The new librarian: leaders in the digital age

How can the school library reimagine itself to serve the needs of the "Google" generation?

An article in Connections on this speaks about the changing role of the school librarian:

Teacher librarians play a crucial role in ... digital transformation, as well as other strategic initiatives. As a result, they are expanding their role to spend more time in the classroom, curating digital content and lesson plans with teachers, teaching digital citizenship to students, and even emerging as technology experts within their schools.

Mark Ray comments:

By virtue of their training, relationships, systems knowledge, and instructional roles … teacher librarians are ideally suited to lead, teach, and support students and teachers in 21st century schools.

And in speaking of the introduction of 1:1 devices:

Even before the new iPads and laptops arrived, teacher librarians were often approached by principals to spearhead efforts to teach students about digital citizenship. Now, with students more often working online, in computer labs, at home, and in classrooms, the teacher librarian role as a digital maven is even more important. They are no longer isolated behind their library walls.

Some schools have drastically reduced the numbers of books they have:

In the middle school, the library consists of a table with several book kiosks in a hallway. And at the high school, teacher librarian Katie Nedved works out of a corner of what is primarily the lunchroom. With this arrangement, students can access resources during leisure time or, when the cafeteria is empty, there is ample space for students to work in small groups. As each student owns his or her own laptop, a full-scale library space isn’t needed. iTech offers just 800 print books, which are mostly print counterparts to the digital content the district offers. For Nedved – a librarian without a library – it is natural to view her role non-traditionally: mentoring students one-on-one, teaching digital citizenship, and helping both teachers and students curate the vast array of digital resources available online.

A new book by John Palfrey promises to give a good background to his assertions that

"...anyone seeking to participate in the 21st century needs to understand how to find and use the vast stores of information available online. Libraries play a crucial role in making these skills and information available. In order to survive our rapidly modernising world ... libraries must make the transition to a digital future as soon as possible—by digitizing print material and ensuring that born-digital material is publicly available online"

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