Whats a hot topic for school, childrens, and YA librarians?
There’s a need to adapt to changing perceptions of the library’s role in children’s education, but not in a way that frames the debate as “technology vs. books.” Microsoft’s School of the Future, which opened in Philadelphia last year, does not include a library. Instead it has a digital “Interactive Learning Center.” I join many other librarians in being very skeptical of such a dramatic shift away from the traditional school library, but it’s important that we join the debate with an open mind. Quite likely such experiments will demonstrate that traditional libraries would benefit from greater use of new technologies, and that all-digital “learning centers” are a step too far. How can librarians help kids prepare for that? We need to instill the next generation with a healthy skepticism of Web resources. We are in a unique time period now, with “digital immigrants” (those of us who were not brought up in a time of ubiquitous computing) teaching “digital natives” (those who have never
