Circulation

From Forbes.com – Young Learners Need Librarians, Not Just Google.

Mark Moran writes:

In the libraries of old, the Dewey Decimal System got you started on research. But there is no card catalog 2.0. To use the Internet as a library you need new research skills: the ability to pick out reliable sources from an overwhelming heap of misinformation, to find relevant material amid an infinite array of options, to navigate the shifting ethics of creative commons and intellectual property rights and to present conclusions in a manner that engages modern audiences.

This is another wonderfully well written piece about the challenges we face in teaching our students 21st century research skills. The bright side is that we have the ability to teach our students how to effectively evaluate resources and determine their authority (a.k.a. “crap detection“). While this seems like an uphill (and at times futile?) battle, school librarians are doing it every day, trying to reach kids when they’re young and before they can develop a dependency on Google. One school librarian in particular, Buffy Hamilton, is – in my humble opinion – a leader in this area. (To see what she is doing with her students, check out her blog, The Unquiet Library. She also writes at the blog, Libraries and Transliteracy).