Libraries are learning hubs that connect families to free resources, activities, and services to cultivate children's learning about topics that excite them. Despite recent technological developments which have revolutionized how we read and access information, libraries continue to evolve in order to serve their communities, especially families…

Public media stations play a powerful part in connecting families with broadcast and digital resources, local activities, and events that inspire children to learn about the topics that excite them most. The Families Learning Across Boundaries (FamLAB) Project surveyed more than 400 library professionals, 1,550 parents, and 600 pre-K through grade…

The students at the author's alternative, academic-recovery school come from their base schools and at the author's school are able to rewrite their own school stories. Some of that rewriting naturally happens in the library. Many of the students have experiences at multiple schools, but it is not until they come to the author's school that many…

The school library profession has gone through an evolution since its inception in the early 1900s. School librarians hold strong to unwavering core principles that remain true throughout time. Students today are tech-savvy consumers of information. With smartphones and tablets galore at their fingertips, they have access to all the knowledge of…

This article explores all the actions and opportunities school librarians take to reinforce reading instruction and reinforce learners' growing reading skills. It also details ways to enhance reading instruction through technology and makerspaces.

This article presents the results of the latest "SLJ" survey of school expenditures and collections for 2009-2010. The survey reveals that librarians have used a variety of coping techniques to weather this economic storm, whether it is servicing more than one school, using additional volunteers, taking on more tasks, or seeking outside funding.…

This companion volume to "Collaborative Strategies for Teaching Reading Comprehension," which covered lower grades, completes the educational arc by focusing on adolescent readers in grades 6-12. Drawing on the most current standards from the American Association for School Librarians (AASL) as well as cutting-edge research, this straightforward…

The relentless quest of the school librarian is finding the right book for each student, searching for the home-run book for every child, and keeping students reading book after book after book. A considerable amount of the school librarian's time, effort, and creativity are devoted not only to motivating students to read, but to keeping them…

As advocates for reading, librarians cannot help but love a reading program. In this article, the author talks about the Battle of the Books, a reading enrichment program that had been in place since 1996. Battle of the Books promotes reading among middle school students by offering interesting books and a trivia-type competition. The author…

In this article, the authors describe McNair Middle School's Independent Study process. Each year in late January the authors connect to look at the calendar to schedule time for the seventh-grade gifted and talented (GT) students to come to the school library to begin their annual Independent Study. "Independent study is a planned research…

Co-author of the popular titles "Booktalking Bonanza" and "The Early Literacy Kit", Betsy Diamant-Cohen brings together 18 examples of successful outreach partnerships that children's librarians and administrators can adapt to their own situations. Contributors from the U.S and Canada explain how they partnered with schools,…

Twenty doctoral students from the School of Library and Information Sciences at the University of North Texas met in the summer of 2005 to complete a seminar and online course on "Online Information Services." The class offered the perfect research settings with 10 practicing school librarians and 10 practitioners from other areas of the library…

Brandon School is a small pre-K through 8th grade school serving approximately 327 students. It does not have the funding that a lot of larger school districts have. When the special needs teacher approached the author a few years ago about high-interest, low-level books and asked for ideas to help her students read more, they came up with the…

Teens are impatient and unsophisticated online researchers who are often limited by their poor reading skills. Because they are attracted to clean and simple Web interfaces, they often turn to Google--and now Wikipedia--to help meet their research needs. The Google Game, co-authored by this author, teaches kids that there is a well-thought-out…

Readers' advisory with middle schoolers does not come easily. In an effort to expand students' reading horizons, the author describes how to teach students to speak intelligently and thoughtfully about their book preferences. She cites Joyce Saricks's "Readers' Advisory Service in the Public Library" (ALA, 2005), a book that gave her the clarity…