With many school and public libraries moving toward a diminishing physical collection (especially in terms of reference materials) and a burgeoning digital collection, library media specialists need to remain mindful of a variety of new considerations and related issues.
The controversy of going all digital:
James Tracy, headmaster of Boston area Cushing Academy, has been criticized for making the bold move to a nearly all-digital collection. In a June 2001 T H E Journal article, he is quoted as saying:
“I think that people tend to fetishize the printed book,” he says, arguing that a preference for holding a book over reading a screen is strictly aesthetic, not substantive.
“Books smell differently than an e-reader,” Tracy says. “The text looks different on a page than it does on an e-reader. But by the same token a horse smells differently than an automobile; it moves at a more leisurely pace; it may be more organic. But I don’t know anybody, except for aesthetic purposes, riding a horse today.”
Read the entire article here : http://thejournal.com/articles/2010/06/01/turning-the-page.aspx?sc_lang=en
Digital Discrimination:
When adding digital resources and technology, librarians must plan for and provide access to all learners within the school. This means that adjustments may need to be made for students with learning, visual and/or physical disabilities. In this article, Jim Blansett evaluates how school libraries often fall short of truly accommodating these special needs and offers some great resources for help in addressing web accessibility issues.
Read the entire article here: http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6585927.html
Copyright Law:
More and easier access to online and digital resources, for many students, means more copying, cutting, pasting, plagiarizing and pirating of digital content. It makes direct instruction by library media specialists about fair use and copyright law all the more important. Offering students easy access to tools that help create proper citations and modeling and requiring correct attribution of sources in our own products are just a few of the places to start tackling this gigantic problem.
ALA Copyright Resources: http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/copyright/index.cfm
You Tube Copyright Resources: http://www.youtube.com/t/copyright_education
