Your library is your classroom, and you are responsible for it no matter what's happening there. Ineffective classroom management can hamper or completely negate your efforts at creating a strong library program, and that's true whether you're a new school librarian just starting out or one with many years under your belt. This powerful resource…

This piece focuses on creating a safe space for several subsets of the elementary school student population, including Muslim students, children with autism spectrum disorder, and students with social-emotional challenges. These groups do overlap and intersect, and they are united in their reliance on the library as a refuge. However, school…

While beneficial to student engagement and learning outcomes, student-created research questions require a shift in thinking for the teaching team, which is made up of the school librarian, classroom teacher(s), and other specialists designing the inquiry learning experience. For librarians leading inquiry learning, this shift can seem difficult…

Many of the descriptions of public libraries as sanctuaries provide myriad examples of ways in which they serve the underserved: language circles, English language learning and citizenship classes, and access to technology for the homeless, to name a few. In the school library, if librarians are providing sanctuary only to those who feel…

Storytelling is a craft that takes "talking" to the level of "telling." The cleverest of teachers know these tricks. In this article the author presents the art of storytelling and why it is so important, especially in the educational environment of national standards and standardized testing.

AASL's new integrated standards are designed to empower leaders to transform teaching and learning. The new "National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries" reflect an evolution of AASL Standards, building on philosophical foundations and familiar elements of previous standards while featuring the…

In this article, school librarians from Henrico County Public Schools in Virginia [the AASL 2011 National School Library Programs of the Year (NSLPY) Award recipient] share some of their experiences caring for students in their libraries.

The school library profession has gone through an evolution since its inception in the early 1900s. School librarians hold strong to unwavering core principles that remain true throughout time. Students today are tech-savvy consumers of information. With smartphones and tablets galore at their fingertips, they have access to all the knowledge of…

Librarianship places an ethical demand on practitioners to put patrons or library users' interests before self-interest, and indeed, this is the hallmark of any service profession. But what obligation do school librarians have to their peer librarians and educators? The Code of Ethics of the American Library Association offers this principle, "We…

In this article, the author discusses the transformative power of care. In the interest of achieving some modicum of clarity, the author begins with a definition of the word "care." For each of the different school constituencies, there exist categories of actions through which educators demonstrate care. Broadly, these categories include:…

This study explores the perceptions that Israeli reference librarians have of their jobs and their academic environment. Fifteen academic reference librarians were interviewed over a period of four months and their answers were analyzed using the thematic analysis approach. The analysis resulted in five major themes: 1) elements in reference work…

Building a culture of reading in a school requires the participation of the entire school community--students, teachers, administrators, staff, parents, and patrons. To be successful, the whole community must be on board with books--not just the helpful librarian in the school library. Implementing library programs to encourage students to read…

Where library budgets are concerned, there is every evidence now, after three years, that research libraries have arrived at "the new normal." That is, they do not expect a return to systematic and regular additions to Association of Research Libraries' (ARL) budgets in order to support ever-increasing prices that are out of proportion to…

Climate change, which is evident in the Arctic more than anywhere else, is an issue that affects all generations. Choices made by today's adults, according to a broad and deep body of research, are likely to influence the nature of nature for today's young people and their successors for a very long time to come. The author contends that…

This study investigated the information-seeking practices and interactions of school librarians and special education teachers to better understand how they support the learning of students with disabilities. The work of school librarians and special education teachers may appear divergent; however, as professionals in a rapidly changing…