The standards specified in all academic areas have risen to educational prominence and mandates to meet these standards have changed the face of American education for all educators. The positive ways by which emphasis on standards has changed the face of the library program are discussed and the challenges posed are presented.

Department of Education has created a report card with a star rating system, which would assist parents in evaluating the local schools in Minnesota. Schools should not concentrate only on the stars that are test-based but should also consider other criteria like the quality of the library program.

It has been the author's good fortune to have had the experience of working with amazing clerks, secretaries, and media paraprofessionals throughout his career. In his experience, students rarely differentiate between the library professional and paraprofessional. The most accurate description of how most paraprofessionals are treated is "benign…

The library media specialists are a critical factor in a school's survival, especially as the staff works to strengthen reading comprehension across all classrooms and disciplines. Brief summaries to clarify what is involved in each strategy of the six prime strategies of library media specialists are described, which can help the school to…

The strategies to be followed by a Library Media Specialist when his or her position is reduced due to budget reductions or reorganizations in the school district are discussed. The strategies include, learning the timeline for district budget adjustment project, distribution and discussion of library advocacy information with building…

In this article, the influence of timesaving and inspiring reference technologies on the field of reference services is assessed. Library media specialists are advised to be aware of and embrace such emerging technologies, as these will enable them to make information gathering effective and efficient and create information-literate students.

The process of retrieving information from reference sources can be a problem for young students due to differences in terminology. Pointers on how library media specialists can assist young children to acquire information from sources are provided.

Collaboration between classroom teachers and library media specialists will help overcome problems of increasing workload faced by teachers, students and parents in the aftermath of the No Child Left Behind program. One such experiment resulted in transforming a tedious assignment into an exciting and memorable project.

Recently a public librarian e-mailed the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA)about teen problem behaviors at the library--excessive noise, profanity, vandalism, the works. Anthony Bernier, director of teen services at the Oakland (CA) Public Library, came to the teens' defense. He charged that some librarians "cultivate, exaggerate, or…

The Huntington is a great library set in a magnificent arboretum with trees from around the world. Yet its resources, like those of other libraries, do not match its needs. Important holdings remain uncatalogued and inaccessible to scholars. Many collections were more accessible before they were given to a library, where they can sit for an…

Before the author became an acquisitions editor for Libraries Unlimited, she worked as a teacher and teacher librarian in Kansas for thirty years. The books and articles that she found helpful were always those written by excellent practitioners in the field. These were the people that really had something useful to share. In this article, the…

In the fall of 2002, the author conducted brief surveys of the teacher and teacher-librarians in her graduate cataloging class and in a colleage's media selection class to learn whether and how government documents are used in the schools where these students were employed. The schools included in the surveys were in several central Minnesota…

Evidence-based practice is a process used in the helping professions to systematically improve results by focusing on one child, patient, or client. Although not widely used in the school library profession, evidence-based practice could be used to provide a strong foundation for the teacher-librarian's role in student achievement. The process of…

Four years ago, teacher staffing at the author's grade 6-8 middle school was reorganized so that the library could be open and staffed with a teacher-librarian for the entire school day. However, this required that the library program be part of the delivery of preparation time for the staff with some classes time-tabled with one 50-minute period…

Sixteen years ago, the author was the sole librarian at a suburban Chicago elementary school, teaching 24 classes a week to 450 students. She was overwhelmed and alone, and there was nobody in the building who really understood what she was going through. Although she regularly met with 15 fellow district librarians to review broad topics such as…