21st Century Skills: Critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativity and innovation are fundamental skills that students need to succeed in work and life in the 21st century. To read more click here.
Library Media Specialist (LMS): The library media specialist is an essential link in a new educational learning community which includes students, teachers, administrators, and parents. The library media specialist performs four main leadership roles: teacher, instructional partner, information specialist, and program administrator. To see a video about what the LMS can do in your school, click here. To read an article about the new role for the school librarian, click here. LMS job description from American Association of School Librarians.
Collaboration: The Library Media Specialist has been described as a "collaboration gatekeeper" (Kuhlthau, 2007). On any day the LMS may coordinate with teachers on a research project, meet and discuss new technologies with the administration or contact various community agencies. To read more about how the Media Specialist collaborates, click here.
Collection Development Plan: School librarians build collections for curriculum needs. This plan identifies what areas will be addressed each year to ensure an up-to-date collection. Another item to consider when developing a collection is the district's selection policy (see definition below). Weeding (see definition below) the collection also plays an important part in collection development. Click here to read the ALA's Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights as it pertains to collection development.
Common School Fund: A Constitutionally created state trust fund which, by statute, provides money for the purchase of library books and other instructional materials for school libraries. A complete explanation can be found at the DPI website.
Flexible Access or Scheduling: Considered best practice for library usage, flexible scheduling is an open plan with no regularly occurring classes. Flexible access promotes collaboration and point-of-need access. For this to work, the SLIS needs to be an active marketer. For more information on Flexible Scheduling read Flexible Scheduling: Implementing an Innovation.
Fixed Access or Scheduling: In a fixed schedule, classes come to the library as part of a regular special class rotation. While this has benefits—the SLIS sees every student regularly—the instruction can be less effective as collaboration during a fixed schedule is a challenge. Read Doug Johnson's opinion of the strenghts of fixed scheduling here. Fixed vs. Flexible Scheduling in School Library Media Centers: A Continuiing Debate presents the pros and cons.
ICT: Information, communication and technology skills.
Information Fluency: Another term for information literacy; this describes competence with a set of print and digital information skills for locating, evaluating, using, creating and publishing information.
Information Literacy: see information fluency.
Intellectual Freedom: The principle of free access to information and ideas representing diverse points of view.
Library 2.0: a loosely defined model for a modernized form of library service that reflects a transition within the library world in the way that services are delivered to users. The focus is on user-centered change and participation in the creation of content and community. This includes using web-based tools for writing, rating, developing, and commenting on resources. For more information, see this article in School Library Journal and Library Journal, 9/1/2006.
Selection / Reconsideration Policy: A comprehensive district policy that provides the philosophy and general guidelines for selection of all resources. The policy is the basis for collection development, and the board-approved procedures for handling challenged materials.
Weeding: The process of removing old, damaged, or inaccurate materials from the library's collection.
(Adapted From: "An Administrators' Guide to School LIbraries" by Christopher Harris, 2007 - Creative Commons License)
