Programme 401, The Case for a librarian in every school (15-5-20)

Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.

On this week's programme school librarian from the Albemarle School System in the State of Virginia in the United States, Ida Mae Craddock (Mae) makes the case for having a school librarian in every school. We discuss her work as a school librarian. Among the topics covered are:

• A description of the school she teaches in
• Allocation of librarians to schools in Virigina
• The job of school librarian
• Describing the library and the services offered
• Doing a masters in library science (Old Dominion University)
• Content of masters course
• The challenge and importance of locating resources that are relevant and used
• Developing the library collection
• The library of things
• “Being stuck at home is no fun, being stuck at home with no books is tragic.”
• Cataloguing library materials
• The kind of literature that is popular among the students in the school she works in
• Loss of library stock
• Value of having a librarian in a school
• The history of school libraries
• The future of school libraries – innovation hubs
• Writing regularly for School Librarian Connection and School Library Journal
• The Maker Educator Collective
• Laser cutting and 3-D printing
• CRICKETS – Computer Aided Cutting
• Teaching as a subversive activity by Neil Postman
• Walden by Thoreau