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In these days of increased testing and continued failure of inner-city and poor rural schools to meet the grade, it is becoming more and more necessary to turn to the public library to help students reach the ever-increasing goals being set for them. It seems somewhat unfair to hold the schools solely responsible for continued failure when the simple fact is that too many students arrive at school too late. To overcome this obstacle, those in the know are turning to their public libraries to support early and continued literacy experiences above and beyond what is already being accomplished in schools. The public library, being the only free government-funded educational service available to children from birth through adolescence, remains an invaluable resource in the area of child literacy development. In this article, the author discusses the role public libraries can play as a child literacy development resource for educators and parents. (Contains 4 notes.)

Motivational processes are the foundation for coordinating cognitive goals and strategies in reading. Becoming an excellent, active reader involves attunement of motivational processes with cognitive and language processes in reading. This article presents K-12 strategies for motivating reading success. It describes 10 instructional elements that form the foundation for engagement and motivation in reading: (1) conceptual orientation; (2) real-world instruction; (3) autonomy support; (4) collaborative learning; (5) praise and rewards; (6) interesting texts; (7) strategy instruction; (8) evaluation; (9) teacher involvement; and (10) cohesion.

In this paper, the author shares K-12 strategies for community outreach and describes what school library media specialists can do to expand resources and services beyond their student community. The author first suggests to use Book Fair and other school activities like Open House and Curriculum Night to promote one's library and recruit human resources. Another popular way to reach out to the community is to recruit volunteers to assist in a library media center.