When I am not blogging these days I am studying websites. Here’s where my dissertation sits right now.
Over the summer, a Delphi panel of 20 stellar professionals identified features and characteristics they felt would be present in an effective school library website. They also nominated ten sites as exemplars. Based on their feedback I developed an instrument for content analysis and I am currently testing the instrument and closely studying those ten identified sites.
What I am discovering brings me back to the voice of that young librarian, who at our state leadership meeting this past summer, asked what it was she should be doing. “Everyone is doing different things!”Â
It seems there are as many exemplary ways to interpret a library program online as there are offline. Of course, the community you serve has a great deal to do with the types of services and instruction you offer. Your comfort with new technologies affects your online practice. Your own interests and focus influence your online presence.
Some sites are clearly more focused on reading than others. Some focus heavily on information seeking. Some are deeply invested in online instruction both in the content areas and relating to process. Some are moving in a 2.0 (media-rich/interactive) direction; others are far more “html traditional.”  Some seriously consider use of language that make sense to young people.Â
The point is that 21st century school librarians need to take up just a little bit of space on students’ desktops no matter where those students are working.   I want to build a taxonomy, and perhaps several snapshops, of what that space might look like. I’ll keep you posted.Â
