The Future of Libraries ~ Week6#15

These articles give great perspectives on the future of libraries in relation to technology while updating definitions and revising paradigms. When Rick Anderson talks about the "just in case" collection it reminded me of a conversation I had with a social studies teacher who suggested that the majority of the school library's budget be spent to buy fiction to support the English department's SSR program and let the internet support non-fiction needs. Anderson's comments validated this idea as students want access to all materials and not only those in print. Many older teachers still have their students choose a certain number of print sources, but tech savvy students go to Amazon, copy the bibliographical information for a book to meet the requirement without ever purchasing, checking out, opening or touching the book.

Last year the library moved to a newly renovated library media center and it was the perfect opportunity to change its image. In addition to 70 computers, we have a mulimedia classroom that is used by school and community groups. But the biggest realization wasn't the stuff that was in the new building, but the resources (me) that always said yes to a project and pursued a way to get it done, never said no to a group who wanted to use the facility and juggled schedules to get it to work (most of the time), and time spent researching new technology (often through this Web 2.0 exploration) to help teachers and students get the most out of the "stuff" we had.

This year I proposed to my principal that our teachers work through the 23 things on our minimum day Monday inservice days. So I will start by showing the video "A Vision of K-12 Students Today" http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=d1296214afd7cc367045 to inspire my teachers to want to become more technoliterate to facilitate learning in their 21st century classrooms. Even as we are in the midst of Library 2.o, we need to prepare our students for the "experience" of Library 4.0 as previewed by Dr. Wendy Schultz in her article.