The Fall 2021 edition of the Canadian School Libraries Journal is now available.
Optimism, Joy, and Cautionary Tales
So much to celebrate from coast to coast. Canada’s school libraries are emerging from the pandemic crisis with new purpose. In this edition we celebrate the emerging (albeit cautious) optimism that is emerging in so many ways.
Optimism & Joy
We are very pleased to feature the work of Barbara Stripling, leading school library scholar and a past president of the American Library Association. Barbara shares her latest work to develop strategies and processes that ensure students are building deep reading skills. Don’t miss this very special feature!
A timely new resource from Quebec provides a framework for librarians and library technicians to support teachers as they integrate information literacy skills. We are very pleased to publish an introduction to the new continuum des compétences informationnelles / information literacy framework in both French and English.
Our national champion of school libraries, Dr. Dianne Oberg brings to our attention the brand new IFLA School Library Manifesto.
Judith Sykes and Lila Armstrong have analyzed the latest Leading Learning exemplars. Read about the pretty astonishing trends that they see emerging for school libraries in Canada. Some of those trends are evident in Lila’s article about the recent BCTLA conference, which focused on TL leadership during and post-Covid.
I Read Canadian Day is coming up in February, and teacher-librarian Marianne Whittaker shares her strategies for inspiring high school students and teachers to read Canadian. And don’t miss learning about a great opportunity for high risk teen girls to join a national book club, A Room of Your Own.
We share the overwhelmingly joyful stories from Canadian School Library Day 2021, and celebrate students’ joy at retuning to school libraries in Quebec this fall as recounted by our ABQLA colleagues.
New Realities and Cautionary Tales
The students are back in the building, or at least most of them are. Are you or staff in your school engaged in teaching hybrid learning? Our resource list, curated by the librarians of the Toronto DSB Professional Library, is sure to help.
We also have some trending ethical issues and cautionary tales for our readers to ruminate over in this issue. Anita Brooks Kirkland challenges our thinking about library neutrality, and Richard Beaudry looks at the alarming repression of free speech we are seeing emerge in the US, and its implications for all of us.
New and Exciting Resources from Canadian School Libraries
We are so very proud to announce the completion and publication of two new CSL projects in this issue, the Collection Diversity Toolkit, and the Great Canadian Book Project.
We celebrate the expertise and creativity of school library professionals from across Canada who joined together to work on these wonderful resources.