Inspiring Curiosity

Cassinelli, Colette. Inspiring Curiosity: The Librarian's Guide to Inquiry-Based Learning. International Society for Technology in Education, 2018. ISBN: 978-1-56-484672-3

Note: The author is a teacher librarian at Sunset High School in Beaverton, Oregon.

Publisher's Description
Inspiring Curiosity is a practical guide for secondary school librarians as they collaborate with teachers and students to develop inquiry-based research projects. With success stories from librarians all over the U.S. illustrating how they’ve guided teachers and students through the research process, this book provides strategies for using memorable events to activate students’ natural curiosity and activities for generating essential questions for exploration.

The book includes:

• Ideas and resources to help librarians be more effective in research and inquiry.
• Tips for developing search strategies, locating and curating resources, evaluating sources and celebrating students’ inquiry beyond the traditional research paper.
• Lessons and assessment ideas to keep librarians current on information literacy topics.

Written for librarians by a librarian, this book will help librarians collaborate with classroom teachers on inquiry projects and offers new ideas and insights to inspire them in the process.

We Boost Teaching & Learning

Loertscher, David V. We Boost Teaching & Learning: Micro Documentation Measures for Teacher Librarians. Learning Commons Press, 2018. ISBN: 1-933170-84-0

Publisher's Description
Teacher librarians who wish to document their contribution to teaching and learning in the school library learning commons will find a plethora of recommendations under six categories: literacies, information, inquiry, instructional design, technology, and expertise. Each group of measures is preceded by a state of the art essay that describes best practices and the concept of the newest ideas in library learning commons implementation. Each measure is targeted at the learner level, the teaching unit level, or the organization level. And, the entire collection is prefaced by a brilliant essay by Dr. Ross J. Todd of Rutgers University.

Full STEAM Ahead

Pandora, Cherie P., and Fredrick Kathy. Full STEAM Ahead: Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics in Library Programs and Collections. Libraries Unlimited, 2017.
ISBN: 978-1-4408-5340-1

Publisher's Description
Written by librarians who have experience with integrating technology into all subject areas and working with teens and young adults, this book is a toolkit for youth and young adult librarians—school and public—who wish to incorporate science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM) into their programs and collections but aren't sure where to begin.

Most educators are well aware of the reasons for emphasizing STEAM—topics that fall within the broad headings of science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics—in the curriculum, regardless of grade level. But how do librarians who work with ‘tweens in middle school, high school, and public libraries—fit into the picture and play their roles to underscore their relevance in making STEAM initiatives successful?

This book answers those key questions, providing program guidelines and resources for each of the STEAM areas. Readers will learn how to collaborate in STEAM efforts by providing information on resources, activities, standards, conferences, museums, programs, and professional organizations. Emphasis is placed on encouraging girls and minorities to take part in and get excited about STEAM.

In addition, the book examines how makerspaces can enhance this initiative; how to connect your programs to educational standards; where to find funding; how to effectively promote your resources and programs, including how school and public librarians can collaborate to maximize their efforts; how to find and provide professional development; and how to evaluate your program to make further improvements and boost effectiveness. Whether you are on the cusp of launching a STEAM initiative, or looking for ways to grow and enhance your program, this book will be an invaluable resource.

Features

• Provides school and public librarians with the resources and clear guidance they need to implement STEAM programs and collections at their libraries
• Places librarians in a key position—based on knowledge and ability—with STEAM initiatives in their school and community
• Connects STEAM programming to national standards
• Explains how to secure funding and find partners to collaborate in STEAM

Table of contents

The 21st-Century Elementary School Library Program: Managing for Results

Harvey II, Carl A. The 21st-Century Elementary School Library Program: Managing for Results. 2nd ed., Libraries Unlimited, 2016. ISBN: 978-1-4408-4244-3

Publisher's Description
Compact yet remarkably comprehensive, this book covers all the major aspects of school library services, from administration to instruction focused from the elementary school librarian perspective—now updated and expanded to include the latest developments in makerspaces, the Common Core, social networking, and eBooks.

How do you accomplish a technology transformation at a time when budgets are extremely limited? What is the proper location for web-based social networking in the school library? What are the best practices for working together with students, parents, and educators? The 21st-Century Elementary School Library Program: Managing for Results is an invaluable resource for answers to these and many more questions, as it brings together in one volume the advice and insights you need to bring your library into the new century.

