Secret Agent or Super Hero?

Greetings from an exhausting day at Treasure Mountain. The EST-er is hitting the wall with the time change and endless running around.

It was a big day today--the kind that makes the brain hurt. We began the day with a presentation by Keith Lance about the AASL national study of school libraries. Considering that most of the respondents to his survey were AASL members and probably certified SLMS, his presentation presented a pretty grim picture of the amount of access kids have to the library at all levels as well as what they have access to. Collections are overall not too old, but old in some key places like 500s and 600s. Interesting information, but I have to say, that is so Marcia 3 years ago. The collections issue is kind of deceiving. While it is certainly a cause for concern that book collections in science, math, and health/medicine are old, that doesn't mean that SLMS aren't doing a good job of providing up-to-date and appealing digital resources in these areas.

Then, we broke into roundtable discussions with each table led by a key researcher. The topics ranged from collaboration to reading intervention to school reform to helping kids manage personal information spaces. More about that later.

Lather...rinse...repeat...We did the roundtable thing 3 more times interspersed with other major speakers.

Illinois superintendent Steve Baule probably had the biggest risk of having tomatoes thrown at him by talking about how NCLB was here to stay at least for a while and how SLMS needed to do a better job of engaging with the growing ELL and special ed population. I like to think of his role as that of Celia on Weeds--the ultimate foil. Very provocative.

David Wray from England has the unenviable role of being the post-dinner speaker. Jet-lagged and stuffed full of catered food, we lumbered back into the horribly lit ballroom to be faced with an unassuming man who used no slides, no props, but enchanted us all with his discussion of reading not as a skill but as a tool. He illustrated various situations in which the interpretation of the text was key to cutting through rhetorical games. He used two great examples in particular: the tone of those little signs in hotel bathrooms about not having all the towels washed each day (some are really nice and appealing to the hippie in you, while others are scary and commanding) and the way that scientific writers for many years claimed that women were inferior because their brains were smaller until some genius (probably a woman) pointed out that if you measure brain in proportion to height, the brains were the same size. It's all in interpretation, you see...we each come to reality with out own baggage.

With that said, let me leave you tender technicians with this thought from that lecherous old goat Melvil Dewey:

To my thinking, a great librarian must have a clear head, a strong hand, and above all, a great heart ... and I am inclined to think that most of the men who will achieve this greatness will be women.

[Sorry Chris, don't take it personally--you are a wonderful exception to every rule :) ]