In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Oklahoma State University Library developed an open-source application to record real-time building capacity. Library student security tracks building entrances and exits via the program, with current visitor numbers appearing on the library's website via an API. This effort helps administrators have a…

When librarians at Oklahoma State University (OSU) began creating services to support data intensive research they found plenty of published guidance about doing surveys and outreach to get started. However, they also found that offering the prescribed workshops and consultations didn't assure that researchers would use them. A Sparks! grant from…

In 2021, the Oklahoma School Librarians (OKSL) won the ABC-CLIO Leadership Grant. The OKSL division of the Oklahoma Library Association has always been a small division, but as budget shortfalls and teacher shortages ramped up in the early 2010s, as the author states, they reached a crisis point. According to the author, they were losing school…

Since 2014, the University Libraries at the University of Oklahoma in Norman has been a member of the Software Carpentry Foundation (now part of "The Carpentries"), a nonprofit organization dedicated to teaching basic computing skills to researchers. Through this partnership, we have taught over a dozen introductory programming workshops…

Working with tweens and teens can be challenging. They can be hard to reach and sometimes frustratingly difficult to engage. As a secondary school librarian, the author has often been asked about the philosophy and practices she has implemented in her library to keep students engaged and help them remain active library users. One of the things…

This article details how the Norman Public School District implemented Guided Inquiry Design and making at all levels of the school system. It highlights how the faculty collaborated with other educators and how learners collaborated with their peers and their classroom teachers on inquiry projects.

In many schools, librarians play a key role in teaching information literacy and inquiry learning. From a survey of Colorado librarians, Keith Curry Lance and Leslie Maniotes learned that librarians who regularly facilitated student-led inquiry activities were also more likely to teach regularly a number of information literacy skills. Librarians…

This article asks three questions: (1) Why do the National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries matter to school administrators; (2) How is an administrator's knowledge of the role of the school librarian as articulated in these standards; and (3) Is it known what matters to school administrators and how…

Academic and public libraries are facing the challenge of finding new avenues of service and of creating value for their constituencies. This value is in the form of outcomes that result in bettering the people who use libraries and the community at large. The authors feel that librarians must find creative ways to make their communities better…

Library board members are an integral part of public libraries. Because of the importance of their role, this handbook gives library trustees in Oklahoma a basic understanding of their responsibilities and power. It contains useful information about developing policy, the board/director relationship, funding, intellectual freedom, library laws,…

A study was made of library services in the Kiamichi Economic Development District of Oklahoma (KEDDO). Since six of the seven counties in the district belonged to the Chocktaw Nation Multi-County Library System (CNMCLS), particular attention was given to the seventh county, Pushmataha. The population, socioeconomic factors, transportation system,…

An overview is provided of the Central Oklahoma Economic Development District (COEDD) library system, which serves seven counties. A general analysis of COEDD's background and purpose is followed by demographic and economic data for the area. An inventory of present library facilities and activities is presented along with a comparison with state…

Public library and institutional library statistics are presented in this document. The first section, which focuses on public library statistics, provides an analysis of fiscal year 1995 data on income, expenditures, and resources. Following this analysis are five tables of statistics on operating income, expenditures, library collection and…

The Oklahoma County (Oklahoma) Library executed a six-month experiment in 1974 on one of its five bookmobiles to determine whether: (1) patrons would accept a primarily paperback book collection; (2) the cost of unreturned paperbound books in a no-fine and no-overdue-notice situation would be cost-effective when compared to the predictable loss of…

Explores current patterns of recency, structure, intent, scaling, and planning and measurement in state library standards. Ways that four states--Oklahoma, Colorado, Utah, and Ohio--have adapted basic standards elements are considered, and issues in linking planning and measurement to standards are discussed. (MES)