by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian
It's back to school time!
It will be quieter in the library during the school day now (except for
storytimes). It might be busier after
school and in the evening when students with iPads and MacBooks need WiFi to do
their homework. We’ll be interested to
see how that affects library traffic this fall.
The public library can be a resource for school in a number
of ways beyond basic internet access.
Librarians still help people find information even in this era of
search-it-yourself. If you have a paper
to write, whether you’re in middle school or graduate school, we can help you
search for or order sources.
One of the best sources is provided by the Minnesota state
library agency. It’s called ELM, the
Electronic Library for Minnesota, and it can be accessed at elm4you.org. You can get to it from home or we can help
you with it at the library. The website
offers access to many databases of articles and encyclopedias, all high-quality,
reputable sources. If you’re in college
and your professor requires it, you can limit your results to peer-reviewed
journals. Elementary school students can
use the section especially for students their age that includes Britannica
Learning Zone and Searchasaurus, a way to search elementary-age magazines,
dictionaries, and encyclopedias. I have
used ELM countless times for my own grad school work as well as to help library
patrons. It has so much to offer.
Litchfield high school students sometimes come to us for
help finding a book for a reading requirement.
We are glad to help you come up with ideas for that. There are many options right here in our own
building, plus we can order almost anything else you’d like to read.
Newsbank is a newspaper database that Litchfield Library subscribes
to, primarily because it includes the Litchfield Independent Review in a
searchable form. But it also includes
current event reports that could be useful to students. This month’s include the latest articles on
the Ebola outbreak, the threat of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and the fighting in
Gaza. A social studies student may be
able to use these special collections for current events homework.
If you’re getting ready to take a college entrance exam, you
could check out one of our test prep guides.
We have the 2014 edition of Cracking the ACT from the Princeton Review
and their 2014 edition of 11 Practice Tests for the SAT and PSAT. We also have new test prep books coming in
soon for the GRE, the LSAT, the GMAT, and the nursing school entrance
exams.
Parents looking for ideas for those lunchboxes could check
out The Best Homemade Kids’ Lunches on the Planet. This has been a popular book this
summer. The author of “100 Days of Real
Food”, Lisa Leake, endorses it. I am
completely stuck in a rut for cold lunches, so I think my kids would appreciate
it if I’d check it out sometime.
And for anyone interested in our educational system and
teaching, we have the book Getting Schooled by Garret Keizer. Keizer is a teacher who left the profession
and then returned fourteen years later to the same school, putting him in a
unique position to see what has changed in high school education in the past
two decades. Critics say his writing
style is very engaging and that he has some unique insights on what should be
changed in our schools.
Supporting life-long learning is one of the purposes of the
public library. Whether you have little
ones to bring to story hour so that they can start to learn pre-reading skills,
students to bring in to do homework, or sources to find for your own college
paper, we’re here for you.
