If You Build It, They Will Come…

New York City School Library System

Written by mjacobs on Fri, 03/04/2016 – 14:47

The New York City School Library System (NYCSLS) provides support services, professional development, and mentoring to school librarians and content area teachers in public and non-public schools throughout the five boroughs.  There are three physical offices that make up the NYCSLS, including Tweed (Lower Manhattan), North Regional located in Washington Heights, and South Regional located on Staten Island. These offices are not centrally located and workshop locations are often at the mercy of a library or public school.

Effective library programs provide inviting spaces, up-to-date resources, and opportunities for powerful learning experiences so that students and teachers can gather ideas, exchange points of view, and learn together.  However, librarians in NYC do not have a centralized training facility. It would be ideal to have access to a facility that offers the latest cutting edge technology to support emerging trends such as makerspaces, updated and functional computers and tablets with robust WiFi connections, and programming that support advanced learning, networking, and platforms to share best practices. If we want to develop effective library programs, it would be ideal to have a model space to share and offer as a training facility for school librarians.