Libraries

I found a post on the internet describing what Libraries might become, should they be willing to move with the times...

Labyrinth of Lassitude

As instructional leaders we must be on the cutting edge of new
technologies. Teacher-librarians should be seen as "early adopters" of new and
emerging software, hardware and instructional initiatives. We should be creating
spaces in virtual social networks such as MySpace, entering Second Life and
playing games to understand how these technologies impact student learning,
instructional design, library/computer budgets and information literacy
programs. We must understand how these new technologies impact on space and
library design and be ready to renovate our libraries to accommodate areas that
allow for collaboration (locally, nationally and globally), interaction (e.g
SmartBoards, Skype), portable computing devises, and audio, visual and text
publishing. The library should be the publishing centre of the school and space
needs to be designed to accommodate these activities.
Source: The Illuminated Dragon

I'm a bit frustrated with the idea that librarians are going to be the leaders in the brave new world, when they have failed so miserably to sell their wares to current school administrators. The realities of schools today preclude the use of teacher-librarians in the ways described above. Furthermore, while there are ample paragons of Web 2.0 virtue out there among teacher-librarians, they are few and far between. The reality, the sad reality, is that most school librarians are grateful to have enough books to manage, that they are prayerfully attentive to whether the next round of budget cuts will maintain their positions and fragile library budgets.

Rennovating our libraries to accommodate areas that allow for collaboration, interaction, mobile devices and ePublishing opportunities is a worthy goal. But it remains an unrealizable goal so long as the emphasis is on high stakes testing, and weeding out of anything unnecessary to achieving those purposes. If librarians, teachers should be focused on any achievable goal, it is the eradication of No Child Left Behind.

Until that happy day, we build on shifting sand, labor in a lost, lifeless, labyrinth of lassitude. One supposes that posts like the one above are merely remembrances of what should have been, could someday be, if only we remember what life could have been like without NCLB.

Maybe, this kind of writing is really about accomplishing what one director characterized as....

When one works without a net (mandate), one tends to pay more attention to the
needs of those one serves and perhaps a little less attention to theoretical
"best practices." Best practices are those that keep school libraries vital and
indispensable by providing the services that are seen as important by the entire
institution. We need to acknowledge that other people in education also have
valid perspectives about what is in the best interest of the children we all
serve.

Go ahead. Rage at the dying of the light. Wake me up when you're done.

Copied from http://www.edsupport.cc/mguhlin/archives/2007/04/entry_3022.htm