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Showing posts from June, 2019

Survey from the State Library of North Carolina

From Jennifer Hanft at the State Library of North Carolina: Dear North Carolina Educators, The State Library of North Carolina, in its mission to preserve and facilitate public access to state government information and advance the study, understanding, and appreciation of North Carolina's cultural heritage, is gathering information to better understand how we can support North Carolina K-12 educators. Please help us by completing the following survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NCEducators . The survey should take 5-10 minutes to complete, and will be open  through   Monday, September 9 th .  Once we have processed the survey feedback, we will compile a report and publish it to the State Library website. You can learn more about the resources and services available to you at the library through the following ways:  Sign up for our email list:  http://eepurl.com/dGt16X Connect with us on social media:  https://statelibrary.ncdcr.gov/social Get a library card to access research

Calling someone out in public

There are times, when you just have to call someone out publically. Someone says something incredibly offensive online. You cannot let it go, so you speak up. Thank you, thank you, thank you.  What I want to address is not that blatant, in-your-face offense, but the unintential. The “I thought I had all the bases covered” or “That never crossed my mind” offense.  I’ve got a couple of examples to share that go in slightly different directions. Book lists are published for an annual event. This particular event has separate ES, MS, and HS book lists. One of our members didn’t like a list and emailed the chair. I cannot say thank you enough to librarian #1 for reaching out to the chair to get answers. The chair explained the process and the nuances of working with the other committees. Librarian #1 then took her information to a national blog and published it without further inquiry - without offering to help the committee make the next list better - without talking to someone else in the

My Job Title Matters

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I am a school librarian! You've heard me say this before. Do I sound like a broken record? I hope so.  This spring, I sent out a survey to members of NC School Library Media Association. One of the questions asked about job title. Most of the job titles listed did not contain the word librarian . oh my! Our jobs have changed, but so have the roles and duties of teachers, counselors, and administrators. We’ve all evolved in our professional roles. Technology has touched and changed every position in schools. But in many cases, the school librarian title has changed so much that the position of school librarian cannot be identified by looking at a list of school jobs. And we wonder why outsiders don’t know what we do. I've sung this song before, but today, I want to add a new verse.  In the past, my concern has been for our identity as school librarians. When people hear the word librarian, they know we deal with books, computers, coteach, lead PD, but with different ti