Teachers and school librarians know that giving students the freedom to choose what to read from a variety of materials is the most effective way to foster a love of reading. Curiosity, pre-existing interests, or even a desire for connection cause students to reach for books that inform instead of entertain. But a genre of books is often left out…

The relationships school librarians develop with administrators and teachers can serve as a powerful advocacy tool in demonstrating the tremendous potential they have as instructional leaders of multiple literacies in K-12 schools. Through the author's experience and research, this article presents principles that may help guide school librarians…

As classroom teachers face continued pressure due to prescriptive standards and high-stakes testing, school librarians continue to look for ways to make learning more dynamic and authentic for the diverse students in our schools. However, adolescent literacy research as a field operates largely apart from the research about school libraries and…

As an educator who recognizes the critical role of librarians and the too few conversations among literacy researchers and librarians, in this article the author presents a unifying conception of literacy, a conception to buttress collaborative efforts to support all students. The first section uses the experiences of David (pseudonym), a…

Information literacy instruction continuously adapts to changes in the information environment, whether those changes are small and focused on a regularly used tool or much broader in scope. What is harder to conceive of and implement are more radical, overarching shifts. These transformations go far beyond introducing new and revised tools or…

Participatory culture, in which citizens feel and exercise the agency of being cocreators of their culture and not just passive consumers of culture created by others, depends on widespread literacies of participation. One can't participate without knowing how. And cultural participation depends on a social component that is not easily learned…

School librarians and teachers are working together in a national movement to bring digital and media literacy to all citizens. When people think of the term "literacy," what generally springs to mind is reading and writing, speaking and listening. These are foundational elements of literacy. But because people use so many different types of…