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The author believes her professional life can be divided into two parts--being a building-level school librarian and being retired, noting that few librarians she has met planned to enter the profession, and like them, she was an accidental librarian. Though trained to be a high school English teacher, she was offered a job after college as a school librarian if she would take two courses to get an emergency license. She began working on her Masters of Library Science at Columbia University, took the job, and discovered that she loved her new profession far more than teaching English. After accepting a later job as an elementary school librarian, she decided to take coursework at Rutgers University to get a Certificate in Supervision. From there, she co-authored books and newsletters related to the field and became active in state and national library associations. She was transferred back to the high school with orders to work on building a new library. After butting heads with a new principal, she once again moved out of her comfort zone and applied for a job out of her district, leaving the security of tenure. Eventually, she retired from being a building-level librarian. She has continued with her writing career, and she now teaches pre-service school librarians, seeing it as a logical extension of what she had been doing to promote leadership for school librarians.

A library supervisor for the Anchorage (Alaska) School District, credits five things with transforming her perspective throughout her school library career and helping her develop a clear vision and clearly articulated core values. Each of the five required her to move beyond her library and even beyond her district. The most critical opportunity she had was being invited to go into 80+ school libraries to help librarians do collection development and weeding. Another critical area was being involved in various positions with the Alaska Association of School Librarians while she was still in a school library position. A third transformative experience occurred when she was selected to participate in the Lilead Fellowship, the focus of which was transformational change. It provided a framework for thinking about library services and change that she implemented in her district. Through a connection she made while a Lilead Fellow, she had an opportunity to run for the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) Region 8 Director position on the AASL Board of Directors. Finally, she was given the opportunity to work with a group of her district librarians to revise the school librarian job description. She notes that those in the profession must always strive to rethink practices and priorities and remember that most of them were not trained in the type of librarianship that students need today--and they do not even know what type of librarianship students will need in ten years.

The Colorado Study (Lance, Wellborn, and Hamilton-Pennell 1993) and its many replications in other states have demonstrated that when educators and learners had access to a qualified school librarian in the context of a thoughtfully built, adequately resourced, technology rich, and widely accessible school library, learners tended to flourish on traditional measures of reading and science achievement, regardless of the district or community's relative wealth and other external factors (Scholastic 2016). This correlational research has been vital for communicating the value of school librarians and school libraries to decision makers and other stakeholders. The Causality: School Libraries and Student Success II (CLASS II) project is aimed at establishing the foundation for comparison and groundwork for causal research. In this article, the authors share the CLASS research agenda and progress to date and demonstrate how this effort to chart the future of school librarianship research has the potential to guide and strengthen professional growth and implementation. The resulting knowledge is to help school librarians create meaningful, authentic learning experiences that impact and influence the next generation of learners.

The publication in 2015 of new international school library guidelines was the culmination of a two-year process involving a wide network of contributors. The process was guided by the Joint Committee of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) School Libraries Section and the International Association of School Librarianship (IASL). The new guidelines remain grounded in and consistent with principles expressed in the 1999 IFLA/UNESCO School Library Manifesto. The "IFLA School Library Guidelines," 2nd edition, interpret in practical terms those foundational principles and reflect current research, practice, and conditions of 21st-century school librarianship. The second edition of the "IFLA School Library Guidelines" meant to apply to school libraries of many different kinds, and the importance of local context is addressed frequently throughout the document. All school libraries, regardless of context or placement in developed or developing countries, exist on a continuum of practice. Regardless of the context, ultimately school libraries embody the basic concept expressed in the "IFLA/UNESCO School Library Manifesto" of "teaching and learning for all." The guidelines have no force of law, only the force of persuasion or inspiration, and they need to be implemented nationally and locally through legislation and through professional practice. It is possible that the international guidelines will inspire the development of national or regional standards and/or legislation where none exists at present. "The IFLA School Library Guidelines" will need to be updated in the future. As the current educational environment continues to evolve, school libraries will evolve to address the challenges of educating current and future generations. The leaders within IFLA and IASL have a well established pattern of collaboration and a shared commitment to keeping our guidelines relevant to our rapidly changing learning environments: These school library guidelines envision a world of inclusion, equity of opportunity and social justice. They will be implemented in the context of the 21st century, characterized by change, mobility, and interconnection across different levels and sectors. (IFLA 2015, 13)

William Henley shares how his first-day experience as a new English teacher influenced him to do everything in his power as a graduate student to mitigate the same first-day terror as a school librarian. He knew he had to get as much practical experience with school libraries as possible. These experiences added layers of invaluable context to what he gained from his courses in graduate school. In this article, Henley discusses what he learned from his engagement in practical experiences related to becoming a school librarian and provides suggestions for library science students, library science professors, and practicing school librarians.

