Friends Groups...School Libraries

Reed, Sally G. Friends Groups: Critical Support for School Libraries [toolkit]. Philadelphia: United for Libraries, 2013.

About the Toolkit

...gives tips on gaining school support; raising the profile of the school library; generating excitement; establishing a friends group of parents, faculty and community members; creating a student friends group and more.

“With school libraries closing across the country, it is becoming more important than ever before for school librarians to develop friends groups,” said United for Libraries Executive Director Sally Gardner Reed. “Friends have been keeping public libraries open and even staving off budget cuts for years – they can do the same for school libraries.”

This toolkit is also available online.

Rethinking Information Literacy

Secker, Jane, and Emma Coonan, eds. Rethinking Information Literacy: A Practical Framework for Supporting Learning. London: Facet, 2013. ISBN: 978-1-85604-822-4

From the Publisher

Based on groundbreaking research undertaken by editors Jane Secker and Emma Coonan as part of the prestigious Arcadia Program at Cambridge University, UK, this book presents a new and dynamic information literacy curriculum developed for the 21st-century information professional. The authors adopt a broad definition of information literacy that encompasses social as well as academic environments and situates information literacy as a fundamental attribute of the discerning scholar and the informed citizen. It seeks to address in a modular, flexible and holistic way the developing information needs of students entering higher education over the next five years.

The book is organized around the ten “strands” of the new curriculum, which cover the whole landscape of information literacy development required to succeed as an undergraduate in higher education. Interweaving the editors' research and the reflections of internationally recognized experts from the library, education, and information literacy fields, including Moira Bent, Andy Priestner, Sarah Pavey, Geoff Walton and Elizabeth Tilley, it illustrates how and why this new curriculum will work in practice. Detailed appendices present the curriculum, lesson plans and tools for institutional audit, giving readers all the tools they need to implement it successfully in their institutions. 

The table of contents and chapter 1 of the book are available online.

How To STEM (book)

Gubnitskaia, V. & Smallwood, C. (2014). How to STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education in Libraries. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.

Library staff realize the importance of getting involved in STEM education, but many have difficulty finding comprehensive information that will help them plan and successfully implement STEM direction in their organization. This book is designed to meet that need. It is timely and relevant. How to STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education in Libraries is by and for libraries who are involved in contributing efforts into advancing these subjects. It is organized in 9 parts including funding, grant writing, community partnerships, outreach, research, and examples of specific programming activities. Authors are drawn from the professional staffs of educational institutions, libraries, and non-profit organizations such as science museums. 
 
The book contains eight parts, each emphasizing a different aspect of how to succeed with STEM. Part 1 emphasizes how hands-on activities that are both fun and educational can be used to further STEM awareness. Parts 2 and 3 contain chapters on the uniting of STEM with Information Literacy. Innovative collection development ideas are discussed in Part 4 and Part 5 focuses on research and publishing. Outreach is the theme of Part 6 and the programs described in these chapters offer an array of ways to connect with students of all ages. The final section of How to STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education in Libraries addresses the funding of these programs. 
 
Librarians of all types will be pleased to discover easy-to-implement suggestions for collaborative efforts, many rich and diverse programming ideas, strategies for improving reference services and library instruction to speakers of English as a second language, marketing and promotional tips designed to welcome multicultural patrons into the library, and much more.

(book description)

Serving Grandfamilies in Libraries (book)

Gough, S., Feehan, P., & Lyons, D. (2013) Serving Grandfamilies in Libraries: A Handbooks and Programming Guide. New York: Scarecrow Press.

Gough, Feehan, and Lyons have taken everything learned from their research on developing GrandFamily Resource Collections and leading grandfamily programming in several states and put it in this easy to use guide. They share the successes and failures of existing programs so other librarians can hit the ground running rather than trudge through a time-consuming and costly period of trial-and-error. It’s a lot more efficient to learn from someone else’s mistakes than to make your own.

The target population, grandfamilies, and most specifically, grandparents raising grandchildren have become a statistically-significant group worthy of attention in many communities but library practitioners may not have explored further due to a lack of resources and money.

Special features include:

• List of Web resources (government agencies, support groups, etc.)
• List of grants and funding opportunities
• Sample grant applications
• List of possible community partners for the library
• Sample surveys or some tactic for getting to know the needs of one’s target population
• Sample marketing plans
• Sample promotional materials
• Sample activity sheets
• Sample release forms, etc.

With this practical and comprehensive guide, your library will be ready to jumpstart or easily expand a stellar program for the grandfamilies in your community. (book description)

XML for Catalogers and Metadata Librarians

Cole, Timothy W and Myung-Ja K. Han. XML for Catalogers and Metadata Librarians. Santa Barbara, California: Libraries Unlimited, an imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC. 2013. ISBN: .
978-1-59884-519-8.

From the publisher:

This book provides a foundation of knowledge for catalogers, metadata librarians, and library school students on the Extensible Markup Language (XML)—one of the most commonly listed qualifications in today's cataloger and metadata librarian job postings.

How are today's librarians to manage and describe the ever-expanding volumes of resources, in both digital and print formats? The use of XML in cataloging and metadata workflows can improve metadata quality, the consistency of cataloging workflows, and adherence to standards. This book is intended to enable current and future catalogers and metadata librarians to progress beyond a bare surface-level acquaintance with XML, thereby enabling them to integrate XML technologies more fully into their cataloging workflows.

Building on the wealth of work on library descriptive practices, cataloging, and metadata, XML for Catalogers and Metadata Librarians explores the use of XML to serialize, process, share, and manage library catalog and metadata records. The authors' expert treatment of the topic is written to be accessible to those with little or no prior practical knowledge of or experience with how XML is used. Readers will gain an educated appreciation of the nuances of XML and grasp the benefit of more advanced and complex XML techniques as applied to applications relevant to catalogers and metadata librarians.

Features:

• Covers XML from basic concepts, such as core syntax and grammar, to advanced topics, such as transformation and schema design
• Provides an in-depth look at metadata standards used in the library domain, including MARC, Dublin Core, MODS, and others
• Introduces available XML tools, utilities, and XML related technologies
• Includes case studies that draw from real-world applications that show how XML is used in library cataloging and metadata workflows

Sample Topics:
Creating XML-Based Metadata Application Profiles
Essential Syntax and Grammar of XML
Implementing Metadata Crosswalk with XSLT
Library Metadata in XML
RDF and XML
XML and Descriptive Cataloging
XML in Cataloging and Metadata Workflows
XML Schema and DTDs
XPath and Extensible Stylesheet Language for Transformations (XSLT)