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Jenny Odau

AASL Blog - 16 views

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    In July, 2011, the AASL Board approved the Position Statement on Labeling Books with Reading Levels. The AASL position statement defines standard directional spine labels and compares them to reading level labels (associated with computerized reading programs) as they are often applied in school libraries. The statement also offers suggestions for concerned librarians to be aware not only of the possible negative effects of these  labels on children as they browse, but also offers suggestions for voicing those concerns. There are proponents and opponents to how computerized reading programs are implemented in schools and their effects on school library collections and students' free access to books of their choice.  A school librarian (name withheld) shares this story of how labels affect students' choices in her school. "Recently I helped a student who came to me while his class was in the library browsing. As the librarian of a middle school library, I often see situations such as this one. The boy had been most recently reading about George Washington and Ben Franklin. His class assignment that day was to checkout two computerized reading program books within his tested reading level and thus was "allowed" only one free choice book. "But I'd rather not have to check out labeled books and there are some books I'd like today that don't have the dots or reading level labels on the backs of the books. Does that mean Ican't check them out?" he asks me. The boy went on to say that he'd rather be allowed to check out three books on his favorite non-fiction topics, regardless of reading level. As he expresses his frustration, he lowers his voice and moves toward a corner of the library where there are no other students. "I'm a pretty good reader," he said quietly, "and I really like reading about the American Revolution. But I have to stay within a certain range. I can't find many books in my reading level that are really interest
Celia Emmelhainz

Can We Talk About the MLS? | Editorial - 0 views

  • Public libraries in rural areas really don’t have a large enough donor base to make extensive fundraising worthwhile. The other problem public libraries have with outside fundriasing is that if you start taking in a lot of major gifts and donations, then your steady stream of revenue, the local government, may just wind up cutting your funding.
    • Celia Emmelhainz
       
