"Our best librarians will evolve, adapt, and thrive in effective schools." -Joyce Kasman Valenza and Doug Johnson, School Library Journal, 10/1/2009Things That Keep Us Up at Night enumerates the issues that are a concern (or should be a concern) to school teacher/librarians:
- economic shifts
- intellectual property shifts
- the challenge of keeping ahead
- failing to embrace networked media
- advocacy by nonlibrarians
- national expectations that ignore critical learning skills
- missing the potential of reading 2.0
- realizing that Internet access is an intellectual freedom issue
- recognize that modern practice is directly connected to equity
- we are bigger than databases
- define the brand
- plan for one-to-one computing or ubiquitous computing
- become an online presence
- see obstacles rather than opportunities
- the lack of urgency in our profession
Joyce and Doug have issued a warning and a challenge: embrace the change in our profession or face irrelevancy and obsolescence. We're at a critical juncture; we can become a part of the new information landscape or fade into obscurity.
What will you choose?
"There ain't no rules around here. We're trying to accomplish something." -Thomas Edison
"Alice looking for Wonderland" by micheleart
2 comments:
'See obstacles rather than opportunities'
All teachers and librarians are hopefully forward thinkers who always find opportunities to advance learning despite challenging realities. The last thing we need are skeptics.
In other discussions, I'm not seeing skeptics, rather librarians who feel overwhelmed and overscheduled. Those who don't already use technology as an integrated part of their professional and personal lives don't like what they interpret as another demand on their time.
Many teachers feel the same way, but librarians need to be leaders in information fluency, not naysayers.
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