Library Centers

Give students exciting learning opportunities across the curriculum while teaching them important information skills! This book documents a continuous library center program with a series of mini-lessons that cover topics from bears, books, and dinosaurs to natural resources, rockets, and Victorian holiday traditions. Projects use different types of media (e.g., books, tapes, CD-ROMs, the Internet), giving students a variety of experiences with fiction and nonfiction and allowing them to interact with resources-to find books; use the library catalog, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and CD-ROMs; alphabetize; perform author research, build a bibliography, create a book cover and poster; role play; conduct a video interview; and so on. For each center, the author provides reproducible instruction cards, a list of materials, and suggestions for implementation. Various assessment tools are recommended-observation checklists, coaching and discussion, presentations, celebrations, and formal checklists to be

This statistical analysis report from the National Center for Education Statistics examines the current state of school libraries in the United States and how they have changed. The primary source of data in this report is the 1993-94 Library Survey, the first federally sponsored survey of library media centers and head librarians in elementary and secondary schools. The data taken from the 1993-94 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) are compared with historical data from previous surveys. Results, in tables and charts, are divided into two sections. The first section gives a background on school library media centers and results are presented in terms of growth in school library media centers, library media center staffing, expenditures, collections and resource evaluation, technology and equipment, and scheduling and transactions. The second section focuses on school head librarians, and provides results in current status, background and experience, training, collaborative activities, perception and attitude toward work, compensation, and number of FTE positions. Appendices include detailed tables, and technical notes focusing on survey content, target populations and estimates, sample design and implementation, data collection procedures, response rates, edit procedures, imputation, weighting, and definitions. (AEF)

A guide to designing school library media centers that provides information on addressing the unique ergonomic and technology needs of children, controling costs using proven bidding and evaluation methods, understanding the technical drawings and language used in architecture, and other related topics.