The release of AASL's "Standards for the 21st-Century Learner" and "Empowering Learners: Guidelines for School Library Media Programs" has provided school library media specialists with the opportunity to "develop new visions for learning" (AASL 2009), and to rethink what their roles are, and what skills and characteristics are required of them to…

In this time of change in our society, children's needs, preferences, and interactions with the world are changing. These changes have sent education policymakers scrambling to two extremes. The first extreme, a focus on testing and basic skills, seeks to ensure that all children leave school with equal knowledge and preparation for the workplace.…

As a middle school librarian in Austin, Texas, the author has been running weekly book clubs for years, which covered many genres that appeal to a wide cross section of kids. When approached by a group of Latino boys from low-income families, the author was inspired to run a Bluford High book club for reluctant readers. The author shares how she…

Nothing comes closer to "the truth" than a primary source, even a primary source with wart--biases, narrow-minded interpretations, and historical inaccuracies. Students who learn to apply critical thinking to the analysis of primary sources also learn to situate sources within the broader historical context, test hypotheses, form their own…

Over seventy percent of students who are deaf or hard of hearing will attend a public school and enroll in a classroom with their hearing peers or in a self-contained classroom with other deaf and hard of hearing students. Teacher-librarians who work in these schools can improve their instruction by understanding not only what it means to be…

In the rapidly changing globalized world, school librarians cannot prepare today's students for every possible outcome, but they can give them the skills that will make them adaptable in 21st-century learning and work settings. The mission for school library programs is to ensure that students are effective users of ideas and information by being…

What specific learning behaviors are important to students and faculty members? Does the campus provide spaces that foster these behaviors? Where are those spaces? Asking these three questions at six colleges and universities reveals notable differences in the ways students and faculty members answer them. Student and faculty member answers also…

American education is failing many students, but especially students of color, from low-income families, with disabilities or those who have limited English proficiency. These students are the focus of "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB), the 2001 revision of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), which was signed into law…

Beyond acknowledging for spatial--more specifically map--literacy to the intellectual development of lifelong learners, teachers need to know how they might teach these tools. This article describes a collaboration to help teachers integrate spatial literacy in the school. The author suggests excellent web resources that supported an integrated…

Three hosted federated search tools, Follett One Search, Gale PowerSearch Plus, and WebFeat Express, were configured and implemented in a school library. Databases from five vendors and the OPAC were systematically searched. Federated search results were compared with each other and to the results of the same searches in the database's native…

Educational needs assessments (hereafter NAs) are inattentive to cost considerations and are frequently dominated by elite stakeholder groups. In this article I make a case for adopting a cost-utility approach, illustrating the argument with data generated in a NA of central library services in a Canadian school district. Using survey data from…

In this article, the author discusses collection development. Collection development is the one professional activity that allows librarians to define the coin of their realms: the content and kinds of materials they can offer the patrons they serve. Collection development begins with a collection development plan that underscores the mission of…

In this article, the author describes five lessons which focus on skills that students will need in any library. The following lessons should be taught during first semester to first-year middle school students: (1) Locating books at the library; (2) Locating databases at the library; (3) Locating encyclopedias at the library; (4) Locating…

With the explosion of technology, librarians are not the only ones who sometimes feel that reading has taken a backseat as a recreational activity. Readers are not reading like they used to. However, while overall readership is down in almost every demographic group, African-Americans, a faction traditionally considered reluctant readers, are…

Teachers are generally kind and nurturing people. Students who plagiarize their assignments from these kind and nurturing teachers are often given a second chance when caught and encouraged to do their work over, but it would be better to eliminate their need to plagiarize. The first tip for eliminating plagiarism has not so much to do with what…