Library Supervisors’ Conference before AASL

Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Today was the meeting of library supervisors enlisted from school districts affiliated with the Council of Great City Schools (U.S. large urban school districts). The sponsor was Cengage http://www.cengage.com/librarians/learning_librarians_school.aspx that school librarians know as the former Thomson-Gale Publishers. The Cengage representative expressed his newly named company’s interest in school libraries. Cengage in return received the heartfelt thanks of the urban library supervisors’ community.
The hosts were Dr. Ann Weeks http://www.clis.umd.edu/people/weeks/ from the University of Maryland, who originated and has developed the idea of this urban school library supervisors’ conference, and Pam Berger http://www.infosearcher.com/ nationally recognized expert and educator on educational technology. I reconnected with library supervisors from across the country who have developed remarkable school district library programs and are wrestling with common problems such as creating and maintaining school library programs that effectively support student learning, assessment of student learning in the school library, using those assessments to bolster school library programming, and providing useful information about their school libraries to school principals to better enable them to support the programs. More information about the endeavors of this group can be found at the wiki
http://greatlibs.wikispaces.com/About+Us
The fitness room was next to work off the excellent lunch to which we had been treated, followed by a walk in the fresh air. We went down to stroll on the short but scenic River Walk beside the Truckee River. Reno has created pocket parks here. The moon was full.
This was an intellectually stimulating day.