Why School Librarians are Even More Important in the Digital Age

After last week's school budget meeting, I feel it's more important than ever to get the word out about what we do.  This article, sent out yesterday by Sara Kardasz, SSLMA president, explains why school librarians are even more important to students' learning in the digital age.  And the comments are good reading also.

 

http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/22/moran-librarian-skills-intelligent-investing-google.html?boxes=Homepagecomments

 

And here's the NY Times article referenced in the Forbes piece, which includes a great video of Rosalia, a NYC SLMS, in action.  These lessons and concepts are very familiar to those of us teaching at the intermediate level, but it's validating to see it being hailed in the NY Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/16/books/16libr.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=school%20librarians&st=cse

Oh, and hot off today's email, Sue Lercher sent this link:

http://fno.org/mar2010/still.html  Why We Still Need Libraries and Librarians.  

Welcome fellow school librarians!

I'm creating this blog for two reasons.  First, full dislosure, I'm leading a workshop in April, 'Cloud Computing - Using Google docs for Librarians and Teachers', and I wanted to use as many of the free tools Google has to offer as possible, before then.  Two, I have a fantasy of this being a repository of the great ideas, lesson, links, resources that we, the school library media specialists in the Commack School District, have been sharing all year, either in conversations, emails, meetings, etc.

Although, it's been a wild and crazy year at the MSIS library, especially for the three librarians travelling in to teach part-time, I feel I've benefitted from the sharing of ideas, lessons, and resources that takes place every week, out of necessity in this situation.  And I hope Ellen, Terry and Sue have also.

The only problem is that some of the ideas and resources get lost in the email history, or in my dwindling memory capacity.  So perhaps we could start blogging our great ideas here.  I don't want to add to the already full load everyone has, but if you have a resource you've used successfully, or a great article to share, think about posting it here.  In the meantime, stay dry and enjoy the week!