This invaluable guide provides tips and techniques, forms and templates, and advice on everything from staffing and budgeting to collaborating with teachers and other libraries, to Web 2.0 and other new computer tools for building collections and devising special programs. Whether you are just getting started or are a library veteran seeking effective program renewal, this book belongs on your shelf.

Features

• Provides information written by a former practicing school librarian and guidance that is applicable immediately in school libraries
• Updated to include collection development in the digital age to address eBooks and other digital acquisitions
• Covers the instructional stance of school libraries

Table of contents

Challenge-Based Learning

Graves, Colleen, et al. Challenge-Based Learning in the School Library Makerspace. Libraries Unlimited, 2017.
ISBN: 978-1-4408-5150-6

 

Publisher's Description

An invaluable how-to text that details the workshop model, addresses the design challenges, and explains the best avenues for curriculum-based learning in the school library makerspace.

A successful school makerspace needs an enthusiastic maker community, school-wide participation, and staff support. How do you build this type of learning at your school? The innovative team behind Challenge-Based Learning in the School Library Makerspace addresses common questions and concerns and describes step-by-step how to introduce challenge-based learning into the school library makerspace.

Intended for librarians and school staff who have already started thinking in terms of makerspaces but need further help sustaining programming and want to know more about Makerspace 2.0, this helpful guide details the workshop model, various real-world design challenges, and the process for implementing curriculum-based learning in the school library makerspace. Readers will be empowered to go beyond the initial implementation of a makerspace and to draw from an arsenal of proven methodologies for designing challenges for student learning. Additionally, the book enables the addition of curriculum connections to library programming, shows how to connect your students to local experts and the global maker community, and eases you into more productive collaboration with other librarians.

Features

• Explores crowdsourced research methods that lead to authentic participatory learning
• Ensures that student-led workshops and design challenges result in tremendous success
• Supplies practical tips that can be applied by beginner maker-librarians and provides curricula suggestions for advanced maker-librarians
• Explains how to incorporate design thinking, empathy building, and problem solving with design challenges that spur student creativity

Table of contents

36 Workshops to Get Kids Writing

Hurtado, Annmarie. 36 Workshops to Get Kids Writing from Aliens to Zebras. ALA Editions, 2018. ISBN: 978-0-8389-1648-3

Description: 

    Creative writing encourages imaginations to take flight, and when adults use the  right approach, building literacy skills becomes a form of play that gets kids excited to create their own stories. Packed with ready-to-use lesson plans designed for kindergarten- and early elementary-aged children, this book will help librarians add creative writing activities to more traditional storytime initiatives and school librarians enrich English Language Arts lessons. Hurtado’s resource provides an entire year’s worth of weekly lesson plans, adaptable as needed, that include instructions, handouts, and everything needed to plan and prepare: recommended read-alouds for each lesson plan; ideas and activities scaffolded for different ability levels; tips for using humor and silliness to grab kids’ attention and keep them engaged; information on how creative writing dovetails with Common Core standards, emphasizing skills and critical thinking over rote learning; and additional quality read-aloud picture books that can be used as inspiration to create new lessons.

    This book will serve as a handy lesson/program planning tool for any children’s or school librarian interested in exploring new ideas to teach creative writing and higher literacy.

Table of Contents: 

Chapter One    Writing in the Library: A Radical Idea

Chapter Two    All You Need Is a Good TERRIBLE Idea

Lesson 1    A Panda Parade Is a Terrible Idea

Lesson 2    If You Ever Want to Bring a Shark to the Park, DON’T

Lesson 3    Revising and Illustrating: Smartphones Are Definitely Not for Animals

Lesson 4    Don’t Let the Alien Play in the Toilet!