      True with school libraries as well; can't fundraise because can't lose current funding, but then feel sense of lack of control over revenue streams? = ick.
  • “Students who pick their major based solely on postgraduation salaries, as opposed to passion for a field, will in all likelihood struggle in both school and career.”
  • would agree that public librarians questionably need a library specific degree, or a degree at a graduate level anyway, as evidenced by the wealth of paraprofessionals who often do at least as good a job in that setting, though for management I think you would want someone trained in public management with library experience. In an academic setting, there is a credibility issue that begs credentialling in the areas of research and education, and credentialling to a higher standard than is now present in library schools, hence the inadequacy of the degree university libraries particularly, or at least that degree alone. The degree needs to be reinvented and would best partner to at least confer joint degrees in librarianship and business, education, and other disciplines
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  • The piece I was missing was how to develop workable ideas that were well researched and aligned with the basic tenants of Librarianship.
  • philosophy and values of librarianship. It also grounded me in supervisory skills, in library management, and collection development.
  • Paraprofessionals here have been the ones leading the discussion on topics such as fair use, copyright, RDA, cataloging standards, FERPA, etc. There are several levels of paraprofessionals from pages/shelvers, circulation desk workers, catalogers (copy & original), acquisitions, IT Systems, ILL , etc. MLS Librarians are mostly reference & instruction positions, collection development and/or managers. Education is absolutely needed for some positions, but experience should be recognized as well. Our newly hired MLS people would be lost try to perform original cataloging, acquisitions/budget or ILL just as the paraprofessionals may lack the knowledge in instructional pedagogy, management/leadership, etc.
  • Much of my practical learning during grad school came from my classmates that had worked in libraries for years and were just then getting the degree. They had a MUCH better context for what was going on than I did at 23 and straight out of my undergrad
  • Require the masters in a specialized field rather than the MLIS. That could definitely work in academia. And you can require directors and managers to have the MLIS, but not necessarily the librarians at the reference desk or running a department like circulation.
  • But why do acquisitions, CD, or e-resources librarians need the degree? Those are practical jobs, that you do need practical experience for.
  • Any self-starter with a library job could easily supplement training and hands-on experience with reading books from leaders in the field on the subject, starting a blog, getting involved in conversations in the library community.
  • But for colleges, this becomes a game of perpetual growth – to secure funding and improve programs, we need more students, more alumni to donate! Job markets shrink, shift and dry up all the time, but rarely does a degree program shrink proportionately
  • Why I couldn’t pick up a book here, attend a webinar there, and get the same place eventually through grit and dedication like the librarians just a generation before me.
  • I am a Library Director in a hamlet (pop 3,000) in NH. The likelihood of my ever advancing to a larger library is categorically denied by that degree requirement. It doesn’t matter what experience I bring. Paying for another degree (I have a B.A. and an M. Div.) is out of the question for me, and, certainly, out of the question for the trustees of the library I serve
  • Laura is correct – being in a rural library is actually very challenging. There are far fewer resources for our patrons – so good luck directing them to the resources they need.
  • The public school teachers (including the school librarians) in my area have a starting salary that is about $10,000 higher than the starting salary of the public library system. Yet only the school and (some) public librarians are required to have a Masters before applying for their jobs
  • They are responsible for recruiting too many librarians, and the schools need to take responsibility for over saturation. If not, how are they any different than for-profit colleges or career colleges.
  • This is a women’s profession. Women are not valued. Hence any professional education we may have is useless in the eyes of…. us. Ah, feminism we’ve come so far. I realized when I went to library school that it was merely a sham union card for a lowly paid job.
  • Library school does need to emphasize more about management – not just one class. This is what will make us more useful. The best library directors are those who kept their libraries afloat during the economic downturn. This is because they have the fundamental ethics of a librarian coupled with mad management skills.
  • This isn’t just in the public sector. Academic librarians have crazy politics to wade through as do school librarians.
  • What if we migrated from our current degree to a B.A. in Education (with a focus on libraries); an M.A. in Education (with a focus on a particular library type or area); and a Ph.D. in Education (with a narrow focus on a particular library type or area)? This would also serve to define who we are (educators) and what we do (education: through self-directed, research assistance & instruction, instructive & enlightening experiences
  • Honestly, I privately refer to this as my fake master’s degree.
  • There is no unified body to convince that the MLS is somehow superfluous to needs; you have to convince these individuals, 99% of whom have an MLS and probably can see the value in it.
  • When I first became a librarian, I found that my past experience working in a bookstore was far more valuable to me than my MLS program.
  • For many, it clearly does not provide necessary or useful theory and practice opportunities.
  • I think some programs, like the one I attended, relied a lot on theory, and that meant that my dream, of creating better technology, was not quite realized as I needed the practical skills at building technology
  • A classmate of mine jumped ship and attended a business school in New York, and now works at Goldman Sachs…I stayed on board hoping to do meaningful work; that hasn’t quite happened yet, really because of the emphasis on theory..I think my classmate saw the writing on the wall and made a smart calculated move; I do not like to start something and leave it unfinished,
beth gourley

The Library in the New Age - The New York Review of Books - 0 views

  • four fundamental changes in information technology since humans learned to speak.
  • around 4000 BC, humans learned to write.
  • the invention of writing was the most important technological breakthrough in the history of humanity
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  • second technological shift when the codex replaced the scroll sometime soon after the beginning of the Christian era. By the third century AD, the codex—that is, books with pages that you turn as opposed to scrolls that you roll
  • eventually included differentiated words (that is, words separated by spaces
  • other reader's aids
  • codex, in turn, was transformed by the invention of printing with movable type in the 1450s.
  • technology of printing did not change for nearly four centuries, but the reading public grew larger and larger, thanks to improvements in literacy, education, and access to the printed word.
  • fourth great change, electronic communication
  • movable type to the Internet, 524 years;
  • writing to the codex, 4,300 years;
  • codex to movable type, 1,150 years;
  • would argue that the new information technology should force us to rethink the notion of information itself.
  • Internet to search engines, nineteen years
  • search engines to Google's algorithmic relevance ranking, seven years;
  • continued at such a rate as to seem both unstoppable and incomprehensible.
  • continuity I have in mind has to do with the nature of information itself or, to put it differently, the inherent instability of texts.
  • every age was an age of information, each in its own way, and that information has always been unstable.
    • beth gourley
       
