A good website and using the right tools is important must-have

I recently started a job as a middle/high school librarian at an independent school that realized it needed a stronger library program. One of the challenges I’m finding is trying to explain the balance that’s needed in technology education and how having a website is part of it—but having a good website and using the right tools at the right time is hard.

There are many administrators who are also older and so only see that we need technology and don’t understand the complexities of getting the right tool in the right place. It makes it tricky but not impossible. I’m sure I’m not the only one with this problem of trying to explain that having a website is only part of what’s needed.

“Soap Box: Not Fast Enough” (Extra Helping , Dec. 4, 2012) by Mark Ray, a response to School Library Journal’s tech survey, “The League of Extraordinary Librarians” (Nov. 2012, pp. 24–27) is a thought-provoking article, but I worry that you’re preaching to the choir at this point since sometimes, as school librarians, we can create and teach and explain. Yet teachers and administrators have to say, yes, we want this and will use it.

Kate Keith-Fitzgerald Middle/Upper School Librarian The Roeper School Birmingham, MI

Listen up

“Now You’re Talking” (Nov. 2012, pp. 32–38) is a great list of must-have audiobooks for teens and tweens. Happy to see some titles I really enjoyed (Beauty Queens was hysterical) and some for my to-listen list. Of course, I have to put my two cents in for my hands-down absolute favorite audio this year—Mandy Williams’s narration of Seraphina (Listening Library) by Rachel Hartman—that wasn’t on your recommended list.

Geraldine Farmer-Morrison Head of Children’s Services Levittown Public Library, NY