Magazine on a Mission

Since joining School Library Journal last month, I’ve often been asked if I have a vision for the magazine. I’ve simply said, “Yes”—and left it at that. The only other option is to invite the questioner to pull up a chair and spend a few hours with our staff. After all, librarians have created varied and dynamic learning environments—and their professional lives are more challenging than ever. SLJ is your magazine, and in supporting you in your work, it must reflect this complexity. Our staff, with your help, tries to meet that challenge each month.

One mission of School Library Journal is to provide evidence of how school libraries and librarians enhance learning, a task my predecessor, Evan St. Lifer, worked so well at. Fortunately, we are entering a golden age for research into school libraries, with initiatives like the Center of International Scholarship in School Libraries, a Rutgers University institute dedicated to research and scholarship in school librarianship.

This conversation about libraries and learning was jump-started last March at the hugely successful SLJ Leadership Summit, which brought together librarians, teachers, reading specialists, administrators, and more. Stepping out of their professional silos and moving beyond jargon, participants collaborated on an action plan aimed at three key areas of education: literacy, student achievement, and 21st-century learning skills. (For more information, see the Virtual Summit Blog.) We look forward to building on this conversation at the second SLJ summit in 2006.

Another mission of SLJ is to cultivate a love of reading. As my friend, former colleague, and 2005 Grolier Award–winner Caroline Ward said in these pages last month, “…still, at the heart of it all, is the book.” There’s nobody else, no other professional, Ward added, that knows as much about children’s literature and can have the kind of influence that librarians can. Our magazine, with its rich and respected reviews, will always support you in developing collections and connecting the right child with the right book.

If you have any doubt about SLJ’s third mission, keeping up with technology, just watch the teenager sitting across from you on the bus. She’s text messaging on her cellphone while shuffling through songs on an iPod. In this month’s cover story (“Cool Tools,” pp. 42–45), SLJ columnist Jeffrey Hastings discusses a range of technologies, from wikis to radio frequency identification (RFID) systems to the FLY, a “pentop computer” that looks to be lots of fun. When it comes to technology, there is almost no end to the “keeping up” we need to do.

Technology also poses its share of tough questions: What types of learners are best served by the electronic worlds we’re creating? When do students benefit the most from traditional library services? Looming in the background is the question of how library budgets can grow to support this world of expanding content, tools, and services.

My job is to make sure that SLJ provides you with what you need to know about learning, books, and technology. Hardly separate topics, they’re interrelated in complex ways, both in the lives of our children and the lives of our libraries. By harnessing the power of each, library media specialists and public librarians can create new generations of lifelong learners who are proficient readers, critical thinkers, and expert dreamers.

Let the wild rumpus continue.

Brian Kenney, Editor-in-Chief
bkenney@reedbusiness.com