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=// Welcome to the School Library Branding wiki created for the “Advocating in a Tough Economy: An Advocacy Institute Workshop” at ALA's Midwinter 2011! //=

// It can be risk-taking behavior to ask your students, staff and even your community what your school library program and facility should be to meet their needs. But, you are taking a risk if you don't! The risk is being perceived as a "traditional" library that is so 20th century that it meets the needs of the students you used to have, not the ones that you do have. //

**Dr. Nancy Everhart's AASL President's Vision Tour**- organized to visit an outstanding school library in every state in the U.S. in order to bring to the general public visual models of what good school libraries offer students and communities, aligned with the AASL Initiative, Learning 4 Life, particularly these two objectives:

Objective 14: Identify exemplary models for implementation and transferable visual products for support for implementation at the local, district, state and national levels.  Objective 17: Develop a national roster of celebrity, well-known eduations and organizations and public figures as advocates for school librarians and programs.



@http://outstandingschoollibraries.org/

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The Issue: //Why do we need school libraries when we have Google?//=

--From my own backyard: Quotes from comments on a school library expansion article as part of a technology initiative from the //Adirondack Enterprise// newspaper in Saranac Lake, NY
= = "Wow this school board does not get it. Put in a simple wifi system and if the students need a laptop, let their parents buy one for them. Also why does this school need a library? With the information on the internet and a very nice library in town and one at the college. This district could save tons of cash by not paying the librarian and staff the crazy salaries they get(look at the school budget over one hundred thousand a year for the high school librarians alone."

"Get rid of the library? Seriously people? Anyone who has been to college knows that the library offers invaluable resources in electronic databases, personal assistance and access to hard copy texts. Kids already have little enough experience with library's when they go to college. Taking it out of the school would put students at a serious disadvantage for the future. Let's learn how to better utilize our school library, not get rid of it!"

[] 12-15-10