Robin Good: School librarians may be one of the new change-making roles in the educational revolution silently taking place. Their role as organizers, collectors and guides to relevant information is a skillset that is not only in growing demand by the marketplace, but which perfectly fits the learning needs of today students / tomorrow information workers.
Joyce Valenza and Shannon Miller, who recently presented at the Building Learning Communities conference, think that we are about to witness a "golden age" of librarianship and that there are five skills that information / school librarians need to cultivate.
The first of these is curation.
"Given the unprecedented quantity of information learners are exposed to, the librarian’s role is more important than ever.
Librarians help all students gain access to, evaluate, ethically use, create, share, and synthesize information.
...
Students have long documented their research in notebooks, bibliographies, and research papers, but the presenters described these containers as inadequate for the digital landscape.
In the 20th century, content was king, but in this millennium, curation has emerged as the new monarch.
Valenza and Miller highlighted emerging technologies that help students showcase their progress as they acquire, organize, contextualize, and archive both existing content and new learning.
...The presenters stressed the value of teaching learners to purposefully contribute to society’s collective intelligence.
...
School librarians, with their specialized training and background in collecting, organizing, preserving, and disseminating information, must now teach their patrons—students and educators alike—to perform these tasks."
Relevant. 7/10
Full article: http://www.eschoolnews.com/2012/08/02/five-key-roles-for-21st-century-school-librarians/