Describes the School Corps program in Portland, Oregon that was formed to promote a stronger partnership between public and school libraries. Topics include effects of school budget cuts on library services; encouraging students to get public library cards; and in-service training for teachers on computer use, including the Internet. (LRW)

There's no such thing as a school or library with too many computers. We're still nowhere near the one-student, one-computer ratio that's ideal for our schools and libraries, especially those in neighborhoods where most students don't have home computers. That's why Computers for Schools (www.pcsforschools.org) is such a great idea. The nonprofit…

Minkel Walter, recently read about a school district in Texas that's supplying its fifth- and sixth-grade students with laptops. Along with electronic copies of textbooks, the laptops will also contain a "library" of about 2,000 books--"classics of Western civilization"--packaged by Vital Source Technologies and sold for about 5200 per computer.…

This article presents an interview with Jon Scieszka, author of "The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales" who is tapped by the "Children's Book Council" and the Library of Congress's "Center for the Book" as the first National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. A former grade-school teacher, Scieszka is also the creator of Guys…

Describes a statewide language-development program developed among Maryland's city, county, and regional library systems to help parents prepare their preschoolers for success in school. Discusses child development, the role of libraries, storytelling training, and preschool literacy efforts by the Public Library Association; and lists Web…

Describes a program in Seattle, the Rapid Library Transformation Initiative, that was designed to help transform libraries by changing the way librarians do their jobs. Discusses the presentation by Michael Eisenberg that encouraged school librarians to reach out to teachers more frequently and focus on their roles in information literacy, reading…

Librarians seldom give enough thought to the needs of potential Web-site visitors. Few librarians, for example, stop to consider how they can make their sites easy to use or more attractive. As a result, many sites have awful color schemes, hard-to-find navigation buttons, inappropriate font sizes, and confusing layouts. No wonder they don't…

Google at times is a librarian's best friend--quickly locating lots of helpful information for the students libraries serve. Other times, it is a librarian's worst enemy, since many kids believe that they can find everything they need by simply using one search engine. It is important to remind kids that it is also important to look in the…

Describes how several libraries are encouraging children to participate in summer reading programs by bringing them to childcare and recreation centers. Discusses reaching out to teenagers; starting a program and gauging summer reading program participation in the community; and securing funding and partnerships. (AEF)

Describes the use of search engines to search the World Wide Web for homework or reference questions in libraries. Subject directories, basic engines, and metaengines are discussed; examples of useful homework-oriented Web site directories are given; and suggestions for reference work are listed. (LRW)

Addresses five themes that represent school librarians' overriding challenges for the year 2002: gaining the respect of school administrators; making information literacy a higher priority; recruiting new librarians to meet the growing demand; dealing with fiscal uncertainty in a recession; and the challenge of accessing information in a filtered…

Discusses the increase in online plagiarism and what school librarians can do to help. Topics include the need for school district policies on plagiarism; teaching students what plagiarism is; pertinent Web sites; teaching students proper research skills; motivation for cheating; and requiring traditional sources of information for student…

A new study shows that students aged 6 to 17 who have access to the Interact at home are growing afore and more dissatisfied with the access to the Net available to them at school. Grunwald Associates, a California market research firm, released the results of their survey, "Children, Families and the Internet," on December 4. Seventy-six percent…

Understanding precisely how young people search for online information is both easy and frustrating. It's a snap because we can easily observe kids sitting down at a computer, going straight to Google, typing in one or two key words, and selecting a few Web pages from a huge list of hits. It's frustrating because of the many questions their…

While librarians routinely collaborate with reading and humanities teachers, they rarely partner with teachers of math and science--to the loss of students. With the current emphasis on standardized testing and declining student performance in math and science, media specialists need to remedy this situation. Why don't librarians click with…