Lesson 5    Teach Your Zebra to Ride a Bike

Chapter Three    Fractured Fairy Tales

Lesson 6    The Very Old Bad Wolf

Lesson 7    Fairy-Tale Characters on Vacation

Lesson 8    Double Trouble

Lesson 9    Trickster Tales

Lesson 10    Small Actors Folktale Theater

Chapter Four: Animal Muses

Lesson 11    If I Had a Dinosaur

Lesson 12    How to Throw a Unicorn Party

Lesson 13    My Puppy Brother

Lesson 14    Take Your Poem for a Walk

Lesson 15    Don’t Sweat the Snow Stuff: Self-Help for Stressed Penguins

Lesson 16    Public Service Announcement: Beware the Giant Humans

Lesson 17    Diary of a T. Rex

Chapter Five    The Plot Thickens

Lesson 18    Chickens Can’t Sing

Lesson 19    Pirate Puppy

Lesson 20    Maybe It’ll Work This Time

Lesson 21    Every Hero Needs a Villain

Lesson 22    Meanwhile

Chapter Six    Playing with Words

Lesson 23    Go on a Word Hunt

Lesson 24    Insect Linguistics

Lesson 25    How to Make a Bear Burrito

Lesson 26    Riddle Me This

Lesson 27    Silly Split-Panels

Lesson 28    Scrambled Animals

Lesson 29    Bring a New Animal to Dr. Seuss’s Zoo

Chapter Seven    Advertising and Other Forms

Lesson 30    Grand Opening for a Literary Diner

Lesson 31    Write a Circus Poster for the Most Horrible Monster on Earth

Lesson 32    Make a Menu for an Ice Cream Truck Shop

Lesson 33    Make a Campaign Video for President Squid

Lesson 34    Propaganda: The Truth about Flowers

Lesson 35    What Will You Do with Your Idea?

Lesson 36    Make Your Own Jar of Happiness

Chapter Eight    Books to Feed the Young Author’s Spirit

Appendix A

Appendix B

Bibliography

Index

Middle & Junior High Core Collection

Corsaro, Julie, et al., editors. Middle & Junior High Core Collection. 13th ed., Grey House Publishing, 2017. ISBN: 978-1-68217-238-4

Note: The State Library also has Senior High Core Collection, Children’s Core Collection, and from a different publisher, A to Zoo, and many more collection development resources.  

Publisher's Description

Middle & Junior High Core Collection, (13th Edition, 2017) is a guide to over 11,000 fiction and nonfiction books recommended for children and young adolescents, grades five through nine. This volume is designed to address the unique needs of younger adolescent readers and help school media specialists and young adult librarians locate highly recommended titles to strengthen their collection.

New & Expanded Coverage

This new edition covers thousands of titles not previously included. It provides immediate access to the Most Highly Recommended and Core Collection level titles for middle school students and teachers. In addition, particular attention has been paid to developing areas of computers, math, and the sciences.

For many years, librarians have relied on Middle & Junior High Core Collection to help build their collection and for many other important uses:

• Purchasing & Title Selection. With easy access to price, ISBN and publisher information, selecting and ordering titles is quick and easy.
• User Service & Readers’ Advisory. Every title in this Core Collection is a recommended work of its kind and can be given with confidence to a student or teacher who expresses a need based on topic or genre.
• Curriculum Support. The indexing, annotations, and grade level designations are incredibly helpful in identifying materials for classroom use.
• Collection Development & Maintenance. This Core Collection identifies titles that are recommended to add, or keep, in a collection. This helpful insight helps facilitate decisions to rebind, replace, or discard items.
• Professional Development. This edition features library science titles specifically addressing collection development for this age group.

Bibliographic & Cataloging Data, Descriptions & Reviews

Individual entries provide a wealth of much-needed information at a glance.

• Complete Bibliographic & Cataloging Data
• Price, ISBN and Publisher Data make purchasing titles quick and easy
• Suggested Subject headings, Grade Level & Dewey Classification
• Content Descriptions & Quotations from Select Reviews are incredibly useful when evaluating books for selection and in determining which is best suited for the individual reader.
• Additional notes describe sequels and companion volumes, editions available, awards, and publication history.
• Starred listings highlight over 2,400 “Most Highly Recommended” titles

Easy-to-use Arrangement

• Nonfiction, provides immediate access to over 6,500 nonfiction titles, arranged by Dewey Decimal Classification.
• Fiction, arranged by author, recommends nearly 4,200 of the best fiction for young adolescent readers. This volume now includes graphic novels too!
• Story Collections, arranged by author, highlights over 100 of the best story collections for students in grades five through nine.

