Although April is National Poetry Month, poems are for any time... and all the time... and sharing poetry should be part of the library experience. Before we ask students to write poetry, however, we need to read poetry to and with them. We also need to provide opportunities for them to browse the poetry section and select poems to read to each…

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…

Published children's literature in the United States overrepresents some identities while underrepresenting others, such as people of color, LGBT people, people with disabilities, people who live below the poverty line (Crisp et al., 2016), and more. Thus, some children may not encounter text representative of their identities. As literature can…

As libraries adjust to the needs of the 21st century, there needs to be a different way of thinking in regards to its design. School libraries have traditionally been designed as large rooms for the storage of materials for research and pleasure reading. As more and more districts focus their attention on digital acquisitions, the need for storage…

This article defines the elements of Access Services, explains the importance of those aspects in the library, and proposes a course centered on Access Services for library schools. The areas of circulation, interlibrary loan, course reserves, collection maintenance, and public relations are core components of Access Services. Each of those…

J. Linda Williams was coordinator of school library services for Anne Arundel County Public Schools prior to her retirement. She served as AASL President 2005-2006 and is also a past president of the Maryland Association of School Librarians. Looking back on her 2005-2006 term as AASL President, Williams writes that she feels that particular year…

Today's school library uses an increasing number of digital resources to supplement a print collection that is moving more toward fiction and literary non-fiction. Supplemental resources, including streaming video, online resources, subscription databases, audiobooks, e-books, and even games, round out the new collections. Despite the best…

Over the years, the authors have asked their readers and colleagues to join them in creative and flexible thinking exercises to help reinvent or re-energize the work that needs to be done in school libraries. Their work to conceptualize a school library responsive to client needs and global changes erupted from this exercise nearly six years ago.…

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…

Fourteen scholarly papers and eight abstracts comprise the content of the twenty-second annual Brick & Click Libraries Conference, held annually at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri. The proceedings, authored by academic librarians and presented at the conference, portray the contemporary and future face of…

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…

Although it has been argued that school libraries are important for supporting the reading engagement of pupils who receive free school meals, to date there has been little analysis of the extent to which use of school library spaces is related to these pupils' reading behaviors. We analyzed data from 6,264 children and young adults in the United…

Learning is a constant in today's library world. Not only the students who use the school libraries, but the adults who facilitate the learning progress of these students are enticed, encouraged, and yes, sometimes, even forced to learn new things at alarming rates. Professional development (PD) must occur regularly in order to keep the library…

School librarians can assume an important role in preserving and perpetuating the oral tradition. The same skills and techniques when telling a personal story can be transmitted to telling various kinds of stories from literature and history. For school librarians to be successful storytellers, they need to select stories that they like and enjoy…

This author states that a professional focus on evidence based practice (EBP) for school libraries emerged from the International Association of School Librarianship conference when he presented the concept. He challenged the school library profession to actively engage in professional and reflective practices that chart, measure, document, and…