have the same right. Research indicates that many young people who offend have low literacy levels,” they say in a letter that will be sent to secretary of state for children, schools and families Ed Balls this evening by the campaign’s head, the twice Carnegie-shortlisted author Alan Gibbons.

Only half of all secondary schools have a full-time librarian, they say, and only 28% have a qualified librarian. “Sadly, some of our schools still lack adequate library provision,” they write. “It would not be expensive to rectify this situation, even in these difficult times. The social costs of poor literacy are significant.”

Gibbons said this morning that the petition was only the start of a concerted campaign to make school libraries statutory. “When it’s just the book world, particularly if it’s just libraries, the government feels less pressure than if it is a broad cultural movement supporting literacy,” he said. “That’s why I’ve been working on publishers, teaching professionals and public service unions.”

Last November Pullman told a comprehensive school in Chesterfield that it would become “a byword for philistinism and ignorance” if it went ahead with plans to close its school library. Since then, Gibbons said, there have been “worrying indications” that more school libraries are likely to close. “It’s nibbling at the edges at the moment but the signs are there that they are being cut down,” he said. “We want to at least get the discussion going about how to deal with it.”

The petition itself – which calls on the government “to accept in principle that it will make school libraries, run by properly qualified staff, statutory” – will run until December, but by the end of the summer school term Gibbons hopes to have consolidated the support of the book world and to have started soliciting support from community figures, faith groups and celebrities within the wider community.

Harry Potter creator JK Rowling, he added, was top of his list. “We don’t want to stand on the sidelines – we want to engage with government,” he said.

Libraries become the hip place to be

Posted on June 16, 2009 by slav

Interesting article in Sunday’s Age (the print headline was “Just quietly, libraries have become the place to be”, happily the online version is not so hung up with the ‘shush’ stereotype) on the growing popularity of libraries, including school and public libraries:

Libraries become the hip place to be

As exams approach, students cram at the State Library in Melbourne, but attendance at libraries is increasing in general. Photo: Pat Scala

John Elder

June 14, 2009

BOOK sales might be on the slide around the world, but borrowing from the local library is surging – and that’s the story whether you live in New York, London or . . . Korumburra in West Gippsland.

Victorian municipalities are following the global trend, with some libraries becoming as crowded as clubs.

On average, West Gippsland regional libraries have a third more members than they did a year ago.

The City of Port Philip boasts an 11,000 jump in membership, from about 61,000 to 72,000.

But the most dramatic surge of library patronage has occurred in the central business district, with the State Library recording more than 400,000 extra visitors in the past recorded year – with 1,147,000 visitors in 2007 compared with 1,570,000 in 2008.

A spokesman for the State Library, Matthew van Hasselt, was “reluctant to give just one reason for the gain, but I think the increasing numbers of people now living in the CBD are a factor”.

Apparently, inner-city residents don’t account for the astonishing but low-profile success of the obscurely located City Library. Set up five years ago as a joint initiative between the City of Melbourne and the Centre of Adult Education in Flinders Lane, the City Library had a record 70,000 visitors last month – 15,000 more than in May last year.

Says Barry McGuren, library services co-ordinator, City of Melbourne: “Last year, about 60,000 a month was the maximum. Why the leap? I think people are only now starting to find we exist as a library … and 75 per cent of those people aren’t city residents. They’re mostly commuting workers, students or visitors from the country. We also have between 3000 and 5000 homeless people who regularly use our services.”

The City Library has become so popular – with up to 3000 visitors in an hour during lunchtime – that the State Government recently co-funded an extension of weekend opening hours. “We used to close on Saturday at 1pm, now we’re open until 5pm. We’ll be opening on Sundays from August.”

Since late last year, various media bodies including The New York Times, The Denver Post and Bangor Daily News, have been pondering if the leap in library use is linked to global economic woes. Indeed, where many businesses are under threat, libraries are a growth industry such that the City of Melbourne is planning to open three new libraries in the next 10 years – in Carlton, Docklands and Southbank.

Says Barry McGuren: “We do get a lot of unemployed people coming into use the computers to look for jobs or work on their CVs, but I wouldn’t think the GFC (global financial crisis) has played a great role yet. We’ve seen a steady increase at our East and North Melbourne libraries … and I’d say that’s more about the fact that the population of Melbourne is growing.”

Online resources are having an undeniable impact on library popularity, and also how libraries are organised. This shift is most apparent in our schools.

Mary Manning, executive officer of the School Library Association of Victoria, says that most non-fiction and reference materials are accessed online in the school system, while bookshelves are laden with more fiction books than encyclopedias.

“We’re more likely to subscribe to an online encyclopedia than have a set of volumes on the shelves. It’s made learning much more proactive . . . and students feel much more excited using online resources. It also means they can easily communicate and workshop their ideas with fellow students at school, but also with students on the other side of the world. They’re not longer writing for the teacher, but for themselves.”

Ms Manning says it is now routine for students to be taught about intellectual property and copyright to avoid plagiarism issues.

Issuu

Posted on June 4, 2009 by slav

Issuu is an online magazine publishing/hosting service where you can publish your own magazines or read ones developed by other Issuu users.

: Issuu homepage

Here is an example of what Issuu offers readers, and the thought that school libraries could publish their handbooks and library guides through Issuu. Imagine how many trees we could save:

There are magazines covering approximately 20 languages, so Issuu could be great for LOTE classes. As with any resource, check first that what you plan to use is suitable for your students.

The Issuu website provides the following information:

Issuu makes your publications look good

Issuu turns your documents into beautiful online publications. Publish to an audience of millions and get your message across to anyone, anywhere. It only takes a minute and it’s free.

Features and benefits

Upload your documents and we turn them into professional online publications.

Enjoy the best reading experience online (fullscreen with crisp vector graphics).

Explore a living library with the web’s most interesting publications.

Post/embed your publications anywhere online (Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, etc.)

Get a high rank on Google and receive detailed statistics about your readers.

Create a custom viewer design and integrate your publications on your website.

Issuu is definitely worth investigating. It could be great for budding writers as well as publishing school anthologies or perhaps library guides and documentation. Issuu also takes your documents and turns them into PDFs ready for publishing on the Issuu website.

The current state of Australian school libraries

Posted on May 12, 2009 by slav

ASLA and ALIA have just released research findings on Australian school libraries and teacher librarians. A copy of the report can be accessed here. Alarming trends regarding budgets and staffing, but many people already knew that from their own school circumstances. As the ALIA website states, “School libraries are hovering on the poverty line.”

A similar tale in the May edition of the AEU News (Victorian branch). An article about teacher librarians is entitled “On borrowed time”. Read the article here.

School Library Association of Victoria

Tag Archives: school libraries