Current Trends and Topics in School Librarianship
Posted October 29, 2012 by Maya Bery
One of the best ways to get a sense of whether or not school librarianship (or really, any aspect of LIS) is right for you is to explore what the current trends and topics are in the field. The school library field is a particularly rich one to investigate from the comfort of home because even if you don’t have database access to the leading journals, there’s a lot of great stuff out there that can give you a sense of what we school librarians spend our time thinking and talking about, and better yet, they’re free!
Blogs:
The wonderful (really, I’ve met her in person, she’s fabulous!) Joyce Valenza can be found over at NeverEnding Search, her blog at School Library Journal.
Buffy Hamilton blogs at The Unquiet Librarian, and closer to home, Michelle Luhtala publishes her thoughts at Bibliotech.me.
SLTP Professor Rebecca Morris is also active in the blogosphere at School Library Monthly.
There’s so many more diverse and interesting voices from the field out there, so go explore!
Webinars:
YALSA offers webinars, both for free and for a price, but members have access to these webinars and the archives, so sign up today (you can do it even if you’re not an LIS student, but you will have to get an ALA membership first, and then select YALSA for your secondary membership).
Booklist offers a veritable treasure trove of webinars, relevant and interesting not just to school librarians, but to all librarians, and you don’t have to be a member or sign up to download them.
Twitter:
Really, if you’re not on Twitter, you should be. Check out the hashtag #tlchat for the scoop on what teacher-librarians are talking about in the Twitterverse.
For the cash-strapped amongst us, these free resources are a gift, a way to enrich our practices and our ideas about what it means to be a school librarian in the 21st century without spending a dime or having to worry about transportation to and from conference venues. It’s a wonderful way to begin learning about the profession, to get informed, and to figure out if this field really is for you.