This article reports on selected results of a comprehensive survey of children's reading in England, carried out online in 2005 by the National Centre for Research in Children's Literature at Roehampton University. With 4182 responses from children living in England aged from 4 to 16 years, the survey is a follow-up to a similar study completed in…

A hallmark of school library media best practice is for the library media center to be open and accessible to patron use before, during, and after the school day and throughout the entire school year. Anecdotal evidence and informal discussion among school library media specialists indicate that library media facilities are sometimes used for…

There are plenty of reasons why teaching students to set up their own blogs should not be taught by school librarians. But the truth is, not all students have access to that out-of-school technology world. ELL students and kids from lower-income homes are unlikely to have the Internet at home. As much as school librarians promote and encourage…

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) have both recently launched new standards. These are known as the "AASL Standards for the 21st-Century Learner" and "The National Educational Technology Standards for Students: The Next Generation" (NETS). The standards from each…

School Library Journal's 2007 Leadership Summit, "Where's the Evidence? Understanding the Impact of School Libraries," focused on the topic of evidence-based practice. Evidence-based school librarianship is a systematic approach that engages research-derived evidence, school librarian-observed evidence, and user-reported evidence in the processes…

School is sometimes framed as a place for preparing, a place for becoming college and career ready. At times this approach positions school as an important space "within" the world of college and careers, envisioned perhaps as Dewey imagined it, as a safe place to try things, a space where real work of participation in society could be done but in…

In October 2007, the Oregon Association of School Libraries (OASL) invited the author to speak at their annual conference. The question they asked him was, "What information literacy and library research skills do academic librarians think entering college freshmen should have?" The author investigates this question in his home state of…

Some essential components of "keeping current" with trends and new developments in the school library field for library media specialists includes attending conferences and reading professional literature. Beginning in May 2007, one article on "keeping up" each year has been devoted to summarizing the major themes in conferences and professional…

A library at Sycamore High School in Ohio, by its location in the center of the academic wing, encourages students to drop in on an informal basis. (Author/MLF)

A description of a learning center program for the school media center. (Author)

A successful program to increase library use was complimented by a year-end raffle to encourage the return of overdue books. (PF)

Ways are suggested for improving relations between the school library, teachers, and administrators and for increasing the library's contribution to instruction. (PF)

Based on definitions of a machine-readable data file (MRDF) taken from the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, second edition (AACR2) and Standards for Cataloging Nonprint Materials, the following recommendations for processing items of computer software are provided: (1) base main and added entry determination on AACR2; (2) place designation of form…

In Mesa, Arizona, the media center is the spiritual and physical heart of the educational program. (Author/PF)