Found via today’s American Libraries enewsletter is Chris Harris’ pragmatic essay on the possibilities and unresolved barriers to widespread eBook adoption in school libraries.

It’s a good essay to have in mind when you have conversations about administrators who hold an overly-rosy view that everything can be digitized, though tomorrow’s big announcement from Apple — will it be digital textbooks and/or a Garage Band-like tool that makes eBook production easy for everyone and/or something else — could change things in the coming months!

Ebooks and School Libraries | American Libraries Magazine via kwout

Holy Common Core, Batman! Check out this post from the New York Times Learning Network, chock full of strategies for reading informational text:

The Times and the Common Core Standards: Reading Strategies for ‘Informational Text’ - NYTimes.com via kwout

We’ll be adding this to the September/October “Nudging Toward Inquiry” column. What other strategies do you recommend? Submit ‘em below!

Strategies That Work - Stenhouse Publishers via kwout

Have you read Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis’s Strategies that Work? The first edition is pictured above (the second edition, 2007) is green. It’s one of those book about reading comprehension that makes light bulbs go off in my head about ways to enhance students’ comprehension using authentic texts. I’ve always harbored a belief that it is a key text for school librarians, and Carmen Pianko agreed (we even have the same favorite quote).

Check out her Prezi outlining the key strategies of the book and active steps school librarians can take to support students’ reading comprehension skills in a deep, meaningful way.

More and more, I think that “reading comprehension” is a near-synonym for “information literacy.” The overlaps are scarily strong. Take a look and see what you think!

And if you enjoy it, drop Carmen a note!