LISNews: Librarian News

Jackie Siminitus sent in word on her California School Library Media Centers and Academic Achievement study [It\'s a PDF] on issues, trends, and network applications. This is the first year K12 school library media centers were the focus.
Academic Achievement was the #1 issue, and other issues include, funding, staffing, space, technology and development.

Bob Cox sent This One in from The Christian Science Monitor that says The presence of Laura Bush – a former
school librarian – in the White House has
meant a big boost in morale for school
librarians. Yet despite such positive steps, many
librarians are feeling grim about the future of
their field. School districts across the
country are suddenly finding themselves
cash-strapped, and there are already signs
that budget cuts will hit librarians hard this
fall.
It\'s a sad little summary of the bleak budgets most of us are facing.

Mark writes \"When school officials arrived Tuesday morning they found that part of the ceiling in the library had fallen. Since it happened overnight no one was hurt.

Full Story, With Picture.

\"

Jeffrey Hastings writes:

A few weeks ago I posted an essay entitled \"Technology and The School Library: Great Expectations and Unexpected Consequences.\"

An unexpected consequence followed. People actually read the lengthy and rambling article--both on LM_NET and here--and wrote me to thank me for telling a largely untold story about the state of the school librarianship. I heard from lots of them. They told me that my career retrospective was \"eerily familiar\" because, they said, it was essentially their story, too.

In the essay I talked about facing the decision to quit school librarianship and retreat into classroom teaching after having faced a series of disappointments over the last decade. Though I mentioned a number of challenges and obstacles, most related to how technology, which presents so much promise and so many potentials to our profession in theory, had, in fact, had an adverse impact on both my ability to teach and my \"brick and mortar\" school library operation in practice. -- Read More