August 2007 — Features
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The New Librarians
The changes are visible up and down the grade levels. Linda Miller and Jennifer Langford are the librarians at Patricia J. Blattman Elementary School and Gregory Luna Middle School, respectively, both part of Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, TX. "Twenty years ago," says Miller, "you checked out books, got a story from the librarian, and that was really about it." Now, she says, "we're a portal for the kids. We're information brokers."
They're also teaching students how to conduct research. "You're never too young to learn how to do things the right way," Miller says, and the right way these days is often to go online. That means using discrimination: "One child just printed out pages from the internet. It was a good teaching point: Not everything's relevant, not everything's useful, and you can't just copy things." She facilitates an activity called "trash and treasure" in which students look for only the pertinent research.
Miller expects to continue seeing a heavy reliance on databases. "Teaching students how to access information on the database is going to be very critical as we move on to the technology of blogs and other means of communication," she says. She gets notes all the time from students saying, "This is the best library in the world." Miller thinks that staff development is critical in all this: "You want to make sure that they're teaching students and other teachers" about the resources they discover. She works with her campus instructional technologist to infuse technology into the curricula, "as opposed to using technology for technology's sake, which I think is a waste of time," Miller says.
For her part, Langford has seen her middle school students change dramatically, even through working with such low-tech tools as videotapes. One example: Seventh-grade students were required to write either a commercial, a segment from a talk show, or a movie review that embedded information about an event related to the Texas Revolution. They wrote scripts, videotaped themselves, and used Windows Movie Maker to edit what they produced. Working with the seventh-grade Texas history teacher, Langford tried to get students to participate in public speaking, and found that some of them were reluctant—until they watched themselves on video and were able to offer self-critiques. "I saw kids who were quiet and reading off a script, and then after a little coaching, becoming hams," she says.
The key to making modern libraries work, according to Langford, is collaboration between the librarian and classroom teachers. "I do my best to meld the classroom and library whenever possible," she says. "[That] offers the students the best possible scenario. The student-to-teacher ratio is better, and it has the added benefit of exposing students to varied points of view and teaching styles."
Confronting Obstacles
As with any time technology enters the discussion, funding becomes a decisive issue. In Bethesda, MD, Erica Lodish, the media specialist at the Walter Johnson High School Media Center, says the school is currently experiencing its third and fourth upgrades of both hardware and software. Her book collection has been negatively affected because she has to put so much money into her online resources. "For getting those extra things like whiteboards, notebook pads, clickers for assessments, and all the other tools that are coming out," she asks, "where does that money come from?"
