Librarians Embrace the Digital World

SLJ Summit names recruitment, trust among school communities as 'critical opportunities’

By Joan Oleck -- School Library Journal, 12/1/2006

On November 3, 200 teacher-librarians, administrators, and other educators gathered in Chicago for School Library Journal’s two-day Leadership Summit to vote on the most “critical opportunities” facing media specialists today.

The need to recruit young librarians, and building trust and respect among school communities tied as the primary concerns. With 25 percent of librarians turning 65 by 2009, attracting young professionals with strong tech backgrounds has never been more pressing.

“While it was fascinating to see what opportunities floated to the top, all the recommendations the groups made were incredibly valuable,” says Brian Kenney, SLJ’s editor-in-chief and organizer of the summit.

Building trust means dispelling other educators’ fears over their students’ use of Web 2.0—the second generation of Internet-based services, such as social networking sites and wikis, which emphasize collaboration and sharing among users. The learning potential of these technologies should outweigh any fears of abuse, the attendees seemed to be saying.

Building trust also involves educating stakeholders and the learning community about the learning opportunities that new technologies offer.

Finally, “trust” implies trusting students to use social networking sites like MySpace and Friendster appropriately—while still expecting adult oversight.

The summit at Chicago’s Drake Hotel attracted 200 vendors, public and school librarians, library science professors, and other community members. Keynote speaker David Cavallo, a research scientist and codirector of the Future of Learning Research Group at the MIT Media Laboratory, spoke about the One Laptop Per Child initiative he leads in Brazil. Joan Frye Williams, a librarian and consultant based in Sacramento, CA, gave the second keynote on the challenges of providing library services to a wired generation.

Attendees divided into three core groups focusing on technology and literacy; the media center in the information-rich world; and School Library 2.0.

Other hot topics on the critical opportunities list included the need to provide every child with access to technology and good digital content; the urgency for teachers to understand information literacy and include it in their curricula; and the goal of making librarians partners in assessing student learning.

Last year’s inaugural SLJ summit focused on empowering learners and advancing the profession.

For this year, Kenney says that “although we had keynote speakers and panelists, everybody there was an expert, and everyone there was an active participant. This wasn’t a conference where you could sit back and receive knowledge; it was really about actively creating knowledge together.”

Scholastic Library Publishing; Rosen Publishing; SirsiDynix; Learning Express; Thomson Gale; Follett Library Resources; Follett Software; and Capstone, Picture Window, Stone Arch, Compass Point cosponsored the summit.