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| Masterman principal Marjorie Neff sits in the school's closed library, which was closed last year due to budget cuts. TOM GRALISH / Staff
POSTED: Monday, December 1, 2014, 1:07 AMBy Carol Heinsdorf
and Debra Kachel In 1991, there were 176 certified librarians in Philadelphia public schools. This year there are 11 and only five are known to be actually doing what they were trained to do. Five librarians for the nation's eighth-largest school district. Leaving Philadelphia's public school libraries without professional staffing is a grave mistake. It will have consequences for the students for the rest of their lives. Study after study shows a clear link between school libraries staffed by certified librarians and student achievement.
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Showing posts with label Philadelphia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philadelphia. Show all posts
Thursday, December 4, 2014
School libraries are essential for learning
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Kyle Cassidy photographs librarians at the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting (PHOTOS).
When you think of a librarian, what image comes to mind? Photographer Kyle Cassidy
ventured to the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting in
Philadelphia in January to explore that question. In between networking,
educational events, and panels, librarians from across the country
stopped by Cassidy’s makeshift studio to sit for a portrait. The result
is a celebration of the diversity in the librarian community. “I
realized I had a stereotype in my mind of what a librarian looked like,
which is one of the reasons I wanted to do this project. Whenever I
think something is true, I'm often wrong,” Cassidy said. “I tend to
think of librarians as the ones I know from my public library and from
school. But there are librarians who are researchers and archivists
doing extraordinarily technical work. There are librarians who work in
specialized fields who have to know about archaeology, for example, or
medicine or research science. The field was broader than I had gone in
there thinking.”
Ingrid Abrams, a librarian at Brooklyn Public Library who
participated in the project, said diversity among librarians extends
beyond their professional expertise. “If you haven't been in
a library since you were a little kid, or maybe have only
seen libraries in movies, you might think we're all a bunch of
humorless, shushing curmudgeons,” Abrams said via email. “The truth is,
we're a variety of ages. We're every race, ethnicity and religious
background imaginable. We can be the type who wears a suit and tie every
day or someone like me, who has pink hair and dresses in bright colors.
Not that any part of how we look really matters, but if the
only librarian you've ever seen is the librarian ghost from the first
scene of Ghostbusters, I assure you we're a really dedicated and friendly bunch.”
Friday, February 7, 2014
Who Says Libraries Are Going Extinct? - Pacific Standard: The Science of Society
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February 06, 2014 •
6:00 AM
February 06, 2014 •
6:00 AM
Bates Hall in Boston Public Library. (Photo: SeanPavonePhoto/Shutterstock)
With nearly 2.5
billion materials circulated through more than 16,000 public branches,
2013 was one of the strongest years for libraries in the past decade.
And things are looking up.
billion materials circulated through more than 16,000 public branches,
2013 was one of the strongest years for libraries in the past decade.
And things are looking up.
is older than America itself. You can make a strong case that the
precursor to our modern book-lending system was developed in Boston in
1636, in Charleston in 1698, by Benjamin Franklin and his Philadelphia
cohort in 1731, or in the Massachusetts town that named itself after
Franklin in 1790. But what is indisputable is that this “amazing
decentralized mutual aid” creation, as one librarian described
it, was founded on a radical belief that all citizens have a right to
information, art, and literature. That these things are not a luxury,
but a necessity, is an idea that turned the old elite concept of private
libraries and ivory towers on its head.
Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that the people locked out of the
traditional venues for knowledge are the ones who pioneered the public
library. By donating book collections, fundraising for better buildings,
and lobbying for political support, women’s clubs around the country
were key forces in cultivating public libraries: 75 percent of America’s
libraries were started by them on humanistic principles. When the
Detroit Public Library was founded in 1865, “our nation was moving from
the concept of libraries as storehouses of books—considered as precious
physical objects for the use of the few—to the conception of books and
libraries as people,” according to Parnassus on Main Street.
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