According to a report by PEN America, 40% of banned and challenged books have BIPOC protagonists, and 41% have LGBTQ protagonists and/or LGBTQ major plots or themes. Librarians know that censorship is bad. Censorship surges in school libraries are not a new or uniquely 2020s problem. In the early 1980s, the American Library Association's (ALA)…

School librarians, because of their role in their learning community, are uniquely situated to support and facilitate student learning through collaborative partnerships with other educators. This kind of collaborative work is built into the work of school librarians, exemplified in the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) shared…

Digital citizenship should be an embedded component of all curriculum. In order to teach students to be empowered digital citizens, school librarians must use their libraries as safe spaces to explore the layers of digital citizenship. Through classroom discussions, online learning, and unplugged activities, learners can engage with aspects of…

School librarians often find themselves betwixt two different worlds that come with quite varied expectations. They are seen as the arbiters of traditional learning and academia, with library spaces providing books and quiet places for self-enrichment and study. They are also often given the responsibility of being the building's technology…

Christie Kaaland shares the journey of Washington state's school library legislative advocacy that has led to passage of eight legislative bills. The article stresses the importance of having a full legislative advocacy team including a lobbyist, knowledgeable practitioner advocates, and external champions.

In an era where information is both abundant and increasingly complex, school library media centers (LMCs) serve as hubs for learning, creativity, and critical thought. Yet, little to no data exist describing the state of school LMCs in Minnesota. During the 2023 Minnesota legislative session, Minnesota's Multicounty Multitype Library Systems…

Purpose: This paper reviews the corpus contained in the Knowledge Bank of Australian and New Zealand School Libraries (KBANZSL) to explore the under-researched history of Australian school libraries and teacher librarianship. Through the analysis of publications in the knowledge bank, new insights into the history of school libraries and teacher…

As learning environments shift toward meeting the needs of an increasingly diverse student population, empathy is becoming an important tool for instructors. Empathy deepens the connection between students and instructors. This connection can also emerge in the library, where librarians are teaching students in a variety of contexts, from the…

Relationships are all about connection. Teacher librarians are more effective at positively impacting learners when they have established relationships with them. There are a myriad of ways to build these bonds, and even small efforts can yield great results. In this article, the author presents the power of relationships when building bonds with…

Over the past 20 years, school libraries have gone through a significant digital transformation reflecting a broader shift in education and information access. Traditional card catalogs have been replaced by online databases. Hardcover A-Z encyclopedias have given way to digital versions with numerous additional online research tools. Literature…

This article describes the process and strategies used in Arkansas to make the "AASL National Framework for Learners" the basis for the state's learning standards for school libraries. In addition, it provides details on the plan for helping school librarians fully implement the newly revised state standards into their curriculum.

The National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) is a national non-profit organization that works to make media literacy highly valued and widely practiced as an essential life skill in every school, library, community center, and home in our nation. They define media literacy as the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and…

School libraries are vital to any comprehensive approach to literacy instruction. School librarians directly support learners' reading success by enabling both access and motivation to read a range of texts and other informational materials. Moreover, school librarians collaborate with classroom teachers to provide resources and programming that…

In this article, the author examines how school librarianship has changed, but also remained the same over time. School librarians consistently hold to core values of collaboration, learning, equity and inclusion, access and literacy amidst changes in the landscape--technology, materials, school expectations, and student needs.

This group of school librarians from across the country answer questions from "how do you approach collection development," to "share a story of a book you added to your collection that had a meaningful impact on a student," as well as preparing for challenges and the importance of EDI in collection development.