In this new age of the Internet, school libraries are no longer a place where the media specialist can spend her day browsing quietly among her books. The media center has now become so intergrated with supporting school curriculm that it is considered an extension of the classroom. The Internet contains a plethora of information waiting at the researcher's fingertips to be accessed and utilized. A media center web site is the logical location for providing access to this information.
Media center web sites should contain information about the school such as mission statements, names of personnel, e-mail addresses, and hours of operation. Yet, it should also go beyond that to include links to informational web sites for research, book reviews, homework helpers, library and community news as well as other useful and important information. Like the hub of a wheel, the media center web site is the center of the information spiral that radiates throughout the school. This web site should be available to teachers, students, parents, and adminstration.
Good ideas, but where does a media specialist find the time to design, write, research and publish such a site? The idea can at times seem daunting and fearsome. Researching the internet to find research resources is time consuming and tedious. Designing a web site that is functional and useful is challenging and downright scary. Yet, many media specialist meet this challenge each day with fortitude and skill.
In addition to basic information about the school and the media center, the web site should provide links to web site resources for teachers and students. Student need web sites that will provide factual information for research. These sites need to be updated regularly and be user friendly. Informational web sites also need to be appropriate for the grade levels within the school. Teachers could benefit from having links to web sites that contain ideas for lesson plans, projects, and professional articles.
However, media center web sites should not promote entirely promote research over reading for pleasure. Links should also be included that present sites for book reviews, ebooks, interactive games, and book lists. The list is endless.
While doing some reading on the subject of media center web sites, I came across some information about some web sites that centralize resources for librarians, teachers and students. Some of these web sites are:
School Library Web Directory (www.sldirectory.com) This site contains a lot for teachers and librarians by providing links to many other sites. A subcategory of this site www.sldirectory.com/libsf/resf/wpages.html provides links to media center web sites all over the world and is very interesting to browse through.
Librarians Index to the Internet (Ill.org) also provides many resources for librarians to link to.
For students there are also a number of interesting and informative sites such as :
Kids Click
Yahooligans
Ask Jeeves for Kids
Utilizing and linking through these sources, might make seemingly overwhelming task of reseach a little easier for the busy media specialist.
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4 comments:
You’re quite correct that media center web page should serve as a tool to provide information for the entire school community and what is also true is that there seems to not be enough time in the day of a media specialist to necessarily get this accomplished. Like you, I came across some information online that may be helpful to media specialists anywhere. I found an article from Learning and Leading in Technology magazine entitled, “What Should Be on a School Library Web Page?” It’s quite interesting and helpful. It also offers useful links to sites to the SLMS started. The link to the article is: http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Publications/LL/LLIssues/Volume_32_2005_2004_/September_No_1_/32146b.pdf.
As an elementary teacher I feel it is very important for a media center's website to be "kid-friendly." This means having graphics, fonts, and links which will entice the students and make it easy for them to navigate. You mention a lot of great items to include on a media center website, and I agree teachers and parents should be able to benefit from its use as well. I think so many times media specialists fall into two categories: techies or book worms. I think you can tell which category a media specialist falls into from their website. If technology is something he or she is passionate about, they are much more likely to keep their website up-to-date. If the media specialist loves books, it'll show in the programs and collection they keep. It's great that you included those links that centralize web information. Those could really help the reluctant "techie" media specialist.
Your posting is so well-written, and you make many great points. I agree, it is important for patrons to be able to access an abundance of resources through the media center web site, for the purposes of research as well as for personal growth. Such a task can be quite overwhelming and is especially difficult to manage for those lone media specialists, but yes, somehow they forge on. There are so many great examples available for the novices to model their own sites after.
You are so right about the duties of the media specialist! Every day I learn more and more about what the job really entail. It is staggering to realize how much there is to do. With regard to the website, I do not know how to design a website. It's possible that our counties may offer a staff development class on the subject. I think that like teaching positions, much work will have to be done outside of our regular hours.
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