Oregon School Library Standards adopted by education board

One of the more noteworthy events to happen this week in the realm of school library services, was an action by the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) to adopt Oregon School Library Standards.

I learned through one of the listservs I subscribe to that the ODE board met on Jan. 22 and “easily approved” a motion for the standards’ adoption.

The standards were developed by a committee made up of members of the Oregon Association of School Libraries: public and private school teacher-librarians and media specialists from around the state.

The standards “provide direction to school libraries for skill development and instruction,” according to a Rationale published on the committee’s Google site. The standards focus on four key areas: of Information Literacy, Reading Engagement, Social Responsibility and Technology Integration.

My interest and involvement with Oregon School Library Standards is from a non-teaching perspective, but I’ve found that being consistent with educational standards has implications for the “how” and “why” of patron-access services.

I purposely adopted directional signage for “Informational” materials, to use language that was consistent with what children were being taught.

Likewise, during my day-to-day activities of helping students find materials in the library, I want to model and support the lessons taught by my teacher-librarian. By extension, I want to model and support any overarching library standards.