Library Stuff

“The last time a student at Archbishop Wood High School borrowed Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was 1997. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island has fared even worse: No student has checked out the adventure novel since 1991. It could be they are simply dated and unappealing to today’s high school students, or it could be because they are, well, books in an age of proliferating digital information. Either way, these titles may not be on Archbishop Wood’s shelves much longer: By the end of the school year, the number of volumes in the school’s library will be whittled from 47,000 to about 1,000 to make room for a new bank of computers, projection equipment, and collaborative space.”

via The Inquirer

“We all know that the more you read the more fluent you become, which in turn leads not only to increased literacy skills but also to improved attainment in all subjects. But, it seems, proof and evidence of this impact has eluded the reading profession for many years. This may be the reason why school libraries have been on the decline, with schools favouring to focus their energies on areas that can display this elusive impact. At Monk’s Walk School, Hertfordshire, we’ve worked on this area, knowing there must be some way a library can show the impact it has on literacy development. If this value and impact can be seen, not only does this move a library alongside other departments in a school but it may also go some way to holding back the decline of this vital resource.”

via Guardian

“When Sue Reinaman became Northern High School librarian 18 years ago, there were CD-ROMs and a card catalog in drawers, with the beginning of digital resources.

Today, her library has seven online databases, with the budget shifting toward buying more digital resources, including e-books. Still, she said the emphasis is the same. “It’s always been about teaching them how to find and use information efficiently and ethically,” Reinaman said, except in a different format.”

via PennLive.com

“The kids are back, but the media center at one of California’s largest high schools is quiet, even for a library. That’s because the 4,000 students at James Logan High School in Union City are starting the school year without access to the aisles of books and computers sitting in a darkened room, unused.

“Due to budget cuts, the library is closed,” read printed signs on the library doors. Carla Colburn, the school librarian for eight years and a teacher for 26, is the only person who goes in there now. For one period each day, she goes to the library and prepares book carts for English-language-learner classrooms or history classes working on research projects.”

via SFGate

NYTimes – “In the last three years, TNS has cut its Reading Recovery program, lost its assistant principal and its half-time math and literacy coaches and increased class size in every grade. The school learned this past April that it could no longer afford its library or librarian. Forty percent of TNS students qualify for free lunch, and the school pays for that diversity in an unexpected way: it’s far more difficult to raise large sums of money from its families. But the school still does not qualify for the federal Title 1 financing allocated to schools serving large percentages of low-income children. It is the public school version of the marriage penalty: diversity is largely considered a social good, but those who practice it are expected to pay, one way or another.”

NYT – “Students using the computers at Camdenton High School here in central Missouri have been able to access the Web sites for Exodus International, as well as People Can Change, antigay organizations that counsel men and women on how to become heterosexual. But the students have not been able to access the Web sites of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, or the Gay-Straight Alliance Network.”

SLJ – “Colorado’s Red Hawk Elementary School has gone Dewey-less—and so far the results have been great. The new school, which opened its doors just six weeks ago, is the only building in the St. Vrain Valley School District to scrap the Dewey Decimal system in favor of a more user-friendly bookstore model for organizing its 6,031-title collection. In fact, according to District Librarian Holli Buchter, Red Hawk is the only elementary school in the United States to ditch Dewey. (The only other one she knows about is located in Alberta, Canada).”

Philadelphia Inquirer – “The library at Rowen Elementary School is musty and outdated – a locked room used for storage and occasional meetings, a repository of yellowing, untouched books. But Callie Hammond has big dreams for the room, whose leather-bound encyclopedias were printed in 1986, the year she was born. Hammond sees the West Oak Lane public school as a launching pad for Library Build, a nonprofit group she recently started to renovate and staff school libraries with fellows in the Teach for America model.”

LA Times – “Firing library aides and office assistants leaves the school district in free-fall. It’s time to tap emergency funds, cut state redevelopment agencies and discuss raising businesses’ property taxes.”

News Leader – “Weeks after a series of national groups demanded the Republic school board reverse a decision to remove two books from the high school, the governing body will take up the issue. The board will meet today to discuss revising a policy that paved the way for the books — “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut and “Twenty Boy Summer” by Sarah Ockler — to be pulled from classrooms and the library. Superintendent Vern Minor didn’t return calls, but a proposed revision to the book standards policy posted online outlines one significant change”