School Libraries

Today, I was in Mansfield, Ohio, for the annual INFOhio Planning Conference (which I mistakenly referred to as a "retreat" in an earlier post). INFOhio is Ohio's set of statewide resources for school libraries, a complement to OHIOLINK (for academic libraries) and OPLIN (for public libraries).

I took this speaking assignment with a little trepidation, because I wasn't sure how school librarians would react to the scan. I didn't need to worry. These folks were ON, and they were eager to talk.

First, it was like old home week. Terri Fredericka, the director of INFOhio, has been a friend for years. Joanna McNally, the president of OELMA, was in my groups at Library Leadership Ohio and Snowbird, and will be a major leader in libraries in years to come. Ellen Stepanian would be a good role model for Joanna; she's been a leader in school libraries on the local, state, and national level for years, and was a mentor with me at Library Leadership Ohio several years ago. I know I learned at least as much from her as the program participants did.

Several things really seemed to resonate with this group. The concept of getting to the "smallest publishable unit" seemed to carry, and they were amazed with some of the statistics about I-Tunes, and about Microsoft's Janus project.

But what really got things cooking was when I asked about the concept of IT professionals moving from the "T" to the "I" in their titles. There was a spirited discussion about the way IT staff are working with faculty to corner the market on classroom information delivery through services like Blackboard and WebCT, leaving librarians out of the process. So who's fault is this? (By the way, I had enough sense not to ask the question quite this blatantly---it came from an audience member!) Some of the people in the room said school librarians need to get out of their rooms and insinuate themselves in this process. Getting the library's website and information connections visible in the classroom systems should be a top priority for school librarians, they said.

After I finished speaking, a high school librarian came up to me and said she was thrilled that OCLC had seen some of the things she's been seeing in the environment. She said that she'd had her library remodeled this year, moving the books to compact shelving and putting the information technology front and center. She had convinced her board that the library had to reflect the way young people are learning now, not when we were in school. (I don't know about you, but my biggest obstacle in going to grade school was evading the dinosaurs.) Several librarians volunteered to participate in focus groups if OCLC wants to learn more about their segment of the market.

This was such an energizing event that I can't wait to get to Victoria tomorrow and take my turn talking to the Canadian Library Association. I wonder why Delta wouldn't let me print out my boarding pass tonight. Hope it's not a bad omen...