“Well you would have thought I was lying down taking a nap. Everybody that walked by my door …  made a comment. “I’m going to give you a job.” “If you’ve got time to read, I’ve got something for you to do.” etc. Next time, I’m going to go hide behind the stacks to read!”

“I don’t give a hoot what people think of me or what I am doing. When I have received a remark about “wouldn’t it be nice if…. [one could read on the job]?” I have responded. “Yes it is very nice.” If I am feeling a little nasty or don’t like the tone of the remark, I have responded “I would be more than happy to get you some information about a library school …”

“I made it a point to always be busy, to be seen to be doing something. (It was NEVER of case of having to find something to do, it was a case of which job was most pressing.) I did this because its the kind of person I am, but also because of the extremely negative comments I heard about a predecessor of mine who was often seen reading the newspaper or a book, “on the job”.  Sadly, the general public or faculty will never understand that keeping up with current events, what’s new and valuable in literature, non-fiction, professional journals, etc. is part of the job. Their view will always be ‘I never have time to take a breath. How come he can sit and read all day?’ or ‘We didn’t get a raise this year and we’re short a math teacher… and we pay him to sit and read?’  Now, imagine those thoughts in an administrator’s head.”

1. Talk about what you do in the teachers’ lounge at break and lunch time. And yes, you should be taking breaks and lunch. Talk about what you are doing at staff meetings and before and after school. No hiding your light under a bushel.
2. Send out a regular newsletter to your staff about the neat things you are doing with classes and teachers, new resources, and handy hints. If teachers don’t seem to be reading it, try Alice Yucht’s technique of taping the newsletter to back of the stall door in the faculty restroom. She calls this her “toilet paper.”
3. Track the use of your resources and send summaries to your staff. Let people know circulation figures, numbers of kids using the media center, how many lessons taught, webquests created, book talks given, and new materials processed. Don’t just share this with your principal – let the whole staff know.
4. Try documenting student skill attainment using evidence-based practice techniques. What did the kids learn? What were the assessment tools used? What did you learn as a result? Share your findings at staff meetings.
5. Share how you spend your budget and solicit input for acquisitions. Nothing like a clear accounting using a spreadsheet to let others know that you are spending resources to support their goals.

We all need to work with the understanding that perceptions are as important as reality in our profession. And how we as individuals are perceived is how our whole profession is viewed.

I suppose I should stop reflecting with my eyes closed – it might be perceived as napping.

Darned perceptions!

• Think of the library as her program where she sets all the rules, knows all the best practices, and owns all the materials.
• Invite children into the library, but when they actually get there, set rules and expectations that make them feel uncomfortable, even unwelcome.
• Place more emphasis on getting stuff back and keeping it in order than getting it out and into kids’ hands.
• Consider the only productive behaviors in the library to be academic in nature. Pursuits of self-interest are simply a waste of resources.
• Assume that kids who like getting information in ways other than reading are rather slow. Oh, and treat them that way. Let it be known that books are superior to technology in every way, under every circumstance.
• Spend a lot of time making sure the cataloging meets standards. Stay in the back office while doing so. Don’t let people say “anal retentive” like it’s a bad thing.
• Ban the copy/paste command. Make students work for their plagiarized term papers!
• Ban cell phones. Ban mp3 players. Ban personal laptops. Ban games.
• Block YouTube. Block blogs. Block chat. Block games. Block Google Images. Block joke sites. Set as many rules on computer use as possible. For first time misuse, take away computer privileges for a minimum of a year.
• Only select and book talk items he likes to read. Make sure he ignores any nonfiction titles. Claim graphic novels are the devil’s handiwork.
• Make sure her library goals in no way relate to building or district goals.
• Assume teachers who do not want to collaborate are bad teachers and treat them as such. Assume administrators who do not automatically value the library are dolts and troglodytes and treat them as such.
• Always advocate for what is in the best interest of the library - not the library user.
• Never accept a task that she considers beneath her professional dignity - teaching a class, hosting a study hall, monitoring a test, keeping a website up-to-date, or managing a network.
• Develop an adversarial relationship with as many people as possible. Key are the principal, the custodian, the secretary and especially the technology director.
• Learn to play good cop/bad cop with the library aide, with the librarian being the bad cop.
• Make sure she is very, very fussy about her job title.
• Consider everything a collaborative effort, and take no responsibility for that which could be directly attributed to or blamed on him.
• Develop a good relationship with parents - after she finds out her job may be cut.
• Whine. At every opportunity.
  

Remember to invoke the pernicious imps of Fear, Powerlessness and Defensiveness at every opportunity. A confident librarian, one that both children and adults like and respect, is among the worst of Our enemies! If Earth is ever to truly become the devil’s playground, nasty concepts like critical thinking, tolerance for a diversity of opinions, the ability to empathize with others, and intellectual freedom must be stamped out faster than prison-made license plates.  With even the least diligence and effort on your part, libraries which support these heresies can be rendered ineffectual by the simple corruption of a single soul.


Fire up, Wormwood! Fire up! Get these librarians in your schools heading down the wrong path. And do make sure it is “down.”



