Six Ways To Become More Indispensable
Six Ways To Build Your PLN Using Twitter Since becoming active on Twitter over the past year and a half, I have noticed some best practices that users with a large following seem to have in common. There are many benefits to having a larger professional personal learning network (PLN).
School Library Snapshot
Thank you for participating in School Library Snapshot! Now more than ever, school librarians are critical to student success and it is equally critical that we showcase that value. The Library Snapshot is a project that originated with the New Jersey Library Association and New Jersey State Library in 2009.
Toolkits
Open Educational Resources (OER) Toolkit School librarians have observed open educational resources (OER) take root in higher education and have grappled with how to translate the OER movement to K–12 educational settings. The AASL OER Implementation Task Force’s charge was to position school librarians in OER efforts that will help extend their role as leaders within their schools, align with the AASL Standards, and provide professional development and make school libraries Future Ready. This toolkit can be used to help school librarians understand the process of curating and creating OER for their school, district, and/or state. Developing Inclusive Learners and Citizens Activity Guide
AASL Advocacy Resources
What Is Advocacy? Definitions developed by the AASL Advocacy Committee. Events Information on AASL sponsored events including Banned Websites Awareness Day and School Library Month. Intellectual Freedom
Information Prescriptions: Tools To Support Students’ Library Skills
Have you ever had a student arrive at your desk and your gut tells you they need more help than they are letting on? If so, information prescriptions may provide a remedy. Our inspiration came one evening after we caught a news feature about a local university teaching hospital offering information prescriptions, which doctors give to increase their patients’ understanding of a diagnosis or condition. The patient and family librarians at the hospital began offering information prescriptions as a targeted method for providing patients and their caregivers research-based information related to their illness or injury, treatments, and care.
Ten Things Your Administrator Needs to Know as the School Year Begins
10. That you are a teacher who teaches not content but process. You teach children to be information literate, digitally literate, media literate, and visually literate.
A Letter to my Colleagues
As I begin to think about the start of the school year my focus is on how to create positive momentum. I like to make sure that my colleagues view the library the same way I do. A few years back, one of my mentors, Cheri Dobbs (@CheriDobbs) suggested I write a letter to my colleagues to explain my vision for the library.
Computers in Libraries 2017
Thank you to all of the attendees, speakers, and exhibitors who helped to make this year's event a success! Stay tuned for updates on the 2018 event! Congratulations to the winner of the Amazon Echo from the Spring into Action and Win prize program - Laurie Gaillard from Southern University at New Orleans! There are many excellent libraries as well as a myriad of innovative and engaging services in the information world these days. What strategies, learning, training, partnering, out-of- the-box thinking and borrowing from other industries will enable all libraries to be excellent in their communities? Computers in Libraries is a must-attend event and caters to all interests and all levels of knowledge while providing many exciting networking opportunities.
Giving Data Some Soul
Carolyn Foote At the 2014 Internet Librarian Conference, held in Monterey, CA (October 27–29), EBSCO user experience researcher Deirdre Costello shared the company’s efforts to delve into the research habits of teens. EBSCO researchers conducted one-on-one interviews, and they also sent video cameras to students so they could create their own research video diaries. The shared results could have been interesting, but dry. However, the EBSCO team chose to capture their results in the jargon of “Harry Potter.” It was so memorable that without consulting my notes, I can recall the three types of teen researchers they identified: Hermiones, who use every research tool well and listen to instructions; Rons, who rely on the Hermiones to help them through the research project; and Nevilles, who only get good at research once they find their true passion in a subject—and then blossom.
5 Ways to Advocate without Being in Your Face
Recently, a colleague and friend reminded me that sometimes the louder we get the less people listen. As librarians we know the importance of advocating for our profession. It is our responsibility to share with others what we do to help students and how this looks different from librarians of the past. Since we are often the only person in our building who does our job we have to be careful how loud we get.
