Marr Memorial Library Web Site
By Walter Minkel -- School Library Journal, 3/1/1998
"This is an exciting time to be a deaf person," said Martha Emrey, Librarian at the Marr Memorial Library at the Tennessee School for the Deaf in Knoxville. "The information provided via the Internet is no more than a few keystrokes away; e-mail allows communication on an equal plane with non-deaf people; and technology in general is a source for future job opportunities for our students." That's a big part of the reason she has created a site to meet the needs of her hearing-impaired clientele. That's also why I've selected the Marr Library site as the March SLJ Online Web site of the Month.
The Tennessee School for the Deaf (TSD) has approximately 200 students ranging in age from 6 months to 21 years old, and Emrey (mjemrey@sacam.OREN.ORTN.EDU) is the sole librarian, presiding over three libraries with the help of occasional volunteers. Many classrooms are wired to the Internet, and Emrey wanted to provide a central starting place to "jump into" the Web.
Much of the site, designed mainly for middle and high school students, teachers and staff, and an extended community of deaf adults and retirees, is familiar territory for those who visit library sites. There is a list of search engines, newspaper and periodical sites for current-events information, Net tutorials, and research assistance. But Emrey has also assembled a "Deaf Resources" page (voyager.rtd.utk.edu/~tsd/library/deaf.html), a wonderful group of tools for her students' special needs. Included are links to sites like Deaf World Web and local and national deafness associations.
"The Internet is an ideal medium for deaf people," Emrey said. "A recent survey indicated that a growing majority of deaf people use the Internet and/or e-mail regularly," she said. "It is a completely accessible medium, unlike television, radio, movies, videos, and software, etc., that often do not caption spoken text."
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Walter Minkel is Multnomah County Library (OR) School Corps Technology Trainer. |