Insincerely,

Screwdisk

2.    Concordance searching.
Google’s “Book Search” and Amazon’s “Search Inside the Book” allow users to search by term or phrase the entire texts of books. Why should my catalog not allow internal searching of books in my local collection? As I remember, scanning an entire book for the Book Search project costs Google about three dollars. For my unique titles, spending a couple bucks to make them accessible is a reasonable investment.

3.    User defined tags.
The ability to add personal descriptors of items stored on websites like del.icio.us and Flickr have made the Dewey Decimal System and Library of Congress subject headings look rigid and antique. Students and staff should be able to define materials in the library in ways that have personal meaning to them. (Similar to Harry Potter. Jane recommends. Good for Mr. Smith’s physical science class rocks and minerals unit.)

4.    User reviews, readers’ advisory service and online book discussions.
Even the most dedicated library media specialist can read and recommend a finite number of titles. Online sites like Shelfari <www.shelfari.com> “make it easy to see what your friends are reading, what others with similar tastes have enjoyed, and even get and give book recommendations.” Amazon, of course, encourages reader reviews and makes recommendations for future reading based on an individual’s past reading history. As Jacquie Henry suggest in her Wanderings blog, should her catalog be asking:

How about……. “people who checked out this book, also checked out these other books….”
How about …. “let us know what you think about this book”.
How about ….. “join a chat/discussion group about this book.”

5.    Ready-made citations.
Why not have the functionality of the  NoodleTools <www.noodletools.com> bibliography composer built into your catalog? For those of us who never really got the hang of APA or MLA or whatever, it would be a blessing. It would take away some of the suspicion that academic research is best left to the most anal-retentive of society.

6.    User networking tools.
Customizable social network spaces like Ning and tools like wikis make online collaboration on projects made simple. When offered in-house as a part of the library automation system or in a stand-alone application, such tools allow students to continue working and learning 24/7.

7.    Seamless interface with student information system to facilitate data mining.
Allow searching and sorting by NCLB “student groups” to track circulation. Can I demonstrate that my efforts to get more books in the hands of our ELL students have been successful?

8.    No cost to our libraries.
Perhaps we need to reexamine the financial model for how we pay for our library automation systems. Most of us are accustomed to web resources that come at no direct expense to us. They may be supported by advertisements or by premium subscribers wanting more features. While this is not my favorite idea, being able to apply more of my library budget to purchasing materials rather than on automation software or annual maintenance is appealing.

We are indeed starting to see some of these features in current library systems. But are they coming fast enough?

Our students are accustomed to having these tools and features on web sites they already use. If their library resources are to remain relevant to them, shouldn’t we offer these things as well? How do we make authoritative sources as easy to find and access as the questionable materials? And how to we appeal to the social natures of our Net-Gen patrons and help develop their collaborative skills?

We as school library media specialist need to be more vocal, more demanding of our circ/cat providers. Now - before we become completely irrelevant to our students.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead

People use this term to describe every imaginable combination of individuals with an interest in education—a grade-level teaching team, a school committee, a high school department, an entire school district, a state department of education, a national professional organization, and so on. In fact, the term has been used so ubiquitously that it is in danger of losing all meaning.

“teachers in a school and its administrators continuously seek and share learning and then act on what they learn. The goal of their actions is to enhance their effectiveness as professionals so that students benefit. This arrangement has also been termed communities of continuous inquiry and improvement…

The requirements necessary for such organizational arrangements include:

• the collegial and facilitative participation of the principal, who shares leadership - and thus, power and authority - through inviting staff input in decision making
• a shared vision that is developed from staff’s unswerving commitment to students’ learning and that is consistently articulated and referenced for the staff’s work
• collective learning among staff and application of that learning to solutions that address students’ needs
• physical conditions and human capacities that support such an operation (Southwest Education Development Laboratory, “Issues About Change,” Vol 6. No 1, 1997) <www.sedl.org/change/issues/issues61.html>

• Social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us or furl are a great way for these study groups to collect, share and organize websites dedicated to educational research that address specific educational areas. Lists of web resources can be collaboratively compiled, annotated, tagged and shared with all members of the PLC – and with other educators who are attempting to solve similar problems in their own schools.  If the PLC is to be research-driven, having research commonly available is a rather nice thing.
• Wikis can be used for a variety of PLC purposes. Jointly created and edited, pages of group norms, goals, data, activities, and descriptions of specific techniques can be created quickly with little technical sophistication needed on the part of the group members. Wikis can comprise an unlimited number of pages, and can contain links, documents and graphic materials.

33% of online teens share their own creations online, such as artwork, photos, stories, or videos. Lee Raines, Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2006

Author hereby grants to Publisher all right, title, interest in and to the Work, including copyright in all means of expression by any method now known or hereafter developed, including electronic format…

The Author hereby grants the Publisher the exclusive right to the first publication of the Work in the ________ (date or volume) edition of  ____________ (title of publication) in print format only. This exclusive right extends for 90 days after publication, after which the Author may republish the Work in any format or resell to any publisher. A separate permission must be granted for any use of the Work in any other issue of the publication, in any other publication, or in any other format. The Publisher may not resell the Work or grant permission to any other entity to use the Work without the Author’s written consent. The Author retains exclusive copyright ownership of the Work.

