Effective school libraries are no longer quiet, staid places--and the inclusion of preschoolers adds even more joy and active learning to the mix. As more and more elementary schools include preschool children in their school communities, school librarians can respond with programs that emphasize essential early literacy experiences for the very…

Leadership remains an elusive, yet critical, component of a program's effectiveness. While most would suggest that leadership is easily recognized, this too often means that "managers" are simply supporting people's particular interests and priorities. There are many theories and models of leadership. Most people have probably personally witnessed…

The American Library Association says that the arrangement of library facilities should motivate students to use the materials to learn. Believing that changing the library facility can bring about important changes in the program, this author shares how she became a "decorator" and changed the library media center in an elementary K-6 school. The…

Librarians at the Stevens-Henager Career College Salt Lake City Campus have developed a library-instruction program over the last year. The basic section consists of 40-45 minutes on primary, secondary, and tertiary literature, search techniques, live online searching using student-contributed examples, finishing off with short sections on…

The over-riding goals of a quality school-library program are to "collaborate" with teachers, administrators, parents, and students; to "support" building and district initiatives; and to "integrate" the teaching of literature, information literacy, and technology skills into the subject-area curricula. Numerous studies since the 1990s, as well as…

Readers' advisory with middle schoolers does not come easily. In an effort to expand students' reading horizons, the author describes how to teach students to speak intelligently and thoughtfully about their book preferences. She cites Joyce Saricks's "Readers' Advisory Service in the Public Library" (ALA, 2005), a book that gave her the clarity…

In fall 2008, a collaborative partnership was formed between the libraries of two Indiana universities--Marian College's (now Marian University) Mother Theresa Hackelmeier Memorial Library, and the University Library at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). The authors discuss the digital nature of this collaboration, which…

Today's academic library provides resources that users can access both physically in the library and virtually from academic offices. This increasing availability of online access means that information resources are no longer confined within library walls and librarians need to rethink how their constituents' information needs are being met.…

Most academic libraries are members of at least one consortium, and many belong to multiple consortia. However, consortia vary widely in the services they offer and in how they are structured. This project, carried out in the fall of 2009, focused on a review of fifteen academic library consortia that: Included two-year colleges, either…

The Magic Tree House series is a collection of books by Mary Pope Osborne, each built around a time and place of high interest to young children, with an underlying story that makes children want to read the next book in the series to find out what is going to happen. Here, the authors describe the development of a two-week reading program for…

This article explores the process of embedding information literacy into a basic oral communication course. Discussion includes student performance as an impetus for change, collaborative course design between the oral communication teaching team and instructional librarians, and assessment initiatives. Suggestions for future collaborative work…

All teachers and media specialists are looking for the "hook" that will engage their students and make them want to learn--and according to the author, mystery stories are a perfect way to create that hook. Here, she presents a unit on mysteries, intended for collaboration between media specialists and language arts teachers. The unit uses…

It is not unusual for library media specialists to experience having their staff cut. The author has experienced this scenario twice. Each time, she and her colleagues redefined and restructured their library media centers to maximize teaching and learning. In this article, the author discusses some of the things she has learned about coping with…

Nursing and library faculty face many information literacy challenges when graduate nursing programs migrate to online course delivery. The authors describe a collaborative model for providing cost-effective online library services to new graduate students in a three-university consortium. The embedded librarian service links a health sciences…

This article focuses on a course-embedded guided inquiry project initiated by a senior librarian and an education professor to promote an understanding of how the brain functions and to experiment with brain-targeted teaching techniques. Information literacy instruction (ILI) takes place in the electronic classroom in the Educational Resources…