      premise
  • pace of change seems breathtaking:
  • news has always been an artifact and that it never corresponded exactly to what actually happened.
  • News is not what happened but a story about what happened.
  • aving learned to write news, I now distrust newspapers as a source of information, and I am often surprised by historians who take them as primary sources for knowing what really happened
  • newspapers should be read for information about how contemporaries construed events, rather than for reliable knowledge of events
  • We live in a time of unprecedented accessibility to information that is increasingly unreliable. Or do we?
  • as messages that are constantly being reshaped in the process of transmission
  • Instead of firmly fixed documents, we must deal with multiple, mutable texts. By studying them skeptically on our computer screens, we can learn how to read our daily newspaper more effectively—and even how to appreciate old books.
  • Unbelievers used to dismiss Henry Clay Folger's determination to accumulate copies of the First Folio edition of Shakespeare as the mania of a crank.
  • When Folger's collection grew beyond three dozen copies, his friends scoffed at him as Forty Folio Folger.
  • eighteen of the thirty-six plays in the First Folio had never before been printed
  • only two were reprinted without change from earlier quarto editions
  • extual stability never existed in the pre-Internet eras.
  • Piracy was so pervasive in early modern Europe that best-sellers could not be blockbusters as they are today
  • They abridged, expanded, and reworked texts as they pleased, without worrying about the authors' intentions.
  • question in perspective by discussing two views of the library, which I would describe as grand illusions—grand and partly true.
  • o put it positively, there is something to be said for both visions, the library as a citadel and the Internet as open space.
  • We have come to the problems posed by Google Book Search.
  • Google proposal seemed to offer a way to make all book learning available to all people, or at least those privileged enough to have access to the World Wide Web
  • will open up possibilities for research involving vast quantities of data, which could never be mastered without digitization
  • Electronic Enlightenment, a project sponsored by the Voltaire Foundation of Oxford
  • scholars will be able to trace references to individuals, books, and ideas throughout the entire network of correspondence that undergirded the Enlightenment
  • notably American Memory sponsored by the Library of Congress[1] and the Valley of the Shadow created at the University of Virginia[2] —have demonstrated the feasibility and usefulness of databases on this scale
  • will make research libraries obsolete
  • 2. Although Google pursued an intelligent strategy by signing up five great libraries, their combined holdings will not come close to exhausting the stock of books in the United States.
  • 1. According to the most utopian claim of the Googlers, Google can put virtually all printed books on-line.
  • If Google missed this book, and other books like it, the researcher who relied on Google would never be able to locate certain works of great importance.
  • On the contrary, Google will make them more important than ever. To support this view, I would like to organize my argument around eight points.
  • For books under copyright, however, Google will probably display only a few lines at a time, which it claims is legal under fair use.
  • 3. Although it is to be hoped that the publishers, authors, and Google will settle their dispute, it is difficult to see how copyright will cease to pose a problem.
  • But nothing suggests that it will take account of the standards prescribed by bibliographers, such as the first edition to appear in print or the edition that corresponds most closely to the expressed intention of the author.
  • Google defines its mission as the communication of information—right now, today; it does not commit itself to conserving texts indefinitely.
  • it has not yet ventured into special collections, where the rarest works are to be found. And of course the totality of world literature—all the books in all the languages of the world—lies far beyond Google's capacity to digitize
  • Electronic enterprises come and go. Research libraries last for centuries. Better to fortify them than to declare them obsolete
  • 5. Google will make mistakes.
  • Once we believed that microfilm would solve the problem of preserving texts. Now we know better.
  • 6. As in the case of microfilm, there is no guarantee that Google's copies will last.
  • all texts "born digital" belong to an endangered species
  • 7. Google plans to digitize many versions of each book, taking whatever it gets as the copies appear, assembly-line fashion, from the shelves; but will it make all of them available?
  • 4. Companies decline rapidly in the fast-changing environment of electronic technology.
  • No single copy of an eighteenth-century best-seller will do justice to the endless variety of editions. Serious scholars will have to study and compare many editions, in the original versions, not in the digitized reproductions that Google will sort out according to criteria that probably will have nothing to do with bibliographical scholarship.
  • 8. Even if the digitized image on the computer screen is accurate, it will fail to capture crucial aspects of a book.
  • ts physical aspects provide clues about its existence as an element in a social and economic system; and if it contains margin notes, it can reveal a great deal about its place in the intellectual life of its readers.
  • Rare book rooms are a vital part of research libraries, the part that is most inaccessible to Google. But libraries also provide places for ordinary readers to immerse themselves in books,
  • Meanwhile, I say: shore up the library.
  • I also say: long live Google, but don't count on it living long enough to replace that venerable building with the Corinthian columns.
  • he research library still deserves to stand at the center of the campus, preserving the past and accumulating energy for the future.
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    The library as citadel and as the open internet both play an important and distinguishable role.
Robin Cicchetti

