The Librain

When researching Web 2.0 and School Library 2.0 a consistent voice has been Joyce Valenza’s. I have always admired her school website and have found other sites that she has made. But this particular page really rang bells for me:

How my life has changed/How my life will change

She started out a little before I did and has been several steps ahead of me in her thinking and daily practice. I found this page so interesting that I had to think about how far I have come.

She says: “We cannot expect to assume a leadership role in information technology and instruction, we cannot claim any credibility with students, faculty, or administrators if we do not recognize and thoughtfully exploit the information and communication paradigm shifts of the past two years.”

Yes, the pace of change is accelerating and we need to think what kind of library spaces we are going to manage in the future. Will the library be a physical space at all?

Anyway, read her page to see where she thinks we are going.

I have added two new pages to Strongest Links on the future of school libraries and the impact of Web 2.0. These contain the links that I have found when researching for the RTA Conference  materials. This has been really fascinating, finding out so many new ideas and trying out Web 2.0 technologies.

My particular favourite things were:

 Kathryn Greenhill’s  Why should I learn about that when I’m busy with other stuff? and 20 reasons why learning emerging techologies is part of every librarian’s job from her Librarians Matter Blog. These are great posts – I can just imagine how many school librarians will respond to the idea of school library 2.0.

Many will be interested and try to find out more. They will try to incorporate new ideas in their work and will “sell” them to teachers – and their response will be fairly predictable in some cases. Other librarians will use the usual argument of not enough time. This is perhaps rather unfair of me as I don’t mean to criticise. In the UK, many school librarians work on their own and are part-time, term-time only. Many are very poorly paid. There are so many things that take up our time and are very important: reading development, information literacy teaching, the day-to-day running of the library.

But, this is the future. When I started out as a school librarian in 1982, we did not have computers in school libraries in the UK. I think that I got my first one in 1984 – a BBC Model B! I have always tried to keep up with new ideas and, in fact, keep ahead where I can.

So, the future is now! I will continue to use this blog to think about how I am changing and how I am trying to use new ideas in my work.

Decided today that I should completely re-vamp my website Strongest Links. The colour scheme is tired so I have tried to make a new one. When this is completed, then I will look at the links and the rest of the content.

I want to put a lot of new stuff on Web 2.0 and School Library 2.0. During the last three weeks or so, I have been working on a presentation for the RTA Conferences for school librarians in November. This has been really interesting, although very time consuming. I feel that I have learned so much – especially by reading other people’s blogs. I will add some of this stuff on here as well, when I have time.

I am trying out a new blog as I want to communicate my thoughts and progress in school librarianship.

During the last three weeks, I have been preparing a presentation for UK school librarians on Web 2.0 and School library 2.0. This has given me lots of food for thought, which I am going to mull over, digest and then post about!