Learning Commons

         This is the exact vision of what I had going into this job! I absolutely fell in love with what O'Neill changed her library into. This woman is a visionary, and good for her for pushing what she feels to be right for the students. I can remember in high school completely avoiding the library (and I LOVED to read) because of the environment in there. There was absolutely no talking, if you were on the computer the librarian was hovering over you, and printing was basically a mortal sin. No wonder we completely avoided that place, because it wasn't a Learning Commons! The idea of making the library the 'central hub' of the school is genius and I have to say I adore the name 'libratory' used by Valenza.
       Valenza's article was superb (does anyone know if you can subscribe to her blog via Google Reader, and if so, what is the title?). A few things from her that stuck out to me, one of them being the fact that 'it is clear that the concept of modern teacher librarian practice is not clear', which I think is perfectly okay. Each area, or really, city, is uniquely different, so one format for all Learning Commons could not possibly work. It's just like schools, each one operates differently, but has a certain code or rules that it must follow in order to be certified. I do have to dwell on one thing that she mentioned- Librarything.
      This is my most favorite website ever (I would give up my Facebook before I gave up my Librarything account). If you haven't checked it out yourself, this is a must for those of you dealing with any kind of large number of books or who just enjoy reading. This actually relates to another thing that Valenza mentioned- letting your students read reviews that you've writting on books (which is what LT is partially about). I had several high readers this year in my class. I would log onto my LT and let them scroll through 'my library' and see what reviews I had written, how many stars I gave a book, what tags there were, etc. to see if there was anything I had that they would be interested in reading. More often than not, they found a book they wanted to read.
       There are a few things on her blog that I am highly interested in finding more out about... the digital publishing programs (DigitalStorytellingTools) and the social bookmarking tools (Delicious and Diigo). I would love to hear about these if anyone has had any dealings with them.
     In the other two articles both of them posed the question of still having a 'brick and mortar library'. In my own opinion I would say it's entirely too early to go completely digital as far as school/public libraries are concerned. We live in a very rural area, and has a very low income average. Overall I would say that most households have computers, and most of those have internet, but by no means do ALL households have the technical capabilities that would be needed to go completely digital (my home being one of them). Also, for some students digital handheld options are not the best option (I see faces of my ADHD/IEP students).
    I really enjoyed these articles and they truly set into place some ideas and thoughts that I already had about the library world itself.