Do School Libraries Need Books? - Room for Debate Blog - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • constant need to acquire new books
    • Robin Cicchetti
       
      Still need to acquire digital versions. The spending doesn't disappear with the paper.
  • more efficient to work online
  • went beyond stacks and stacks of underutilized books.
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  • Our library is now the most-used space on campus, with collaborative learning areas, classrooms with smart boards, study sections, screens for data feeds from research sites, a cyber cafe, and increased reference and circulation stations for our librarians. It has become a hub where students and faculty gather, learn and explore together.
    • Robin Cicchetti
       
      This is a perfect description of a learning commons.
  • But they need more help from librarians to navigate these resources, so we have also increased our library staff by 25 percent.
    • Robin Cicchetti
       
      Relevance is what saves and builds programs and protects budgets.
  • Cushing Academy today is awash in books of all formats. Many classes continue to use printed books, while others use laptops or e-readers. It is immaterial to us whether students use print or electronic forms to read Chaucer and Shakespeare. In fact, Cushing students are checking out more books than before, making extensive use of e-readers in our library collection. Cushing’s success could inspire other schools to think about new approaches to education in this century.
    • Robin Cicchetti
       
      Diversity of format, open access, increased reading.
  • Holding a book in our hands, we orient ourselves within a larger system.
    • Robin Cicchetti
       
      Strong sensory and nostalgic connections to books and the idea of reading.
  • Who wrote that? Where are the competing voices? How is it organized? By what (and whose) terms is it indexed? Does it have pictures? Can I write in it myself?
    • Robin Cicchetti
       
      Is critical thinking enhanced by one format over another? I think these skills apply to all formats.
  • knowledge is proximate
    • Robin Cicchetti
       
      Why is knowledge proximate? Global awareness is a goal for every student. What about POV?
  • The digital natives in our schools need to have the experience of getting lost in a physical book, not only for the pure pleasure but also as a way to develop their attention spans, ability to concentrate, and the skill of engaging with a complex issue or idea for an uninterrupted period of time.
    • Robin Cicchetti
       
      It is possible to get lost in text, no matter the format. We see it every day. Students engrossed reading off their iTouch, desktops, laptops, Kindles and Nooks.
  • The printed word long ago lost its position of eminence in the American library.
    • Robin Cicchetti
       
      Studies indicate people are reading more than ever - but not from paper.
  • The tangibility of a traditional book allows the hands and fingers to take over much of the navigational burden: you feel where you are, and this frees up the mind to think.
    • Robin Cicchetti
       
      So many references to the tangible experience of paper. Nobody comments on how heavy a book is, how you can't take that many on your suitcase for vacation because of the weight, or holding it in bed at night. If we are going sensory, I'd rather pack/hold a Kindle.
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    Debate on traditional vs. digital reading continues.
jenibo

Locus Online Perspectives » Cory Doctorow: Libraries and E-books - 9 views

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    "The age of austerity has not been kind to libraries, and in many places they are the last ''storefront'' that still tries to put books into the hands of readers. Treating them like a captive market to be exploited is a huge - and potentially fatal - mistake on the part of publishers. If publishers wanted to get something truly valuable out of libraries, they could do no better than to help create a free, open alternative to Overdrive that gives them the data they need to compete with the e-book retailers and frees the libraries from their expensive circulation-management burdens."
Nancy Prentice

