Participatory culture, in which citizens feel and exercise the agency of being cocreators of their culture and not just passive consumers of culture created by others, depends on widespread literacies of participation. One can't participate without knowing how. And cultural participation depends on a social component that is not easily learned alone or from a manual. That's where school libraries and school librarians have a critically important part to play. Librarians have always been stewards of literacy as well as curators of knowledge; knowing how to find what one wants (starting with how to know what one wants to find) has always been part of what people get from human librarians. But today, the personal and social importance of skills of critical information consumption, infotention (managed media attention), ethical collaborative research and networked coproduction of knowledge, digital citizenship, and network know-how is magnified multifold by digital media and networked publics. Today's literacies require knowledge of how to use information skills in effective collaboration with others. In school libraries and librarians, people already have a public place and a community of experts to help them learn the cognitive and social skills as well as the technical skills for navigating today's infosphere. (Contains 1 footnote.)