Site of the Month: Li-Blog-Ary

San Francisco's Galileo Academy of Science and Technology—a public science magnet high school—may be one of the first K–12 public schools to create a Weblog, the Li-Blog-Ary.

Uneasy Times: Run by Patrick Delaney (galileolibrary@yahoo.com), Galileo's librarian, it's both a school library Web site—with access to databases and other resources—and a blog, offering current news and a record of class visits. "These are not easy times for California urban school libraries or urban students," Delaney says. Libraries need all the advocacy they can get, he says, and he believes that a Weblog, or "blog," promotes the library to tech-oriented kids in a tech-oriented school community.

SLAC-ers: He credits his squad of student "SLAC-ers"—the School Library Advisory Committee—with keeping the blog up and running. Because Delaney works without a paid assistant, the SLAC-ers also enable the library to remain open an extra two hours a day. Plus, they also help other units in the school, like the student newspaper, set up their own blogs. Delaney and his team are experimenting with software that would allow students to create electronic portfolios of their work for grading, parent conferences, and college applications.