In-depth Indexing

An in-depth Author, Title, and Subject Index provides users with thousands of ways to navigate this rich collection of recommended titles. Whether searching by author, title or by one of the hundreds of subject areas found in the index, librarians can easily locate titles that will round out their collection.

The Middle & Junior High Core Collection is an essential resource for library and media specialists looking to enhance and enrich their collection with the most important and highly recommended titles currently available. No library media specialist should be without the helpful collection development and curriculum support guidance that this collection can provide.

Sample pages from the prior edition

Encourage Reading

Scales, Pat R. Encourage Reading from the Start: Essays, Articles, and Interviews from the Field. ALA Editions, 2018.
ISBN: 978-0-8389-1650-6

Publisher's Description
A past-president of the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) and longtime spokesperson for First Amendment issues as they relate to children and young adults, for several decades Scales has been a tireless champion for children’s reading in all its richness and diversity. This collection gathers her most popular editorials, feature articles, and author interviews from the pages of Book Links magazine. Filled with stimulating ideas for school and public librarians, this book

• spotlights compelling editorial columns that cover the core values of ALA, including democracy, privacy, and diversity;
• includes interviews with popular authors such as Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Graham Salisbury, Elana K. Arnold, Angela Cerrito, and many others; and
• features essays on reading trends and classroom discussion topics, with annotated bibliographies.

These interesting and engaging pieces will inspire all those who work with young readers.

Table of contents (middle tab)

National School Library Standards

American Association of School Librarians. National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries. ALA Editions, 2017. ISBN: 978-0-8389-1579-0

Publisher's Description
AASL’s new integrated standards are designed to empower leaders to transform teaching and learning. The new National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries reflect an evolution of AASL Standards, building on philosophical foundations and familiar elements of previous standards while featuring the new streamlined AASL Standards Integrated Framework for learners, school librarians, and school libraries.

Three previously separate publications—AASL Standards for the 21st-Century Learner, Standards in Action, and Empowering Learners—are now framed within a single text, emphasizing the importance of all three standards sets while ensuring that standards-related activities are mutually reinforcing. The National School Library Standards enable school librarians to influence and lead in their schools, districts, and states and to develop plans that meet today’s educational landscape for learners, school librarians, and the school library. Among the innovations:

• Common Beliefs reflect current learning environments and professional best practices for effective school libraries; 
• the new standards framework features five shared components—Shared Foundations, Key Commitments, Domains, Competencies and Alignments—which are designed to reflect each other; 
• a section dedicated to assessment and evaluation provides examples on how to create your own tools that align school and district models with AASL Standards; 
• scenarios for various types of school library professionals demonstrate techniques and practices for successful implementation in authentic situations for self-reflection, group professional development, and pre-service education; 
• and included are a glossary of terms, useful verbs, a list of evidence, and other relevant appendices. 

The National School Library Standards enables personalization for every learner and school librarian, allowing you to continuously tailor your school library to local needs, your own strengths, and learners’ benefit.

Table of contents (middle tab)

Connected Librarians Tap Social Media

Robertson, Nikki D. Connected Librarians: Tap Social Media to Enhance Professional Development and Student Learning. International Society for Technology in Education, 2017.
ISBN: 978-1-56484-392-0

Publisher's Description
Once taboo in schools, the use of social media has become essential, providing schools with opportunities for outreach, advocacy and more. Today, it’s often the responsibility of librarians to model the proper use of social media for students.

Connected Librarians: Tap Social Media to Enhance Professional Development and Student Learning offers insights into the opportunities and obstacles of this exciting but sometimes challenging topic, including practical ideas for making the most of social media in your school library.

This informative guide is the professional development librarians need to understand how to effectively use social media to improve student learning.

This book will:

• Demonstrate how to model responsible social media use to manage issues of privacy and anonymity within social media sites and apps.
• Provide tips on teaching digital citizenship, such as using a learning management system to create a safe environment for students to hone digital communication skills.
• Show how to leverage social media tools to encourage reading and writing through rating and reviewing books, creating fan fiction and more.
• Demonstrate how to use social media as a powerful tool to build your own professional learning network.

Table of contents and excerpt

Reimagining Library Spaces

Rendina, Diana. Reimagining Library Spaces: Transform Your Space on Any Budget. International Society for Technology in Education, 2017. ISBN: 978-1-56484-391-3

Publisher's Description

With the advent of modern technologies and the rise of participatory and active learning pedagogy, the traditional school library model is no longer as effective as it once was.

