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The Internet Archive, in conjunction with 150 libraries, has rolled out a new 80,000 e-book lending collection today on OpenLibrary.org. This means that library patrons with an OpenLibrary account can check out any of these e-books. The hope is that this effort will help libraries make the move to digital book lending. "As readers go digital, so are our libraries," says Brewster Kahle, founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive

Thanks to Public Library Services and SA's public libraries, anyone with an SA public library card can now access full 'page-by-page turning' electronic versions of the Advertiser and the Australian for free. www.libraries.sa.gov.au

"What Makes a Great Teacher? Image credit: Veronika Lukasova Also in our Special Report: National: "How America Can Rise Again" Is the nation in terminal decline? Not necessarily. But securing the future will require fixing a system that has become a joke. Video: "One Nation, On Edge" James Fallows talks to Atlantic editor James Bennet about a uniquely American tradition-cycles of despair followed by triumphant rebirths. Interactive Graphic: "The State of the Union Is ..." ... thrifty, overextended, admired, twitchy, filthy, and clean: the nation in numbers. By Rachael Brown Chart: "The Happiness Index" Times were tough in 2009. But according to a cool Facebook app, people were happier. By Justin Miller On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math. One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor's math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked. The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so. Video: Four teachers in Four different classrooms demonstrate methods that work (Courtesy of Teach for America's video archive, available in February at teachingasleadership.org) At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools-not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it's worth noting, not a very hard one). After a year in Mr. Taylo

"The annual Horizon report, released June 29 by the nonprofit New Media Consortium, examines the trends and technologies that will shape primary and secondary education over the next five years. It references libraries as being at the forefront of maker spaces, which are among 18 major trends that include the rise of STEAM education: the intersection and importance of science, technology, arts, engineering, and math. The Horizon Report broke down challenges to school technology adoption into three categories: "solvable," "difficult," and "wicked," representing a range of difficulty to implement over the next five years. The "solvable" problems reflect what many libraries are already doing, like focusing more on blended learning and STEAM. The "wicked" problems were far more dramatic: shifting toward deeper learning approaches and rethinking the role of school itself."

A report, released by American Library Association (ALA) President Molly Raphael, regarding meetings with e-book distributors during the Public Library Association (PLA) Conference, March 13 - 17.

"The days of being shooshed in the library are well and truly over at The Illawarra Grammar School. After a $1 million facelift, the school's staid old library reopened this week as a bright, open space where children are allowed to draw on walls, watch TV, play games, gather to chat, or wander around on their own while listening to stories on headphones."

Stop moaning about saving libraries and use that creative energy to embrass the new and better ways and find cheaper and more effective ways to do what librarians do. Brilliant.

" The nominees for the annual Teens' Top Ten have been announced today in honor of Celebrate Teen Literature Day by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). Nominations are posted every year on Celebrate Teen Literature Day during National Library Week. This year, the nominee list features 28 titles that were published between Jan. 1, 2012 and Dec. 31, 2012. The nominees can be found below on the Teens' Top Ten website www.ala.org/teenstopten and on the new teen friendly Teens' Top Ten website http://www.ala.org/yalsa/reads4teens.

"The Library as Incubator Project describes makerspaces as: Makerspaces are collaborative learning environments where people come together to share materials and learn new skills… makerspaces are not necessarily born out of a specific set of materials or spaces, but rather a mindset of community partnership, collaboration, and creation."

Electronic resources represent an increasingly important component of the collection- building activities of libraries. "Electronic resources" refer to those materials that require computer access, whether through a personal computer, mainframe, or handheld mobile device. They may either be accessed remotely via the Internet or locally. Some of the most frequently encountered types are: E-journals E-books Full-text (aggregated) databases Indexing and abstracting databases Reference databases (biographies, dictionaries, directories, encyclopaedias, etc.) Numeric and statistical databases E-images E-audio/visual resources

This series of tutorials is brought to you by Baltimore County Office of Library Information Services. On the wiki you will encounter the tools of the new Internet: Web 2.0 tools that are bringing our students in touch with the entire world through social networking, video, audio, and gaming sites. There are nine tutorials, each of which focuses on two - three Web 2.0 applications so there are 23 Things for you to do. There are many places for you to explore, experiment with, and think about creative ways to use this in your library or to collaborate with classroom teachers.

Post from lybrarian "The replacement for OverDrive digital AUDIOBOOKS is going to be Recorded Books OneClick Digital. The State Library of Kansas is currently testing this new-to-us service and there are several libraries across the nation already using it. She then lists a few examples

Libraries and schools that lend Kindles to users might be interested in this new service from Amazon that just launched.

The Bodleian library republishes a rediscovered volume of how the "canting crew" spoke. The cant was the secret language of the rogues, beggars and vagabonds who peopled the underworld of early England. The word 'slang' itself is not recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary until 1756

Purpose: This lecture, reflecting on future roles, posits the potential dawning of a "great age of librarians," if librarians make the conceptual shift of focusing on their own skills and activities rather than on their libraries.

"According to School Library Journal's 2012 School Technology Survey, media specialists are leading the charge to bring new media, mobile devices, social apps, and web-based technologies into our nation's classrooms."

Each week we will place a new post accessible through the tab on the top of the page labelled 'further instructions', which will give a little run down of the week's activity.

The Victorian DEECD portal to high quality teaching and learning resources for schools. It enables teachers to Find, Use and Share Education resources. It is open to all teachers anywhere in the world and is located at www.education.vic.gov.au/teacher. It is free to use and managed by the Victorian Education Department. FUSE connects teachers to resources from across the world, Connect, Digilearn, Knowledgebank, the Learning Federation content and thousands of web resources recommended by Victorian teachers. In addition, it contains new resources provided by trusted education partners such as National Gallery of Victoria, the State Library, Museum Victoria, and Zoos Victoria. There are also access pages for students and early childhood children.