Oral histories are an exciting way to directly involve students in the act of historical inquiry. They assist students in personalizing history and relating to the actual lives behind major events, names, and dates in history. This article discusses the benefits of using oral histories in the classroom. It describes how to use "Oral Histories…

This article profiles Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt's new course, "Travel and Transformation in the Early 17th Century." The product of an intense, months-long collaboration between computing specialists, graduate students, librarians, and scholars, the course makes innovative use of all the tools and technical know-how a major university…

"Future" often conjures up something far off. Library media specialists come to realize that the future is often much closer than they think. Web 2.0 technologies have swiftly taken library media specialists into a whole new realm of possibilities. No longer consumers, they have the opportunity to become producers of information and collaborators…

One cannot dispute the value of collaboration. It brings concreteness to concepts for the children and provides a seamless transition to teaching information literacy. The path to student excellence lies in collaboration and flexible scheduling. Although a library media specialist is new to the profession, he or she has likely attended conference…

In this article, the author shares how she encountered unique challenges when parents complained about some books in the school library. Typically, parents' complaints focus on objectionable language, references to witchcraft, and mention of alcoholic beverages. To protect students' right to read a variety of books, the author contends that…

School administrators want to believe that they are champions for the rights of the students they serve. They strive to provide students with a secure, enriching environment to aid in their intellectual and social development. Through their leadership, administrators have the responsibility to guide and redirect students to help them achieve at…

The National Council of Teachers of English awarded the coveted nonfiction prize to "Quest for the Tree Kangaroo: An Expedition to the Cloud Forest of New Guinea." Written by Sy Montgomery, with photographs by Nic Bishop, the book was further honored as a Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal Honor recipient by the Association for…

Environmental identity, or how we orient ourselves to the natural world, leads us to personalise abstract global issues and take action (or not) according to our sense of who we are. For example, are we willing to give up our luxurious cars for more fuel-efficient models even though we know that the earth is warming? In an era where web-based…

A survey of undergraduate students examined how students' beliefs about their problem-solving styles and abilities (including avoidant style, confidence, and personal control in problem-solving) influenced their perception and selection of sources, as reflected in (1) perceived characteristics of sources, (2) source characteristics considered…

Universities offering school library media programs seek accreditation from various regional and national organizations. This accreditation makes the programs valid and marketable. School media programs within a college of education seek accreditation from specialized accrediting bodies. The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education…

Assessment tools enable both learning and assessing. They also give library media specialists snapshots of evidence that demonstrates student understanding of the Information Literacy Standards. Over time the evidence provide a more complete picture of learners' ability to gather, evaluate, and use information to solve problems, make decisions,…

In recent years, the Internet has become a digital commons of commerce and education. However, accessibility standards have often been overlooked online, and the digital equivalents to curb-cuts and other physical accommodations have only rarely been implemented to serve those with print disabilities. (A print disability can be a learning…

Blogs are a hot topic in academia. A search on "blog" in the "Chronicle of Education's" Web site returns nearly two hundred articles, covering such topics as the dangers an impolitic blog can do to an institution's leaders (Read, 2006) or the blogger's career (Tribble, 2005) and the mutual use of blogs by instructors to lambaste students (Lipka,…

The management of information in the business world constitutes a single consolidated area within undergraduate and graduate study programs in Librarianship and Information Science. This article describes information studies for the business sector within Spain, including the university programs known as Diplomatura in Librarianship and…

After seeing growing frustration among inexperienced undergraduate researchers searching a popular aggregated interdisciplinary database, the authors questioned whether the leading interdisciplinary databases are serving undergraduates' needs. As a preliminary exploration of this question, the authors queried vendors, analyzed their marketing…