Reimagining Library Spaces helps librarians rethink the library space, including the changing role of technology, showing ways to transform how students learn in and use these spaces.

Find the guidance you need to make smart and efficient updates to your library space that encourage the use of technology to improve student learning.

This book includes:

• Tips and strategies for transforming your outdated library space on a small budget. 
• How-to’s for addressing the challenges and opportunities brought about by the changing role of technology, including collaborative learning labs, makerspaces and ways to support BYOD.
• Practical suggestions for finding ideas to improve your space, inventory your library and survey your community.

Table of contents and excerpt

Digital Citizenship in Action

Mattson, Kristen. Digital Citizenship in Action: Empowering Students to Engage in Online Communities. International Society for Technology in Education, 2017. ISBN: 9781564843937

Note: The book's introduction indicates that the "book is intended for teachers of Grades 6-12, school librarians, administrators, and other adults in the school community who are responsible for developing and delivering digital citizenship lessons."

Publisher's Description
For years, much of the available curricula for teaching digital citizenship focused on “don’ts.” Don’t share addresses or phone numbers. Don’t give out passwords. Don’t bully other students. But the conversation then shifted and had many asking, “Why aren’t we teaching kids the power of social media?” Next, digital citizenship curriculum moved toward teaching students how to positively brand themselves so that they would stand out when it came to future scholarships and job opportunities.

In the end, both messages failed to address one of the most important aspects of citizenship: being in community with others. As citizens, we have a responsibility to give back to the community and to work toward social justice and equity. Digital citizenship curricula should strive to show students possibilities over problems, opportunities over risks and community successes over personal gain.

In Digital Citizenship in Action, you’ll find practical ways for taking digital citizenship lessons beyond a conversation about personal responsibility so that you can create opportunities for students to become participatory citizens, actively engaging in multiple levels of community and developing relationships based on mutual trust and understanding with others in these spaces.

This book includes:

• Tips for creating a digital space where students can try something new, grow through mistakes, and learn what it means to be a citizen in different spaces.
• “Spotlight Stories” from teachers engaged with participatory digital citizenship that demonstrate how these ideas play out in actual classrooms.
• Featured activities to help you integrate these ideas into your classroom.

Table of contents and excerpt

Children's Core Collection

Corsaro, Julie, and Kendal Spires, editors. Children's Core Collection. 23rd ed., Grey House Publishing, 2017. ISBN: 978-1-68217-235-3

The State Library has all of the books in the Core Collection series.

Publisher's Description
The Children's Core Collection is a comprehensive guide to 15,000 recommended books for children from preschool through grade six...users will find bibliographic data, content descriptions and reviews of 15,000 highly recommended titles, including Picture Books & Easy Readers, Story Collections, Fiction Books, Nonfiction Books, Biographies, and Graphic Novels.

More details and table of contents

School Librarian as Curriculum Leader

Howard, Jody K. The School Librarian as Curriculum Leader. Libraries Unlimited, 2017. ISBN: 978-1-59884-990-5

Product Description
As one of the only books to offer a behind-the-scenes look at the multifaceted role of school librarians in student success, this instructional guide offers everything you'll need to develop, align, and evaluate curriculum with your library collection in mind.

This reference provides school library professors with strategies and tips for creating future school leaders out of current LIS students. Drawing upon her extensive experience as a school librarian, author Jody K. Howard heralds the library professional's role as information specialist, instructional partner, and curriculum advocate. Her insider's perspective is rich with tested strategies to help students seamlessly integrate the responsibilities of their multiple roles into daily activities.

The work explains the process of curriculum mapping and collection development with an eye on teaching these tools to those new to the profession. The content provides methods for developing guided inquiry lessons in collaboration with teachers, illustrates ways to develop leadership skills while aligning the collection with the curriculum, and offers strategies for working alongside curriculum committees and classroom teachers to build a cohesive educational program. The final chapter explores the roles and responsibilities of school librarians at the district, state, and national level.

