Iowa School Library Program Guidelines: Libraries, Literacy and Learning for the 21st Century,February 2007

These guidelines were created by a Task Force appointed by the State Library of Iowa and the Iowa Department of Education to provide assistance to local school districts in developing school library programs. These include a summary of the data collected annually by the State Library of Iowa in its Survey of School Libraries. This data will allow local schools to compare themselves in terms of collections, budgets and staffing to schools of similar size throughout the state

Library Costs as a Percentage of Law School Budgets

For many years, the benchmark for the portion of the law school budget that goes to the law library has been twenty percent. An analysis of law school budgets for 1976-77, 1981-82, and 1986-87, however, shows that this benchmark should be lowered or modified by size of the law school

A Library’s Journey from Journal Subscriptions to Articles on Demand

Presentation given at Ohio Valley Group of Technical Services Librarians Annual Conference, 2015.Due to constrained budgets and rising subscription costs, IUPUI University Library was faced with making a substantial cut to its science journals. It was important to both the library and School of Science faculty to maintain quick and easy access to the journals cut in order to fulfill faculty research needs. In Fall 2014, University Library launched an articles on demand pilot using the unmediated version of the Copyright Clearance Center’s “Get It Now” service. This presentation will share how the library integrated the service into its link resolver; limited access through authentication; and gathered feedback from and communicated with pilot users

California Teacher Librarians & the Differences They Make

In August 2024, the California Department of Education released data gathered via its 2022-23 school library evaluation. Following are major findings of an analysis of this dataset focusing on factors associated with where there are credentialed teacher librarians and how their presence helps to shape school library programs—details about staffing levels, library access, staff activities, collection size and budget, and implementation of the Model School Library Standards. Because data were reported by a voluntary sample covering approximately a third of California public schools, the dataset was not adequate to generate state totals or averages. Most responding schools had on-campus libraries. Compared with all public schools, those that responded over-represented some school characteristics (e.g., city locale, elementary and middle schools, schools with least poverty) and under-represented others (e.g., schools with smallest enrollments, combined schools, charter schools). The most powerful factors influencing whether a school has a full-time teacher librarian, a parttime one, or none at all are structural ones, including enrollment range, grade level, and locale. Statewide, teacher librarians are concentrated in larger-enrollment schools, high schools, and schools in city or suburb locales. Almost all schools reporting full-time teacher librarians had librarians who were responsible for one school library, while most schools with part-time teacher librarians had librarians who served libraries in multiple schools. Schools with teacher librarians—especially full-time ones—were more likely than those without teacher librarians to have library staff who were involved more frequently in planning, supporting, and delivering instruction, particularly in the areas of basic and digital literacy. Schools with teacher librarians were also more likely to have library staff who led professional development for teachers. In addition, schools with teacher librarians were more likely to: schedule library access flexibly, have space to accommodate whole classes as well as smaller groups and individuals, and support them pursuing research projects. They were also more likely to provide greater access to technology and to use it to extend the school library program’s presence. Schools with teacher librarians tended to have larger book collections and budgets as well as larger budgets for other types of materials and database access. Quotes from respondents to the CDE School Library Evaluation referencing the findings are included. The report concludes with specific recommendations for improving and using this dataset to the California Department of Education, district and school administrators, educators and professional development providers for teacher librarians, and teacher librarians themselves as well as school library researchers

Growing Collaborative Outreach Efforts to Support the Well-Being of Communities

Libraries of all types provide outreach efforts for their patrons to reduce stress and promote well-being. Public, school, and academic libraries often partner with external entities to provide yoga, therapy dogs, and other creative activities for their patrons. Although collaboration is expected in public, school, and academic libraries, how to collaborate and/or grow collaborative efforts is lacking in the library literature. A former public library employee and a former school librarian came together to pilot a de-stressing program for students at their academic library and each semester have continued to grow their collaborative efforts with partners on and off-campus. Strategies for how to create partnerships and expand collaborative efforts are discussed within the framework of providing programs and activities to support the well-being of library visitors. Additional planning materials, such as a list of resources, budgets, and marketing ideas are provided

Integrated thematic instruction and the elementary school library media center

The purpose of this research was to: 1.) determine the readiness of the three elementary school library media centers in the Egg Harbor Township public school system for implementation of integrated thematic instruction; 2.) determine the role the school library media specialist will play once integrated thematic instruction was adopted; and 3.) present these findings for other elementary schools where the integrated thematic instruction approaches might be adopted. The population was made up of the staff of three elementary schools in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey. This produced samples of three principals, three school library media specialists and 140 teachers. Three separate survey instruments were designed and descriptive statistics were used. This study concluded that the budgets for the elementary school libraries must increase before implementing integrated thematic instruction. This research also concluded that flexible scheduling is necessary in order to adequately implement integrated thematic instruction. Finally, this study suggested that additional staff might be necessary when integrated thematic instruction is adopted because many library tasks will increase or be added

Supporting Scholarship: Thoughts on the Role of the Academic Law Librarian

Discussing the role of the law library in legal education is necessary and essential, both because of the demands libraries place on increasingly tight law school budgets and space, and the challenges that libraries face as the information they collect and organize has moved largely from print to digital formats. This paper explores the roles of academic law librarians in supporting faculty scholarship within the context of the forces affecting libraries, librarians, and legal education in the (still early) twenty-first century. Although it has been more than 30 years since the widespread adoption of the legal research databases in the 1970s, the legal information environment continues to be seen as changing and uncertain, roiled by such new developments as working paper services providing pre-publication looks at new articles, growing interest in blogs and other varieties of short form legal scholarship, and the potential for open access publishing to reduce or eliminate reliance on printed law journals. As these developments continue to affect the processes of legal research and scholarly communications in law, what implications do they have for the role of law librarians in those processes

An analysis for more equitable revenue and expenditure allocations within Lingnan College

From the triennial 1995-98, the funds allocated from University Grants Committee to universities have decreased. In order to use the limited resources effectively, and to manage their revenue and costs efficiently, universities have to set up a better budgeting system. Therefore, the eight universities in Hong Kong are proposing the Revenue Center Management (RCM) instead of the current budgeting system. The purposes of this project focuses on the analyses of the current budgeting system adopted at Lingnan College, and the proposed RCM budgeting system