Maine State Library

Present: Susan Nelson, Nancy Grant, Audrey Conant, Francis Ally, Gretchen Sam, Sylvia Norton, Smelly Swiss, Roger Brained, Linda Hazard, Tumor Blush, Abigail Garthwait, Glenda Dow, Margaret McNamee

THE SECRETARY'S REPORT was accepted with one omission and one correction. Audrey Conant was present at the meeting. Articles for Azaleas "Best Practices" Electronic Library CD should be sent to Linda Gustafson and Edna Comstock.

THE TREASURER'S REPORT was accepted. $100 income and $598.37 expenses reported for March, 2000. Balance in the checking account is $15,025; $1010.71 is in the savings account. A motion was passed to use the unexpended ENEMA money towards delegates' travel expense to the ALA conference.

PRESIDENT'S REPORT: Susan welcomed Roger Brained to the Board and appointed Gretchen Sam PRY person for the Board.

Susan distributed copies of an email asking people to send Senator Reed information about out-of-date reference materials to support a bill to provide federal funds for school libraries and copies of the article "Study shows Rise in Test Scores Tied to School Library Resources" from Education Week online.

Susan repeated the call for Knowledge Quest articles. It was reported that the "Child Labor is not Cheap" booklets have arrived.

The situation involving the K-8 position in Brewer was discussed briefly. Susan will write to the superintendent emphasizing the importance of the professional position to the library media program. It was suggested that the Board should revisit the issue of library educational technician responsibilities.

Susan will post our response to Governor King's laptops initiative on the MELibs listserv. We have asked to be included in future organizational meetings on the initiative.

It was noted that there are openings at Bridgton Academy due to Ann Choirboys retirement and at the Asa Adams elementary school.

Recognition and lifetime memberships for people who have contributed greatly to the organization were discussed. There will be no Mac Campbell Award this year, but there are applications for the Library Media Specialist of the Year Award. A committee will meet during school vacation.

Sylvia Norton will be attending teacher certification meetings for the State Board of Education Task Force.

Gretchen Sam took copies of the old brochure to begin her first job of updating it as PRY person

A short conference call to the ENEMA virtual meeting was placed. A conference meeting followed the Board meeting.

INFORMATION SKILLS COMMITTEE: Pam Fisher from USM's CITE (Center of Inquiry on Secondary Education) facilitated a discussion of the Research Process Overview sheets.

NEXT MEETING: The next MASL board meeting will be at the Maine Library Conference.

Pam Fisher from the Center of Inquiry on Secondary Education used the Tuning Protocol to facilitate the discussion of the research assessment work of the Information Skills Committee.

TUNING PROTOCOL
1. Presentation of work
2. Clarifying Questions
3. Pause
4. Warm & Cool Feedback
5. Presenter Response
6. Dialogue - Next Steps

1. Presentation:

Audrey Conant and Nancy Grant presented the committee's work. The draft focuses on four basic parts of the research process and the need for documentation to assess the student's mastery of the four steps. The range of teacher/librarian collaboration from zero librarian involvement in teacher planning to total librarian/teacher partnership was discussed.

(Bullets represent chart paper notes with some additional notes from Board members).

Goal: Describe exit requirement in research skills

• What is required K-12 to reach goal?
• Draft: essential pieces of research process
• What will the evidence look like?
• Final Product: Models, Examples - Local (school level), District, State, National

2. Questions:

• Written curriculum preceding assessment
• Guide for Educators
• Models --- depth & breadth of model
• Integrated with teachers and librarians
• Are there multiple entry points?
• What will the front end/interface/foundations be like?

3. Pause (Silence!)

4. Feedback

• Simplicity
• Next steps for product --- looks like?
• Marketing/ownership issues --- audience (teachers, administrators, librarians, technologists)
• Local coup assess systems
• Vocabulary
• Information Learning Results?

5. Presenter Response

• Consultancy

In what ways will ME students demonstrate achievement of Research/Information Skills

* How will process be connected to other content projects, etc.?

* What will the product (assessment) look like?

• · Some librarians need help in teaching the research process
• Content area people need connection to their standards and to their "stuff"
• We need to build backwards from 12 to K
• It's not just research; it's Information Literacy!
• "Keep it simple, but not simplistic."
• Whatever we put on paper risks being an external add-on.

Pam Fisher spoke about the invisibility of librarians, the need to realign time to allow for teacher/librarian planning, and the need for the authority and empowerment to change things. She advises that people start at the local level, that local work puts the heart and soul into state standards, that local implementation will lead to state advocacy. We were cautioned to remember that many teachers and administrators may be threatened because they did not learn research and information literacy in the same ways.

Pam put forth three main points for the document.

1. Begin with the Charge: Information Literacy is the Gatekeeper Literacy of the 8th Century (Information literacy replaces the traditional gatekeeper literacies of reading, writing and math)
2. "Bubble Up" where information literacy is embedded in the Learning Results Highlight all the content areas (Replace the misconception that it is only in Language Arts).
3. Give examples of teacher/librarian partnerships, showing snapshots of students' work.

She suggested that the models include a running dialogue with the librarian the center of the discussion, asking essential questions, tweaking the process and showing what happens to a unit when a teacher collaborates with a librarian.

(It might be possible to show how some of the online projects from the Electronic Learning Marketplace could be improved with librarian partnership and input of information skills. Contact Deb Smith at the Southern Maine Partnership).

Pam also offered to publish a lead article about the committee work in the CITE newsletter Pursuing Promising Futures. She left some "proposals" for research units and exit projects, an assessment model at four levels with a rubric, and suggested that Alan Hall of Yarmouth would be another good source for models.

The Board felt that Pam's facilitation greatly aided the discussion of the committee's work. We look forward to working with her and CITE in the future.

Respectfully submitted,

Margaret McNamee margaretmc@lamer.net