February 16, 2013

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Take the Leap with the National School Boards Association, April 12–15

By on February 6, 2013 Leave a Comment
NSBA 2013 logo

Want to strengthen your relationship with the local school board? Or maybe you just need to start one with them? Then the place to go is San Diego, CA, for the 73rd annual conference of the National School Boards Association. Along with educational workshops covering everything from evaluating the superintendent to safety and security, attendees will be treated to keynote addresses from actress Geena Davis, science advocate Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Diane Ravitch, a professor of education at New York University.

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Inspirational Programs at Your High School? Reap the Awards

By on October 16, 2012 Leave a Comment
Inspiration Award winner

If your secondary school is in the U.S., has a minimum of 40 percent of students qualifying for free or reduced lunches, and has at least five senior classes, you could be eligible to apply for the annual College Board Gaston Caperton Inspiration Award. This is no small prize—three winning schools each receive $25,000, and an additional five could receive $1,000 honorable mention awards.

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Colorado Media Specialist Takes Library Fight To The Road

By on September 28, 2012 Leave a Comment
colorado

When it comes to advocacy, school librarian Mike McQueen plays it big—wrapping his RV with stickers and signs to encourage his community of Jefferson County, CO, to vote in favor of two bond measures and save school libraries.

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Fresh Paint: Works Well with Others

By on September 19, 2012 Leave a Comment
91912libprogram

The public library is an information center providing resources that the community needs and wants. To know exactly what the community needs and wants the library relies on comment cards, conducts online surveys, and closely follows local issues and trends. But what if there are no customers to poll, no users for librarians to have a discussion with? This is exactly the situation that my library system is currently facing, because we are building a library where there has never been one (for many, many miles) and therefore there are no statistics, surveys, or discussions to base our collection, preliminary programming, or resource needs.

Filed Under: Budgets & Funding, Buildings & Design, Public Libraries, Teens & YA Tagged With:

PA State Legislators Hold Hearing on Status of School Libraries

By on August 25, 2012 1 Comment
Mary Kay Biagini, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh, presents her study to PA State Legislators.

Although 94 percent of Pennsylvania’s 3,303 K-12 schools have libraries, the bulk of schools without media centers are in Philadelphia, says a new study that was presented to state legislators on August 22.

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UK School Libraries Suffer Deep Budget Cuts, Report Says

By on July 30, 2012 Leave a Comment
uk-school-libraries

School librarians across the Atlantic are feeling the squeeze, too. A recent study by the U.K.’s School Library Association shows that budgets there have taken a hit, with 34 percent of media specialists reporting smaller budgets this year compared to 2011. Meanwhile, only 18 percent say they’ve seen an increase since last year.

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DOE Finally Opens Federal School Library Grant Application Process

By on July 12, 2012 Leave a Comment
doe-literacy

Talk about lousy timing. The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) began accepting applications last week for the new Innovative Approaches to Literacy Program—at a time when most school librarians are off on their summer breaks.

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Canadian School District to Cut More Than Half of its Library Staff

By on May 17, 2012 Leave a Comment

Canada’s school libraries continue to feel the pain, too. A Nova Scotia school system has proposed cutting 56 percent of its library personnel for the 2012-2013 academic year to help close a $6.4 million budget gap, says its superintendent of schools.

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It Takes Two: The Need for Tighter Collaboration Between School and Public Librarians

By Rebecca T. Miller and Laura Girmscheid on May 1, 2012 Leave a Comment
it-takes-two

Numbers can be telling, and the story here presents a stark reality that signals an ideal opportunity to foster a stronger relationship between public and school libraries in ways that better support how kids learn and grow.

The results of SLJ’s first survey of public library spending habits on children’s and young adult services reveals a disturbing trend: only 30 percent of respondents say their library collaborates with local schools to coordinate book purchases to support the curriculum—leaving 70 percent that don’t.

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When it Comes to Technology, Some Schools Are More Equal Than Others others

By Audrey Watters on May 1, 2012 Leave a Comment
have-and-have-not

Looking back at the last four years of technology innovation, much has changed, including the revolutionary release of the very first iPhone in July 2008 and the iPad less than two years later. Even so, some of NCES’s numbers, though dated, seem quite positive: 100 percent of public schools had one or more instructional computers hooked up to the Internet, and 58 percent had carts with laptops.

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