• Professional associations like ALA and ISTE are using the world to offer seminars, forums, and social events. Hear experts and chat your colleagues.
• Teachers are conducting online classes where their avatar works with the avatars of their students, using chat and multimedia support materials.
• Libraries are recreating their images in Second Life. Check the InfoIsland blog <www.infoisland.org> for the latest happenings in virtual library land.

Multi-user virtual reality environments (MUVEs) will continue to expand and evolve, playing a major role in the future of the Internet. Our students are already using MUVEs for entertainment and social networking. Although there are issues that emerge with the growing pains of any new technology, virtual reality environments provide a compelling approach to learning, collaborating, and creating new knowledge.

Education Technology Solutions (Australia), Vol 22. (May 2008)

Our technology department here in the Mankato Area Public Schools (Minnesota, USA) likes what we call “wins” – projects that actually result in a large number of staff members using and benefiting from a technology-based resource we’ve helped put in place.

Like all technology departments, we have finite resources, both human and capital. We’ve invested in projects that really take off – and unfortunately a few other projects that have crashed with a resounding, and sometimes expensive, thud! Those “thuds” most memorable include:

• Digital Video Editing (1996) At this time we had a young and ambitious video tech on staff who wanted in the worst way to replace our analog editing equipment with the latest in digital editing software. We spent about $13K for a system that just never did work quite right. The tech became so frustrated (and probably tired of my questions) that she quit and the equipment sat unused. iMovie made an appearance not long after, and the rest is history. What did we learn?
• Don’t buy a technology that is so complicated only a single person can run it. Or cross train if you do.
• Don’t try to fix it if it isn’t broken. Our analog system couldn’t make someone disappear in a shower of sparkles from a scene, but for about everything else it worked fine.
• Interactive Television (1999) At the cost of about $20K (from a grant, not local dollars), we installed an interactive television hook-up in our district staff development room. Other than one university course, an after school advanced math class, and a few meetings, the equipment did not get used and we removed it after two years. We now use other ITV facilities in town for meetings when needed. What did we learn?
• Don’t build it and hope they will come. They won’t come.
• Don’t assume that just because others use a technology, you need it too. Our smaller neighboring districts use ITV for offering classes that the single small district alone can’t provide. They use it to give high school students the chance to take college courses. Mankato doesn’t really have low incident classes because of the size of our high schools and we have several colleges within easy driving distance for kids wanting classes at that level.
• Don’t forget to take entrenched interests into account. Offering Japanese sounds like a wonderful idea until your current world language teachers see it as competition to their own job security.
• Data-mining (2001) We contracted with a regional tech center to develop a data ware-housing, data-mining solution. About six months into the project, the tech center closed. We found another developer. He bailed after deciding his company would rather focus on online testing. Total lose of funds was about $20K and countless staff hours of planning.
• Don’t go it alone. Our project, while important to us, was small potatoes to the developers. We did not get priority service. If there are not many schools asking for changes or fixes, you won’t get much attention.
• Don’t buy a product without thinking of the service and support component. Duh!
• Figure out ways to grow a big system. We started trying to capture every test score, every intervention and every piece of student demographic data. Better to get a subset of things working well than everything badly.
  

While none of these projects was either financially or educationally catastrophic (I AM still employed), each cost the district and our department many hours of professional and technician time and decreased our credibility.



The rubric below can be used to help objectively determine the Probability of Large Scale Adoption (PLSA) in a school.

Probability of Large Scale Adoption (PLSA) rubric:

 

Schools and libraries with different resources and priorities will obtain different ratings. Remember - small schools around our district use interactive television extensively, but we do not, because of our districts’ relative sizes.

Getting a “zero” in either the Usefulness or Affordability categories would seem to negate high scores in the others. Should these be more heavily weighted? And usefulness in itself seems to be a trump card – if the need is great enough, other factors are less important.

This is how I would rank some technology applications in our district, where we are adequately, but not over, funded.

In my estimation, the total point score correlates with the percentage of teachers actually doing these sorts of things in our district.

Right now, what are the chances of large scale adoption in your district of these technologies?

• Internet 2
• MUVEs (Second Life)
• Wiki spaces
• Interactive white boards
• Voice amplification systems
• A new reading/math programs
• Online testing
  

Use the chart next time someone suggests a new technology project. Even if you don’t use the numbers, the rubric can provide fodder for good discussion.

As leaders and administrators we need to do a better job of predicting what new technology resources and efforts will make it and which will not. A dollar spent on a failure is one less dollar spent on something beneficial to our students. New initiatives need to based on more than good sales pitch.

Description and handouts forthcoming 

For too long librarians have been seen as “copyright cops,” impeding the use of copyrighted materials by students and staff. This presentation suggests we redefine our role, helping those we serve take maximum advantage of fair use provisions, finding authorities with a “user-centric” view of copyright enforcement, and teaching others to consider not just the legal, but moral side of intellectual property acquisition, use and re-use. Heated discussion to follow.

Handouts forthcoming 

This page last updated May 6, 1996