College and Career Ready: What’s the Library Got to Do With It?

College and Career Ready, Career Clusters, and Career Pathways are buzz words often heard but not always understood. These terms will be discussed as information about the collaborative activities between Emporia High School (EHS) and Flint Hills Technical College (FHTC) is shared. One responsibility of Emporia High School guidance counselors is to assist students in exploring and choosing career pathway courses. To support the counselors, the librarians at both institutions have created resources and activities that engage students in career exploration. The FHTC librarian created a LibGuide that includes online handbooks, reports, and crosswalks from FHTC programs to the six career fields and sixteen career clusters. Resources and activities created by the EHS librarian for the career fair, which helped students explore their learning styles and career interests, will be discussed. Although the activities are specific to these institutions they can be generalized for other settings

Bridges to the Future: Teaching Information Literacy Across Standards, Institutions, and the Workforce

Teaching information literacy skills to prepare young adults for the demands of a technologically modern workforce requires collaboration between schools and libraries. Identifying opportunities to build bridges that enable smooth transitions for information literacy learning across content areas, standards, and institutions requires collaboration among librarians. Perspectives and discoveries of four librarians (secondary school, two-year technical college, and an undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degree granting university) engaged in collaboration are examined. Collaboration resulted in a common framework for teaching information literacy skills designed with the goal of developing academic and workforce competencies including accessing, sorting, evaluating, and incorporating reliable information into daily lives