Five initiatives launched during Cyndi Phillip's term as American Association of School Librarians (AASL) President (2006-2007) continue to have an impact on school librarians ten years later. They include the rewriting of AASL's learning standards, introduction of the SKILLS Act, the presentation of the Crystal Apple Award to Scholastic Library Publishing for their first "School Libraries Work" reports, revitalizing School Library Month, and establishing the AASL Best Websites for teaching and Learning Committee. AASL is a vibrant and evolving association that works to meet the needs of its members in the present as well as into the future. Reflecting on how the above five activities from Philips' presidential year have evolved and remained relevant through the past ten years, Philips writes that she is amazed, and excited to see what the next ten years will bring.

As the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) celebrates sixty-five years in 2016 as a division of the American Library Association (ALA), it is wholly appropriate to examine the life of the organization contemplating what the future holds for school librarians. It is important to understand the past and abiding certainty and steadfast adherence to a set of guiding principles, core values, and beliefs. This adherence to core values also explains why AASL is the standard-bearer and undisputed leader in the ongoing commitment to excellence in school librarianship and school library programs. This article presents and discusses: (1) What Are Professional Core Values?; (2) Core Values of Librarianship; and (3) Roots and Pioneers.

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) as an American Library Association division is sixty-five years young in 2016. This article describes the AASL as a division of the American Library Association (ALA). The author presents: (1) Early Days in ALA; (2) AASL as a Division; (3) AASL's Future; and (4) Commemorating the Past by Paying It Forward.

For school librarians, being part of a "connected" community provides support for getting specific needs met, solving personally relevant and meaningful problems, and developing professional expertise. AASL provides many avenues for members of the profession to learn with and from one another. These include AASL and subgroup electronic discussion lists, eCOLLAB for webinars , the recently launched blog on the "Knowledge Quest" website , and the Twitter hashtag #aasl. State-level, university-based, and independent groups of school librarians have also formed communities of practice (CoP) in the online environment (Wenger 1998). Through regular contact with one another, participants in these CoPs learn from one another, develop shared meanings through exchanging ideas and information, and enculturate one another into the ever-evolving profession of school librarianship. This article describes how school librarians can use electronic discussion lists, webinars, blogs, and social media networks such as Twitter to share ideas and information and connect with colleagues. Further, the author briefly discusses findings from a study that aimed to determine whether venues such as Twitter groups offer information that can help professors keep their fingers on the pulse of the profession and practice lifelong learning.

In this article, the author discusses crowdsourcing an e-book--gathering wide, diverse opinions from the school library community (including academics, practitioners, vendors, and others), and gathering those results in a free e-book. As e-book publishers, school librarians could be active agents, bolstering community energy, creating a forum for sharing best practices and big ideas, and starting a larger conversation about school librarians' futures.

Due to the development of new 21st-century technologies, the world of children's and young adult literature is continually changing. For example, one of the fastest-growing multimodal formats that today's visually literate youth embrace is the digital graphic novel. Digital graphic novels are graphic novels produced on and/or accessed on some form of digital device, including computers, mobile devices, and e-readers. Digital graphic novels provide new ways for students to experience reading, and/or learn new content, using the comic format. Through the use of multiple resources, such as digital graphic novels, school librarians and teachers can strengthen their lessons by teaching literacy skills, such as comparing and contrasting. Using digital graphic novels also enables educators to allow for differentiated instruction. Therefore, it is important for school librarians to learn how digital graphic novels use image and text in multiple ways to produce meaning for children and teens. School librarians must also become knowledgeable about equipment and licensing issues pertaining to digital graphic novels. Then, by sharing their knowledge regarding digital graphic novels with fellow educators, school librarians can further establish themselves as technology leaders in their schools. Last, but not least, adding free digital graphic novels to their repertoire of digital resources can help school librarians expand their library collections during tough economic times.