21st-Century Libraries: The Learning Commons | Edutopia - 0 views

  • Libraries are reinventing themselves as content becomes more accessible online and their role becomes less about housing tomes and more about connecting learners and constructing knowledge.
  • Libraries are reinventing themselves as content becomes more accessible online and their role becomes less about housing tomes and more about connecting learners and constructing knowledge
  • Printed books still play a critical role in supporting learners, but digital technologies offer additional pathways to learning and content acquisition. Students and teachers no longer need a library simply for access. Instead, they require a place that encourages participatory learning and allows for co-construction of understanding from a variety of sources.
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  • the space does include paper books and physical artifacts, as well as flexible furniture and an open environment, digital content encourages students to explore, play, and delve deeper into subjects they may not otherwise experience
  • a flexible space with moveable chairs, desks, and even bookshelves. Small rooms can be opened up to allow for group projects, and the circulation desk as well as the sides of the stacks are writeable with dry-erase markers to encourage the collaboration and sharing that the previous space had discouraged.
  • the role of the coffeehouse in the birth of the Enlightenment -- it provided "a space where people would get together from different backgrounds, different fields of expertise, and share."
  • interact with the content, the technology, the space, and each other in order to gain context and increase their knowledge.
  • Students and teachers no longer need a library simply for access. Instead, they require a place that encourages participatory learning and allows for co-construction of understanding from a variety of sources.
Carla Shinn

Catching Up With The Kids: Moving School Libraries Into The New Media Era - 45 views

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    Libraries have done a world of good for schools. They provide a self-directed learning environment and a quiet place to work and study - not to mention the wealth of carefully organized stories, articles, reference materials and other information for students to use whenever they need it. It's no secret that the library is essentially a campus warehouse for media products. Trouble is, media is changing....
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    I heard that a lot of school libraries closed recently. That's too bad. Maybe this could help school libraries alive.
Allison Burrell

Swap4Schools: Donate Books, CDs, DVDs, Media to Classrooms and Schools at swap.com - 0 views

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    Haves and Wants. That's what swapping is all about. Schools don't just have "wants," they have needs. During these difficult economic times, school budgets have been cut, libraries are out of date, and teachers usually have to resort to buying their own classroom books and other resources. Swap.com has over one million members that have listed over 2.5 million items they have to swap. Our community is based on sharing; swapping stuff people have for stuff people want. Swap4Schools is an initiative designed to match swappers' Haves with schools' Wants. It's that simple. If you are a school employee, create a free account, build your want list and donations of books, movies, etc will come to directly to your school. If you are a swapper, there is no better feeling than knowing your unused item will help educate kids across the country.
beth gourley

Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories - 0 views

  • The man shrugged and replied, �In a year, the king may die. In a year, I may die. In a year, the horse may talk!�
  • Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories.
  • connects the information people and the story people
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  • May 15, 1924 issue of Library Journal, Helen E. Haines wrote about contemporary fiction
  • It offers constant problems and perplexities
  • strong role in domesticating
  • Booklist, Bill Ott, likes to say that librarians are divided into information people and story people
  • Librarians, historically, have been at the place where new formats and new technologies happen to people in their daily lives.
  • Plato was concerned that the new-fangled idea of writing stuff down would dilute scholarship and make men lazy
  • even the best of writings are but a reminiscence of what we know, and that only in principles of justice and goodness and nobility taught and communicated orally
    • beth gourley
       
      I thought perhaps she would extend the You-Tube example back to the oral and getting away from the written word
  • change is our only certainty
  • argued between those who consider all fiction foul or useless and those who see no harm in it at all
  • Jamie Larue, director of the Douglas Public Library in Castle Rock, Colorado, calls librarians �the keepers of the books, the answerers of questions, and the tellers of tales.
  • Our job is to keep ideas and make them available.
  • Le Guin's words remind me of is how important it is to keep ideas that we do not comprehend, or believe in, or agree with; to keep them safe, and to keep them available. If librarians don't do this, who will? There is no other profession enjoined to preserve and disseminate all the truths of humankind that is our job.
  • also need to remember that some ideas thought worthless today may turn out to be the bedrock of tomorrow's truths
  • available not just good ideas and noble ideas, but bad ideas and silly ideas and yes, even dangerous and wicked ideas.
  • librarianship is the connecting of people to ideas
  • readers need to have available to them truth in all its myriad guises, light and dark, easy and difficult
  • core values of librarianship are access and service
  • always like to mention a few books that I think my audiences would enjoy
  • Susan Patron's The Higher Power of Lucky.
  • Ann Bausum's With Courage and Cloth
  • Guy Gavriel Kay's Ysabel
  • nformation person and a story person
  • Technology is our campfire. Change is what happens:
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    ©2007 GraceAnne Andreassi DeCandido MLS
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