Reader’s Workshop is bubbling up in our district as a grassroots effort.  The Daily 5 and The CAFE Book have given simple, powerful pointers to our students.

I’m excited to let folks know that Patrick Allen has a new book on conferencing during Reader’s Workshop called Conferring, and Stenhouse has a full-text preview online!

In my afternoon gig as staff developer, I keep reminding administrators that school librarians can be part of these initiatives, reducing teacher stress and maximizing student contact.  As librarians, staying on top of what’s new helps us hold our value in tough times.

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I’m so thrilled that Carl Harvey is going to be speaking (via Skype) to my school library management class tonight.  I really admire how Carl balances friendliness, skill, savvy, and the strong message that if you want to be a great school librarian, well, to quote the opening credits of Fame,  “right here is where you start sweating.” It’s up to you to make things work.

In anticipation of his visit, I pulled his new book, The 21st Century Elementary Library Media Program, off my to-read pile. A few hours later, I had read it cover to cover. 

It’s a terrific overview of what elementary libraries should and can be doing in primary school settings. My head is full of ideas that I need to try, projects I’ve let slide that I need to pick back up, and new goals to set for myself. Whether you’re a pre-service librarian or already in practice, I’m confident that Carl’s book will be useful.

If you haven’t read Carl’s work before, check out his Library Ties blog or this article from the October 2009 issue of LMC Connection on what administrators should expect from school librarians.

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I met with a pair of publishers and former database folks this week to talk about eBooks.  Ben asked me, “What is an eBook supposed to be beyond a PDF?”

I thought this was a great (but hard to answer) question. In School LibraryLand, we’ve had lots of discussion about the value of audio books, but I haven’t had a single conversation on text-based eBooks and how they’re being used in elementary school libraries.

In our discussions, I brought up the International Children’s Digital Library as one example of high-quality digital books.  Of course, there’s also TumbleBooks … but I keep feeling like there’s more out there that we haven’t talked about yet. 

We also talked about the reality that print books remain a cost-effective, one-time investment that’s easily portable, comes in a full range of reading levels, doesn’t break the bank if lost or damaged, and easily shared. 

Has anybody had this discussion about elementary eBooks yet? We’d love to know! (And anything else you’d like us to know about eBooks as well!)

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