Not your grandma's librarian

Not your grandma's librarian - Scholastic Administrator
Hell, it's not your older brother's librarian! - The Blue Skunk

Very heartening to see the article "Meet Your New School Library Media Specialist" in the February issue of Scholastic Administrator magazine. AASL President Sara Kelly Johns and ISTE CEO Don Knezek (whose librarian wife, Jana,  seems to have trained him well) are quoted extensively.

The article included questions from South Carolina's ADEPT professional development system that administrators can use when interviewing LMS applicants. Worth a look.

Nothing revolutionary here for those of us involved on a daily basis with professionally current library media specialists, but it's great to see this in a publication aimed at administrators.

I've been following Justin Medved and Dennis Harter posts over on Dangerously Irrelevant this week (Part 1, 2, 3, 4). Justin and Dennis are tech integration specialists (as I understand it) at the International School of Bangkok. It is really fun to watch techs see The Light on the Road to Damascus - that the most powerful use of technology in schools is in helping make students information literate. They write:

Over the school year we ... came up five essential questions that we felt addressed the core elements of a comprehensive technology and learning curriculum - one focused on the thinking that was needed for the 21st century learner, rather than the technology.             

• How do you know information is true?      
• How do you communicate effectively?      
• What does it mean to be a global citizen?      
• How do I learn best?      
• How can we be safe?

Something we librarians seemed to have understood for at least the past decade. Mike Eisenberg and I wrote the first version of this in 1996! I am not saying this to in any way diminish the great work of the team at ISB. We all have to experience our own epiphanies - nobody can give one. I like the simplicity of your approach.

But my question for Justin and Dennis is "where has your school's librarian been in your lives that you are just now figuring this out?!" And if s/he's been telling you about this stuff, why have you not been listening?

How many 'puters should your library have?

These sorts of e-mails are always interesting and challenging:

Our [high] school is in the process of redesigning the library and I was hoping you could help us out. As we look at our plans for the new space, we want to make sure we have enough computers.  However, through researching this topic, I haven't found an exact answer.  Is there an exact answer?

Our population is 1740 and as of now, we will have 125 computers (a mix of laptops and desktops) in the new space.  Is this enough?  What does best practice say? 

I responded: 

I don't know that there is a hard and fast rule about how many computers ought to go in a library. It depends a great deal on your school program/philosophy (project-based teaching needs more), other computer resources available (do you have computer laptop carts, other labs, classroom computers), the media center staffing (don't put in more computers than you can supervise), size of your student population, class size, etc. Do you plan to begin a 1:1 laptop program in the near future? Do allow/encourage students to use their personal computing devices?

I believe for schools not in a 1:1 program, a 1:4 ratio of computers to students is now about standard. I am not aware of any national standards that are sufficiently quantitative to refer you to. Have you checked to see if your state has standards for this?

I would strongly recommend having two separate computer "areas" - one dedicated to library research resources/catalog access for general library users, and a second or additional areas for whole class use/instruction. We tend to set these off with windows so the area is a part of the library, but there is noise containment. Might you also need a separate production lab for high-end computing needs like video rendering?

Whatever you decide, make sure it is JOINT decision reached by teachers, administrators and parents (even students), not a recommendation made only by the library staff.

I am not very pleased with my suggestions. Blue Skunk readers, your advice on how many computers should a library contain?

 

Lunches and libraries

Jeff Hastings sent this great (and saddening) post to LM_Net and has graciously given me permission to repost it here.

...lunches and libraries. This is a topic well worth revisiting often because schools are becoming more rigid and inflexible with each passing year it seems, and accommodating walk-in traffic during lunch periods is so, well, FREE, ELECTIVE, and NON-PRESCRIBED that it can be difficult to pull off in increasingly locked-down institutions...