The Position Statement on the School Library Media Specialist's Role in Reading, adopted by the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) Board in February 2009, is a guide to help practitioners build library programs that support every learner's development in reading. As part of the Learning4Life (L4L) plan to implement the Standards for the 21st-Century Learner, this position statement offers specific strategies for school librarians to impact students' school-based and lifelong learning. This article explores some of the skills, dispositions in action, responsibilities, and self-assessments to systematically promote literacy through collection development, integrated literacy events, and collaborative teaching of reading comprehension strategies at all instructional levels and disciplines. As the literacy proficiency required to fully function and contribute significantly to society increases, all educators are called upon to ratchet up students' motivation and engagement to improve reading comprehension. The Position Statement on the School Library Media Specialist's Role in Reading is presented.

Broadly defined, evidence-based practice (EBP) is fundamentally about professional practice being informed and guided by best available evidence of what works. The EBP movement had its origins in the early 1990s in the United Kingdom in medicine and health care services. Sackett et al. defined evidence-based medicine as the "conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. This practice means integrating individual clinical experience with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research." This definition has pervaded the now wide-ranging EBP literature across many fields of practice, drawing on the idea of meshing research-based evidence with professional knowing and experience to make professional decisions and implement professional action. Interest in EBP has grown, and its application has extended from medicine to allied disciplines, such as nursing, pathology, and cardiology, and to the social sciences and business professions. Both the education and librarianship fields are developing strong approaches to EBP, and these provide directions, and pose challenges and tensions for EBP for school librarianship. Two characteristics stand out in the EBP frameworks being developed in education and librarianship: (1) using the best available evidence, which gives preeminence to evidence derived through randomized controlled trials; and (2) combining this evidence with professional acumen to deliver high-quality services. It is a question of evidence. The professional practice of school librarianship sits at the confluence of education and librarianship. Like evidence-based education, evidenced-based librarianship places emphasis on evidence-based decision making over opinion-based decision making, and on the conscientious interpretation and integration of research-derived evidence to shape and direct professional practice. What the EBP approach in school librarianship appears to make more explicit is not just the use of research-based evidence to make judgments and decisions about how to deliver the instructional and service roles of the school library to meet the goals of the school. The EBP approach to school librarianship also gives explicit attention to "user-reported evidence," that is, evidence of outcomes and impacts of professional practice based on student-generated evidence. (Contains 1 table.)

Winter 2007 marked an episode of high anxiety in the library science profession, when the latest Newbery winner, "The Higher Power of Lucky," triggered discussion about words and their suitability for young readers. It seems that the entire world now knows that the word "scrotum" appears on the first page of the book. School library media specialists (SLMSs) feared being confronted by accusatory parents or inflamed teachers who would not want to teach that vocabulary lesson. Acting as self-censors, some librarians openly declared they would not purchase the book. Other SLMSs were surprised at this response, cognizant of the basics of the First Amendment and the right to read. They knew the courts have low regard for book banning based on one word, or on book banning in general when its intent is to suppress diverse viewpoints. This article reviews the First Amendment rights for students and presents several landmark cases that demonstrate how K-12 students have been accorded these rights. (Contains 4 online resources.)

In this article, the author shares her experience during her practicum for her master's in library science wherein she had the opportunity to work in a school library that was moving toward combining with a local branch of a public library. Combining the public and school libraries meant integrating these two related yet distinct missions, or at least allowing them to coexist. Staff wondered whether both institutions could continue to meet their individual goals and objectives and serve their patrons. In this article, the author explores the combined public and school library and discusses the benefits and challenges of a combined facility. Given the budgetary issues that continue to plague most communities, the question of combining public and school libraries is likely to be raised with increasing frequency. The author identifies and discusses some elements that every school librarian needs to know about collaborative facilities.

The author describes her positive experiences at library conferences in order to stress the importance of networking-of not only attending these conferences but also of making time for colleagues. Benefits include feeling understood and supported, having a good time and forging long-lasting bonds. (AEF)