This article focuses on nonfiction titles appropriate for mid-sized public libraries, with a special emphasis on bisexuality, transgender identities, race, disability, class, age, and other issues often marginalized in both mainstream and GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) culture in America. Some colleagues, at San Francisco Public…

As a former elementary library media specialist now in a new middle school library media center, it was frustrating for the author to not have enough time to assist students and discouraging to see the apathy that so many of the students displayed toward books and reading. Middle schoolers are busy with social activities, sports, and schoolwork.…

The standards specified in all academic areas have risen to educational prominence and mandates to meet these standards have changed the face of American education for all educators. The positive ways by which emphasis on standards has changed the face of the library program are discussed and the challenges posed are presented.

Department of Education has created a report card with a star rating system, which would assist parents in evaluating the local schools in Minnesota. Schools should not concentrate only on the stars that are test-based but should also consider other criteria like the quality of the library program.

Flexible scheduling of school library media is accepted notion in major library school associations and the classes meet in the library media center based on instructional and curricular need instead of fixed scheduling of school library in which classes have specified library times each week. The controversy regarding fixed and flexible school…

Locating sources and accessing the information they contain is part of the Big6 approach to information problem solving. In this stage of knowing where to look and how to find the required source, library media specialists train students in the use of the card catalog in the library media center.

Recently a public librarian e-mailed the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA)about teen problem behaviors at the library--excessive noise, profanity, vandalism, the works. Anthony Bernier, director of teen services at the Oakland (CA) Public Library, came to the teens' defense. He charged that some librarians "cultivate, exaggerate, or…

This article, the second installment of CIL's (Computers in Libraries) 2005 Helping You Buy series, provides an in-depth look at library selfcheck systems from 10 vendors. The product comparison chart will help you to quickly and easily compare products from competing vendors. All of the information on the product comparison chart came directly…

The Huntington is a great library set in a magnificent arboretum with trees from around the world. Yet its resources, like those of other libraries, do not match its needs. Important holdings remain uncatalogued and inaccessible to scholars. Many collections were more accessible before they were given to a library, where they can sit for an…

Small solutions solve discrete, well-bounded problems and can be pieces of larger solutions. They can move things forward by mixing and matching available components in new and previously unimagined ways. A number of innovations, which at first glance are completely unrelated, can come together and create important synergics. This article…

This brief article describes the impact Aaron Coutu has had on the teens at the Greenville Public Library in Rhode Island. Coutu has gotten on the good side of many of the teens in the library since he is willing to undergo various personal humiliations, like shaving his head if they read 150 books (they read 196) or dyeing his hair green if they…

This article details the work of Lucia Chen of the New York Public Library. Lucia Chen combined her two passions--organization and beautification--in her recent project, creating an online version of the New York Public Library's (NYPL) legendary picture collection. Artists ranging from set designers to filmmakers have long used the collection,…

This article details the work of Gail Staines, who is probably the only Mover & Shaker who lists the U.S.A. Equestrians Association among her professional memberships. But it is not that far a leap from what she does in her work as director of the Western New York Library Resources Council (WNYLRC), where she is responsible for making 98…

They are an unbeatable combination: Grog Sennema, digital resources librarian at Calvin College's Hekman Library, and Jed Koops, library systems programmer. This brief article discusses these two library employees and and how they worked together to solve many issues within their library system.

Janet Crowther was surprised to be considered a Mover & Shaker. As community partnership director for Williamsburg Regional Library (WRL), she has made a point of staying in the background so that the other stars--the librarians, the library, the community partners--can shine. "It's not about me," she says; it's about embedding the…