You know, everyone seems to want our school libraries facilities to include a Starbucks and a stage for folk quitarists these days, and I'm all for kicking back our buttoned-down reputations, [as long as I can station a tip jar on the circ desk] but it's good too, to survey the realities we're up against.  Here are some of mine listed totally anecdotally:

1. I was really surprised once when one of my most faithful patrons, a kid who hung in the library during his lunch period each day, was "busted" by a teacher. The teacher -- who was also a lunch supervisor -- tried to explain to me that the boy "was hiding in the library to avoid going outdoors." Apparently this was somehow deemed severely dysfunctional. The kid was a great reader, by the way, and repeatedly this scholarly ectomorph was literally dragged out of the facility kicking and screaming by said, burly, lunch supervisor. I admit, I passively, umm, forgot to bar the kid from hanging for a few minutes each day and reading his way through noon. I also admit that I came to find witnessing this absurd cat-and-mouse game to be quite entertaining--not unlike Pink Panther cartoons can be if you're in a certain mood.  Anyway, the point here is that, for reasons sometimes unfathomable to us, NOT ALL ADULTS NECESSARILY WANT KIDS IN THE LIBRARY DURING LUNCH. This includes parents, teachers and administrators. I've found this to be the case more often than one would think.
2. WHICH IS WHY I now operate my library facility in a sort of DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL fashion during lunchtime hours. Meaning that, with a tacit nod from my principal, I cheerfully allow kids to pop in during lunch, though I have also been asked not to actively promote the facility as a lunchtime refuge, probably for some of the reasons I'll try and remember to mention below. The basic philosophy: allow anything that does not become a problem.
3. THE LAISSEZ-FAIRE THING only goes so far, though: I've found myself quietly contacting parents now and then to say hello and let them know how nice it is to play host to their son or daughter during the mid day hours. I tend to do this, especially, with kids who eschew lunch completely, to see if there are dietary concerns to discuss. Parents universally appreciate this kind of contact, by the way.
4. THE CUSTODIAL ANGLE. Here's news: We're not exactly rolling in school funds here in Michigan and that translates into less and less custodial help. Our cleaning staff was privatized lately in an effort to squeeze still more Pine-Sol out of the old mop. Even before that dire move took place, I was approached by our day custodian who demanded that I STOP LETTING KIDS EAT IN THE LIBRARY. The problem had nothing to do with the students being little piggies--they were actually neater than I'll ever be. The problem was that the remnants of their lunches --due to the dearth of custodians -- had plenty of time to rot and even ferment between garbage pick-up, attracting all sorts of rodentia and even a few really desperate alcoholics.
5. THE STAFFING ANGLE. Man, I had no idea how wonderful I had it back in the 1990's. Back then I had a full time library secretary, which gave me tons more flexibility to serve multiple patron groups simultaneously. These days, I have secretarial back-up in the afternoon hours only, which means that when I am actively teaching classes during a.m. hours, including early lunch periods, I have no choice but to close the facility to other traffic for lack of supervision and staffing at the desk. My lunch kids have grown used to the idea of looking for the closed sign on the door, but I REFUSE TO GET USED TO THE IDEA OF PUTTING IT THERE.
6. THE PASS THING. The hall pass is still the golden ticket of student mobility and, in terms of lunch traffic, the question is who grants a pass to a kid who wants to hit the library during lunch (which translates into: who is responsible for kids in-transit) There doesn't seem to be a perfect answer for that one, so I'd be interested in hearing from colleagues about that. I'm really lucky to be positioned directly across from the caf: We get long lunch lines and kids can pop out of them and visit us for a while instead. I've also had to chat it up with some of the lunch supervisors to let them know that it is quite okay for them to allow students to cross the great divide and visit us.
   

...I look forward to hearing from others and maybe brewing a more even-handed and realistic discussion about what school libraries can and cannot do within the current exigencies many of us are forced to work within.

Jeffrey Hastings,
School Librarian,
Highlander Way Middle School
E-mail: hastingj at howell schools dot com

My question: Is there a formal means of giving a wide range of stakeholders a voice in policy-making for libraries? Is Jeff's school, like many, "ruled" by only a few pushy folks? How are they counter-acted? One way is here: http://dougjohnson.squarespace.com/dougwri/advisory-advice.html