Scholary Article 3

Scholarly Article #3
School Libraries & Evidence: Seize the Day; Begin the Future by Dr. Ross J. Todd
After reading the article about information literacy in Canada, I found this article by Dr. Ross Todd who has had the opportunity to also meet with educators around the world.
The first thing that struck me was at the very beginning of the article he quoted a librarian from Australia who talked about how librarians advocate constantly to raise awareness by being involved in the school community, meetings, councils, in-services, assemblies and workshops. There is the theme again of having to justify what we are doing and making sure people know it is important. It seems funny to me that you don’t have to advocate if you are a math teacher or biology or social studies.
This author took a different approach and even though it is important to advocate for our profession we sometimes get lost in the negatives. His view is to “focus on an evidence-based approach, and make this the public voice of the profession”. He states that it is this evidence of student improvement that will demonstrate how libraries make a difference. And he challenges librarians to become familiar with research and to communicate these results to the community.
Some of the International research that he talked about identified some more common themes such as instructional role, informational search processes, student use of on-line technologies, program evaluation and student achievement. Todd also suggests strategies and processes, based on studies done in Australia, which they use to document success.
· Assessment tasks
· Feedback tasks
· Rubric measures
· Interview measures
· More formal school surveys
· Portfolios
· Using available school data
· Undertaking small action research projects
So by using some of these evidence collecting techniques you will be able to proudly demonstrate that libraries and library programs do make a difference. This was an article that made sense to me and left me feeling a bit more positive about the future.

Todd, R. (2003, August). School Libraries & Evidence: Seize the Day, Begin the Future. Library Media Connection, 22 (1), 12-18. Retrieved November 24, 2008, from Academic Search Premier database.

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