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…

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…

Not all volunteers respond the same way to the same stimuli. The purpose of this article is to suggest several ways to nurture volunteers in a library media center setting. Some might respond best to a printed word of appreciation or recognition in a district newsletter, while others would value a book or pin as a gift. Perks, like allowing…

Students' backpacks bulge not just with oversize textbooks, but with paperbacks, graphic novels, street lit, and electronics such as iPods and handheld video games. This book is about unpacking those texts to explore previously unexamined assumptions regarding their usefulness to classroom learning. With a strong theoretical grounding and many…

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…