If we stopped the next person walking by on the street and asked them what our jobs as librarians involve, we’d be willing to bet that their first answer would be stamping books. This is because many people’s experience of librarians is of the frontline, customer service staff.

I think the same can be said of school libraries although it varies greatly depending on the interaction between teacher librarians and teaching staff. What the article says about librarians is surely relevant to teacher librarians, librarians and technicians -

If anyone ever thought they’d become a librarian because they liked books or reading, they would be sorely disappointed if they did not also like people too.

Of course, in the digital age, in fact, in the global digital culture in particular, teacher librarians play a vital role in schools. What exactly is the role of a 21st teacher librarian?

It’s not something which can be answered in a simple sentence. For this reason, I want to share links to curated websites on this topic. I am including a list of Scoop.its which have been curated by various people (including me) on the topic of the 21st century teacher librarian. I hope you find this list useful; it includes all things relevant to the 21st century librarian in the broadest sense.

My Scoop.it – What is a teacher librarian?

Curation and libraries and learning - Joyce Valenza

e-Books – Carmel Galvin

Create the web and learn to live - @pipcleaves

21st century libraries – Dr Steve Matthews

Educational technology and libraries – Kim Tairi

Embedded Librarianship – Buffy Hamilton

Graphic Novels in the classroom – @dilaycock

Information coping skills – Beth Kanter

Information science and library studies -  Joao Brogueira

Information fluency, transliteracy, research tools – Joyce Valenza

Inquiry and digital literacy – Shawn Hinger

Internet Search – Phil Bradley

Learning – Darren Kuropatwa

Libraries and ethnography - Buffy Hamilton

Libraries and Tumblr – Buffy Hamilton

Libraries as sites of enchantment, participatory culture and learning (what a title!) – Buffy again

Livebinders – Peggy George

Multiliteracies – Vance Stevens

New librarianship – Karen Burns

Personal learning networks for librarians – Donna Watt

QR codes – libraries - NairarbilUCA

Readers’ advisory for secondary schools – Marita Thomson

School libraries – Nickki Robinson

Social media content curation- Guiseppe Mauriello

Social networking for information professionals – Judy O’Connell

The library technician – Dawn Jimenez

Student learning through school libraries – Lyn Hay

Weird and wonderful - for librarians and booklovers – Jean Anning

This selection is only a small fraction of what’s being curated by people passionate about their topic on Scoop.it. It’s overwhelming but also a fantastic way of keeping track of evolving scoops on searchable topics. The fact that the list relevant to teacher librarians is so broad indicates the breadth of the teacher librarians’ focus and involvement. Of course, we can’t do everything but it’s a good idea to see potential involvement, and having seen the bigger picture, delegate to team members (assuming you have a team) the most pressing areas according to their interest.

By the way, Scoop.its are very easy to make and make reading enjoyable in their magazine-scoop-style presentation. It’s easy to follow, to search, to share and to recommend Scoop.its and articles. It’s also a brilliant way to build your Personal Learning Network by investigating the curators, checking out their bio, looking at what else they’ve curated or what they themselves follow.

You’ve got to start somewhere! Happy scooping!

Well, it’s almost Christmas. I’ve decided to finish the year off here by collating Christmassy (it is so a word) content. Hope you all have a safe and joyous Christmas and the very best wishes for a great new year.

Embellish the Interior Passageways! Can you guess this popular Christmas carol? Of course you can… then try the rest. Click here.

Here’s a Christmas carol Wordle quiz – see if you can decipher these traditional carols from the word picture.

The LIFE photo archive has a great collection of Christmas-related photos. Click here to see these.

You can read Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the complete text from 1843,  online here.

Here are some Christmas biscuits recipes.

And Abby has a great Christmas food gift idea which I have personally received and tasted (good) – Cookies in a jar. Read how to do it here.

And a fantastic macaron recipe here and melt-in-your-mouth cocoa hazelnut Spritz cookies recipe here.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has produced a beautiful Christmas story which you can read or listen to here.

Here’s an infographic for the history of the Christmas tree. See this on the Christmas Tree Market website.

What Victorian anxieties have to do with Coke, candy canes and mythbusting the Bible – find out in the History Channel’s series of videos, The History of Christmas 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5T5ibb2E9I&feature=player_embedded

Here are a few of my favourite Christmas shows on TV -

Watch the rest of the episode on YouTube.

Merry Christmas!

Looking for a good book to help you unwind in preparation for your Summer break? Readings has a few lists -

Best of Non-fiction 2011

Best of Fiction 2011

Best Art and Design books 2011

Best books of 2011 as chosen by Australian authors

Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2011

Best Graphic Novels 2011

Best Fashion and Craft books 2011

Best Albums 2011

Best Food and Cooking books 2011

Best Picture Books 2011

Best Crime fiction 2011

Best Short Story collections 2011

Best overlooked books 2011

Best covers 2011

Lisa Hill is an ambassador for Australian literature and reviews books in her excellent blog here.

You can also discover many book review blogs under ‘Stuff for us’ in the right -hand navigation of this blog.

Happy reading!

Thanks to everyone for sharing photos of your gorgeous libraries – so many ideas for those of us who are thinking about how we can improve our library spaces. And thanks to Judith for going to the effort of putting this project together.  It’s one step towards bridging the distances between all our libraries and sharing library design ideas.

Historypin looks fantastic – have a look at all the different tours.

and Greta Garbo

Not to mention Grace Kelly

Paul McCartney and George Harrison

See the rest here.

I can just see these beautiful photos as posters in our library. What do you think?

It was exciting to see our students enjoying a range of high-quality writing including Australian & international Young Adult literature. Choices ranged from literary classics such as Homer, Dickens, Hemingway, and Erich Maria Remarque through to modern classics by Hosseini, Toltz, Martel, and Hartnett. We noticed an increased interest in biographies, and non-fiction reading. Graphic novels have also been more popular this year, especially the socially illuminating books by Shaun Tan, Marjorie Satrane & Art Spiegelman.

Book prizes were awarded to  Stephen, Terrence and  Zhengyu for reading across a wide range of genres. Austin had an interesting selection of graphic novels. Jean-Marc tackled some challenging non-fiction. Yunxu is our Shakespeare enthusiast, and Leo read the most Michael Prior books. Congratulations to all readers and we hope you will consider entering the Challenge again next year.