Speaking as a Librarian
I'm not a librarian. However, I have spent an intense two days with librarians from around the country at the School Library Journal's annual Leadership Summit. Their conversations and struggles in a time of declining budgets coinciding with a time when their expertise is especially needed, has become a part of my thinking. A question posed to MIT's David Cavallo was a perfect example of where their thinking was coming from.
Dr. Cavallo is the manager of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative in Brazil. In fact, he almost did not make it to the conference because of an air controllers walkout in that country. After his keynote, which included descriptions and pictures of a number of project-based activities from schools in Brazil and others initiated by MIT's Future of Learning Research Group, Cavallo asked for questions. One of the questions was, "In all of these projects you have shared, where was the librarian?"
The question clearly caught Cavallo off guard. It is probable that most of these schools, with which he is working in Brazil, do not have libraries or librarians. Some conversation insued, but if I had been bold enough to raise my hand and speak, I would have asked, "Where was the work done?"
I think that any library that is adequately structured, positioned, and operating within both the print-published and digital-networked information environments would be seen by its students as the perfect place to do much of the work for their projects. Today's school (and municipal) libraries must be seen as much more than places to go find an consume information. They must be a work place, where patrons go to find and filter information raw materials, and then work that information into new and valuable information products (papers, multimedia presentations, videos, audios, music, etc.). It must be a place of information and tools, and viewed by its patrons as a logical first place to go and build.
If your librarians are paying attention and adopting new technologies and new information structures (Web 2.0, etc.), then include them in all of your meetings regarding technology implementation -- if you aren't already. If your librarians are not paying attention and not adopting and leveraging the new information landscape, then send them to conferences, enroll them in staff developments, connect them to each other, and clearly communicate expectations -- if you aren't already.
The library can be much more than the hub of the school. It can also be the spokes, facilitating your schools into ongoing, skill-developing, learner-facilitating conversations.