LISNews: Librarian News

The Executive Board of the American Library Association approved
the establishment of a certification program for library support staff
at its Monday, July 13, meeting in Chicago. The LSSC Program is the
first national, voluntary certification program for library support
staff. Funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library
Services, the program will now enter a testing phase in five library
organizations across the United States.

Camilla Alire, ALA president, said, "This innovative certification
program demonstrates the value of all library support staff to our
national association and to our nation's libraries. LSS are critical to
the success of our libraries in meeting the needs of our users."

Candidates must demonstrate achievement of six sets of competencies. Three of the sets, Foundations of Library Service, Technology and Communications and Teamwork are required. Candidates must also demonstrate achievement of three sets chosen from seven additional competency sets. Candidates will either complete approved courses or submit portfolios that demonstrated their achievement.

Here is the document that was approved by the Executive Board.

The University of Wisconsin System School Library Education Consortium has been awarded almost $1 million to help school librarians become better versed in technology and social media such as Twitter.

The United States Institute of Museum and Library Services Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program will award $989,495 that will be used to train 50 new school library specialists for Wisconsin’s rural and high-need urban public schools. This was the only grant awarded in Wisconsin. More from Bizjournals/Milwaukee.

I wonder if Laura tweets?

"Google announced a new search feature that makes it easy to find and compare public data from sources. In the first launch, the data are produced and published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau's Population Division. There are statistics for prices of cookies, CO2 emissions, asthma frequency, high school graduation rates, bakers' salaries, number of wildfires, and the list goes on.

For example, go to Google.com and type in [unemployment rate] or [population] followed by a U.S. state or county; you will see the most recent estimates and then get an interactive chart that lets you add and remove data for different geographical areas. Users can customize the graphs and share them with others."

Read the full article in the latest issue of the Weekly News Diget from Information Today at: Google Introduces Public Data Search Feature

Susan Davis teaches a library-science class at Drexel, where enrollment in the program has grown more than threefold since 2000. Retirements are opening jobs for librarians.

The enrollment surge is at least partly the result of a report in Library Journal magazine, which suggested in May 2000 that two in five library directors were planning to retire by 2009. In June 2005, the Institute of Museum and Library Services in Washington responded by announcing $21 million in additional grants dedicated to recruiting and educating a new generation of librarians. Since 2003, the Free Library has received nearly $3.5 million in similar funds as part of the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian program.

Full story here.