School libraries remain a hallmark of society. They are places where all students are welcome to use the abundant resources available to them to research topics for class study or explore ideas about which they are curious. At some school libraries it is also a place where students meet with military recruiters, sit for college interviews,…

The role of the student worker is expanding in academic libraries. Their unique perspectives add valuable insights to the design and delivery of library services, project development, outreach activities, and operational planning. Student-workers gain internal and external benefits from working in peer-to-peer learning environments which also…

This article will describe how merging service points in an academic library is an opportunity to improve customer service and utilize staffing resources more efficiently. Combining service points provides libraries with the ability to create a more positive library experience for patrons by minimizing the ping-pong effect for assistance. The…

Hurricane Harvey dealt a devastating blow to the Pasadena Independent School District (PISD) community when it made landfall August 25, 2017, one week into the PISD 2017-2018 school year. Hurricane Harvey affected all PISD stakeholders and all campuses to some extent, displacing more than 2,000 district families and tripling the number of homeless…

Learning in makerspaces involves doing, playing, thinking, experimenting, creating, collaborating, mentoring, inquiring, problem-solving, producing, inventing, designing, building, and sharing (Loertscher, Preddy, and Derry 2013). Whatever the character of a makerspace, all makerspaces have the same goal: to actively engage students in open-ended…

Students look to their school library to find new books, seek information, creatively solve problems, and use technology. School libraries play an essential role in students' academic growth and development of lifelong learning skills. All of the wonderful resources and services that school libraries provide are easily accessible to the population…

The joint-use library is a place where people of all ages, interests, and income levels can find items of interest at no personal cost. The mission of A. H. Meadows Public and High School Library in Midlothian, Texas, is to offer what other public libraries provide: educational and entertainment resources to a community. Yet, the staff also wants…

Using concepts such as Design Thinking to create inquiry-based, hands-on learning opportunities centered on student ideation and creation, Lewisville Independent School District (LISD) in North Texas reimagined the role of library instruction through implementation of a Mobile Transformation Lab. The purpose of this lab is to serve the more than…

The academic library, given its often privileged position on campus, is the information source that can include directional as well as general campus facts among the myriad of print and e-resources for reference. Also, an academic library's audiences can be quite varied and include prospective students or parents seeking more general knowledge of…

As more students, faculty, and staff from traditionally underrepresented groups enter universities and colleges, academic libraries must find ways to reach out to these groups in order to better meet their unique educational needs. In this article, librarians from two large public universities describe how they used data about their communities to…

This article explores the possibility of using eReaders in the schools of the Houston Independent School District (HISD), specifically the Barnes and Noble Nook Pilot Project. HSID initially approved only an eReading device that was not wireless since it is very strict on the devices granted access to the wireless network. The biggest roadblock…

Research libraries have long invested in approval plan services, which offer an economical way to acquire scholarly and scientific publications. Traditional approval plans have evolved and now enable libraries to expand their e-book offerings to better serve researchers. Publishers offer a myriad of e-book purchasing options. These range from…

How will your library serve mobile device users? By building apps from scratch? By offering entirely separate content? Or by modifying your site for mobile devices? This author found that the best fit for a joint library serving Victoria College and the University of Houston-Victoria was to build a mobile website in HTML and CSS using mobile…

In this article, Summer Creek High School (Harris County, Texas) librarian, Louise Lankau shares a formula for successfully integrating technology via the school library and reaching every department and teacher in a school of 2,500 students and 170 teachers. The challenge is that the teaching staff at Summer Creek increases each year to…

A makerspace is a place where makers can envision a project, find an expert, and create something. Libraries have always held programming during which patrons were able to come in and create. The makerspace at the Lamar Middle School in Flower Mound, Texas, is available for students every day, so that they can daily create and play with innovative…