Features

• Includes charts, tables, models, and discussion questions to aid school library professors
• Provides strategies for developing, aligning, and evaluating curriculum
• Features specific process examples for effective collection development
• Explains both horizontal and vertical curriculum mapping

Table of contents

Learning Transformed

Sheninger, Eric C., and Thomas C. Murray. Learning Transformed: 8 Keys to Designing Tomorrow's Schools, Today. ASCD, 2017.
ISBN: 978-1-4166-2389-2

This book is not about libraries, although one example is about libraries. One of the authors is involved in the Future Ready Schools initiative.

Product Description
With all that we know about how students learn, the nature of the world they will face after graduation, and the education inequities that have existed for centuries, maintaining a traditional, one-size-fits-all approach to teaching and learning is tantamount to instructional malpractice.

International security, the success of global economies, and sustainability as a global society all depend on the success of our education system in the years to come. It's our obligation to prepare our students for their future—not our past.

Authors Eric C. Sheninger and Thomas C. Murray outline eight keys—each a piece of a puzzle for transforming the K–12 education system of teaching and learning—to intentionally design tomorrow's schools so that today's learners are prepared for success . . . and stand ready to create new industries, find new cures, and solve world problems.

The traditional model of schooling ultimately prepares students for the industrial model of the past. If we want our students to become successful citizens in a global society, we must dramatically shift to a more personal approach. Failure is not an option. We can no longer wait. Let Learning Transformed show you how you can be a part of the solution.

The authors encourage you to use the hashtag #LT8Keys to continue the discussion online.

Table of contents

Technology and the School Library

Jurkowski, Odin L. Technology and the School Library: A Comprehensive Guide for Media Specialists and Other Educators. 3rd ed., Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. ISBN: 978-1-4422-7644-4 

Product Description

Technology and the School Library is a comprehensive overview of the types of technologies used in school libraries, from traditional low-tech options to the latest developments, describing how school librarians interact with these technologies.

This thoroughly revised and updated third edition addresses the continuously changing nature of technology, including new information on 1:1 initiatives, Chromebooks, mobile devices, and current trends in technology integration throughout schools.

Major topics covered in this volume include information resources in the school library, varieties of educational software, resources available via the web, and the importance of creating a web presence. This book also addresses tools that can be used in classrooms and technology administration—everything from automation and filters to security on student computers and security systems in general.

Table of contents

Social Media and Your Brain

Prado, C. G., editor. Social Media and Your Brain: Web-Based Communication Is Changing How We Think and Express Ourselves. ABC-CLIO, 2017. ISBN: 978-1-44085453-8

Publisher's Description

While society has widely condemned the effects on preteens and teens’ natural social maturation of digitally enabled communication, such as texting and messaging, and of social media apps, such as Facebook, Instagram, and SnapChat, these forms of communication are adversely affecting everyone, including adults. This book examines how social media and modern communication methods are isolating users socially, jeopardizing their intellectual habits, and, as a result, decreasing their chances of achieving social and professional success.

The ubiquitous use of the Internet and social media is changing our society—in some ways, for the worse. Use of social media, the Internet, and other purely digital and less-personal communication methods are distorting the intellectual and social maturation of teens and preteens in particular—those among us who were born into and raised with Internet technology. People's ability to read facial expressions, interpret subtle differences in spoken intonation, and perceive body language is in significant decline due to the use of social media and the Internet largely replacing direct, face-to-face contact with other human beings.

This book documents how changes in our daily behavior caused by the proliferation of social media are reshaping individuals' personalities and causing an evolution of the character of our society as a whole. Readers will understand how these important changes came about and how more connectivity all too often leads to more ignorance and less comprehension, and will consider solutions that could counter the negative effects of being "too connected, too often."

Features

• Focuses on the effects of the Internet and social media overall on the specific groups most affected: ‘tweens, teens, and college students, individuals who take to the use of such modern communication methods naturally but who are also ill-equipped to use self-control to resist the instant gratification, constant distraction, and addictive behaviors that come with social media
• Alerts readers to consequences of social media and Internet use of which they are likely unaware
• Identifies practical solutions that can serve to counter the wide-reaching negative effects of excessive use of and reliance on social media

Distracted

Kurtzberg, Terri R., and Jennifer L. Gibbs. Distracted: Staying Connected without Losing Focus. ABC-CLIO, 2017.
ISBN: 978-1-4408-4295-5

Publisher's Description

What are the benefits and negative consequences of our increased connectivity at school, at work, and at home? Is being constantly distracted now a worldwide problem? This book examines how new technologies and social pressures have changed the way we use our attention, and the extent to which they drive us to distraction, by interpreting hundreds of scientific studies from the literatures in cognitive and social psychology, sociology, communication, management, and decision making.

