Blog Archives

Managing and Leading – A Powerful Combination

Those of you who collaborate or cooperate regularly with teachers, who introduce new technology resources, and who use your library website and social media to promote your program are being leaders.  Many more of you are doing much of this

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Posted in Career, Librarian Life

Elevator Communication

Librarians in their efforts to meet their customers’ needs have an inclination to provide an overabundance of information.  Even when the patron is satisfied and has left the library, we frequently continue the search to ensure we have uncovered all

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Posted in Librarian Life, Professional Development

It’s Your Mission

The school year is over—or just about for some of you.  How do you feel as you look back on it? Do you have a sense of accomplishment over what you have achieved?  Or are you tired and exhausted, able

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Posted in Career, Librarian Life

Show and Tell

Do you remember “show and tell” from grade school?  You would bring something you valued to share with your classmates, letting them see the object as you talked about it.  Depending on what you brought, you might explain how it

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Posted in Career, Librarian Life

Librarians and the Pareto Principle

Have you noticed that around 20% of your teachers constitute 80% of the collaboration projects you develop.  This is the Pareto Principle. Named after Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist who observed in 1906 that 80% of Italy’s wealth was owned

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Posted in Career, Librarian Life

Leadership Is Not An Option

ALA and AASL along with other divisions work hard promoting the value of libraries and librarians with legislators, the community, along with the various partnerships they have built over the years.  If these efforts are to succeed, librarians need to

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Posted in Librarian Life, Professional Development

Cooperation vs. Collaboration

School librarians are quite specific about the difference between cooperation and collaboration.  In the first case, the librarian and the teacher work independently from each other but share a common direction with each contributing content or process based on what

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Posted in Career, Librarian Life

Defining and Supporting Literacy

It once was simple in the days before apps and the Internet. When all information came by way of books, magazines, and newspapers. Literacy was easy to define. It meant you were able to read and understand printed matter.  Functional

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Posted in Librarian Life, Uncategorized

ThanksGIVING

With Thanksgiving Day approaching, I am focused on the second half of the word.  One of the best ways to be thankful is to give back.  As educators we do this every day. We work hard to reach as many

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Posted in General, Librarian Life

Emotion “sells” better than Logic

The most supremely logical Mr. Spock, from the Star Trek series I adored from the very first, says in one episode, “It’s not logical, but it’s true.”  As librarians we need to take those words to heart in order to

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Posted in Issues, Librarian Life