Post 6 - School Library Loneliness

As I've been working on assignments this weekend, I realized that I'm the only school library person in my group for LIS 2000 and this class (at least it appears that way). I bring this up because much of what we talk about deals with public or academic libraries or archives. I find the information very interesting, but at times I struggle with how it applies to the school library. The school library is a very different entity from the others because of its clientele, students. Throughout our discussions, especially in LIS 2000, we talk about access to information and usability of information, but for students in the schools complete access to information is not practical; instead, limited access is practical. Dr. Tomer spoke of a problem for librarians as being the sorting through materials and information to figure out the validity, reliability, and/or worthiness of a piece to be placed in a collection. These ideas encompass the school librarian's job because he/she often has to choose materials for students that will not only help them accomplish their task, but that is also appropriate for their age, reading level, and maturity level. In this sense, the school librarian and often teachers constantly create pathfinders for student research and projects. Pathfinders limit the amount of resources, especially web resources, that students can use for an assignment. Through the creation of the pathfinders, librarians choose valid, reliable, and user-friendly websites or electronic resources for student use. Allowing a student to do a general Google search, especially in lower grades, is not practical because the amount of results is overwhelming for the student and many of the students do not yet understand the concepts of validity and reliability; they assume because it's on the web it's a useful source. Also, school librarians must consider scroll bars, advertisements, and the school web filter when choosing websites for students because of access to inappropriate content or questionable materials often based on the community.

I guess in the end, it is important to realize how each type of librarian must consider the same question: access to materials, and how that access should be granted and used appropriately.