While distraction is ever-present in daily life, staying connected in an efficient way is the goal for one and all. To accomplish that, some amount of fine-tuning of typical interactions with technology is in order. Nearly everyone recognizes the addictive nature of constant connectivity—and its destructive effect on productivity and quality of work. But the availability of technology also promotes better engagement, control, and flexibility in both professional and personal settings. An in-depth analysis of these tradeoffs can lead to smarter choices about when and how to be connected throughout the day and across settings. The ultimate objective is to have technology enhance our lives without serving as a source of constant distraction.

Distracted: Staying Connected without Losing Focus explains the nuances of what this addiction stems from—considering both societal and technological factors—and identifies both the invaluable opportunities and the counterproductive consequences of living in our technology-enabled, instant-access-to-everything world. The chapters examine a wide swath of scientific research to expose how technology use affects our attention and the extent to which it causes distraction. Authors Terri Kurtzberg and Jennifer Gibbs apply the science of human attention to reveal how specific areas of our lives are significantly changed with the advent of "continuous connectedness," including in the workplace, in personal relationships, in childhood development, and with regard to education and learning. Readers will clearly understand why multitasking fails us, what the consequences are—to ourselves and those around us—of being focused on a screen for much of the day, and how each of us can adjust our use of technology in order to improve our lives.

Features

• Offers a comprehensive and insightful understanding of how technology use in daily life affects our attention, our work performance, and our relationships
• Describes how to get and keep the attention of others in a distracted, mobile-device enabled world
• Explains benefits of multitasking as well as how it limits our abilities to process information and make good decisions
• Addresses the connections between constantly being distracted and trying to multitask to the near crisis-level trend of unused vacation time in America and explains why this phenomenon hurts everyone

Recommended Reference Books for Small and Medium-Sized Libraries and Media Centers, 2017 Edition

Recommended Reference Books for Small and Medium-Sized Libraries and Media Centers, 2017 Edition (Volume 37), edited by Juneal M. Chenoweth. Libraries Unlimited, 2017. 978-1-4408-5661-7.

Publisher's Description

An essential resource for collection development specialists in small and medium-sized libraries, this guide identifies the highest quality, most affordable, and most appropriate new print and electronic reference materials.

The 2017 edition of Recommended Reference Books for Small and Medium-Sized Libraries and Media Centers contains unabridged reviews chosen from the current edition of American Reference Books Annual (ARBA) and ARBAonline. As with previous editions, readers will get fair and accurate assessments from these reviews, which are written by librarians and subject-area experts who present both positive and negative aspects of each product. Each publication review is coded to clearly indicate the most appropriate audience—college, public, and/or school.

Features

• More than 500 reviews chosen from American Reference Books Annual. 
• Considers affordability and broad appeal as criteria for inclusion—key factors with today's shrinking budgets. 
• Presents the unparalleled reliability and accuracy you count on for your selection process.

The Discovery Tool Cookbook

The Discovery Tool Cookbook: Recipes for Successful Lesson Plans, edited by Nancy Fawley and Nikki Krysak. ACRL, 2016. 978-0-8389-8891-6.

Publisher's Description

The Discovery Tool Cookbook: Recipes for Successful Lesson Plans, edited by Nancy Fawley and Nikki Krysak, showcases tested lessons by librarians and practitioners for teaching information literacy using a discovery tool. The third volume in the successful ACRL Cookbook series features “recipes” sorted by lesson type and level of student preparedness, including all the information needed to replicate (or customize) each dish at your own institution. The IL Framework is infused in each of the 49 lessons, which suit a mix of abilities, learning outcomes, and patron types, including K-12 and ELL students, with options for flipping instruction to maximize learning outside of the classroom.

The Discovery Tool Cookbook is essential for all academic and school librarians wanting to create fun lesson plans that incorporate a discovery layer.

More Information
See the publisher's website for Table of Contents and editor information.