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Alice, and our favorite Latin friend, Et Al., First, let me say that your message came in just fine here; no extra characters or symbols... Second, as a former classroom teacher, I agree with Diane... teachers should be provided many, many opportunities to visit, work in, and understand libraries as they pertain to resources for the classroom teacher and their students. We did spent lots of time in the library researching projects and issues pertaining to the education of the teacher - and not one single project for what the library holds for the teaching and enlightenment of young students... so, I second the notion about having library assets training and use in teacher education programs. Every teaching university or college should have a small mock school library that holds books of elementary, middle, and high school levels and presents library programs at each level for teacher candidates... man, what a great idea, Diane! Personally, I would have liked to have been trained more in finances and budgeting. The first year I taught in a library (in a small. poor, rural setting), the principal let me have the expendables budget for the entire school for the library program - I didn't find out until near the end of the school year that he had done that ... and of course, I was lost as to why the teachers expected the library program to fund their classroom requirements for paper, crayons, and the like... I would also have liked a few classes on daily routines and book repair sorts of things... No one ever mentioned the sequence for opening the library; initiating the computer systems; looking in on the computer lab (perhaps initiating it as well); giving the library a quick visual inspection for cups, crumbs, and coffeecakes; running the programs all day with or without the assistance of teachers; being on standby as the troubleshooter and maintenance person for almost everything electrical, and certainly anything computer!; the after school programs hosted in the library (with or without permission); the borrowing of equipment after you leave (with or without permission); the shutdown of computer systems (if required), by whom and sometimes with or without your permission... the school I was in last year had a problem with the library server crashing for no apparent reason... and items I catalogued one afternoon were gone the next morning... The problem wasn't the computer system at all - the janitor was shutting down the computers after I left and turning them on again before I arrived each morning (trying to help by conserving energy) - it took a week or two to figure it out... until one day the system was shutdown as I was working on it late one afternoon! Finally, I'd like to see classes on book repair and maintenance be provided... simple things that might permit an item to last a dozen or so more circulations before falling apart completely... or how to put a variety of jacket covers on new books to preserve their look... the first school I was in had me pondering those two-part mylar jackets for a week or so... It finally dawned on me to replaced an old cover to reverse engineer the installation of the thing! I think perhaps there might be a internship component to library schools much like the internship in the teaching programs... a candidate visits with a practicing librarian at the level of interest and spends a semester or so with that person. Teaching programs host that sort of program for many, many teaching students... it shouldn't be too much for a smaller program of librarianship students to have a similar program. I would like to see fewer classes presented by professors who have no interest in the subjects they are tasked to teach (in fact, I'd like these sorts of things eliminated completely from every program!) ... on several occasions, we had professors teaching us computerized programs or some computer-related software program that they use only during the teaching process and not in their daily routines... so they forget how to make it run properly - or simply never learned in the first place - and have no earthly idea what to use it for (other than what they read in the brochures)... There seems to be a student/teacher separation even at the post-graduate collegiate level... students learn what students need to know and once they graduate, well, then they'll learn 'on the job' what librarians need to know to be librarians... Come to think of it, this sort of thinking might be exactly why library programs don't have internship components - the professors don't want students learning how much they learn in the library program simply isn't used on a daily basis! hmmmm. . . Although some of you may remember that I graduated in 1998, I've only actually worked as a librarian for three years (two here in NC and one in CT)... so, please don't accuse me of cheating the requirements to get in on this fun... 8-) Looking forward to the hit... Aloha y'all ... Earl J. Librarian of Fortune Web-based at www.MONIZ.org Reality-based at Fayetteville, NC ***** =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-= All postings to LM_NET are protected under copyright law. To quit LM_NET (or set-reset NOMAIL or DIGEST), send email to: listserv@listserv.syr.edu In the message write EITHER: 1) SIGNOFF LM_NET 2) SET LM_NET NOMAIL or 3) SET LM_NET DIGEST 4) SET LM_NET MAIL * Please allow for confirmation from Listserv. 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