Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Essential Reference Services for Today's School Media Specialists


Lanning, Scott, and John Bryner. Essential Reference Services for Today's School Media Specialists. 2nd ed. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited, 2010. ISBN: 978-1-59158-883-2

Publisher's Description
...Today's school media specialist is an active instructional partner, an advocate for information literacy and media center resources, and a reference librarian.

Essential Reference Services for Today's School Media Specialists: Second Edition is an overview of today's reference environment covering the essentials of reference services, from selecting resources to weeding the collection, from the advantages of chat reference to the types of library instruction. This book is the place to start for information on reference services. It begins with a discussion of information and information literacy and also covers using and evaluating print and electronic reference sources, providing and evaluating reference services, creating web resources, teaching the core curriculum, and more.

Grades K-12

Features
• Offers a database search worksheet to use with students
• Includes a list of print reference sources available for further reading

Highlights
• Provides a concise overview of the current state of reference services
• Discusses information power, the 21st-century learner and Big6 Skills and how they apply to reference services
• Discusses the reference transaction and the Behavioral Performance Guidelines from RUSA
• Examines the strengths and weaknesses of the various methods for providing digital reference service and discusses how to evaluate sources to find quality information