seminar
Effective School Librarians: Successful Professional Practices from Librarians around World
Chair: Dr. Sam CHU, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong
In the Foreword, Dr. Helen Boelens asks:
“How do school librarians at public, private and international schools, in developing, emerging and developed countries manage to inspire children throughout the world to read and to improve the quality of their education? Are there perhaps some hidden secrets, which could help us to make our work in school librarianship more effective?”
In year 2016, thirty-six school librarians from Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Croatia, Congo, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Nepal, Netherland, Philippines, Serbia, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, United States, Venezuela and Zimbabwe were interviewed in writing and via Skype. They were asked about the strategies and practices, with the aims to gain insights into their perceptions there was impetus to consider ways to guide changes that align the professional school librarian practices in different geographical, national and cultural contexts. These interviews have now been combined in this new publication.
This book will be a valuable and practical addition to many libraries and personal collection of educators serving as a useful reference for classroom teachers, librarians and school administrators, who wish to strengthen their professional practices in the area of information literacy and learning; and to increase goal achievement amongst their students. Furthermore, the findings described in this book could further provide strong basis for developing future research in the field of school librarianship on a global scale.
Dr. Patrick Lo is currently serving as Associate Professor at the Faculty of Library, Information & Media Science, the University of Tsukuba in Japan. He earned his Doctor of Education (EdD) from the University of Bristol (U.K.), and has a Master of Arts (MA) in Design Management from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, a Master of Library & Information Science (MLIS) from McGill University (Canada), and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) from Mount Allison University (Canada). He also took part in a one-year academic exchange at the University of Tübingen in Germany from 1990-91. He recent publications on LIS include:
- Conversations with the World’s Leading Opera and Orchestra Librarians. Lanham, MD.: Rowan and Littlefield. (2016).
- Preserving Local Documentary Heritage: Conversations with Special Library Managers and Archivists in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press. (2015)
Dickson K.W. Chiu received the B.Sc. (Hons.) degree in Computer Studies from the University of Hong Kong in 1987. He received the M.Sc. (1994) and the Ph.D. (2000) degrees in Computer Science from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). He started his own computer company while studying part-time. He is now teaching at the University of Hong Kong and has also taught at several universities in Hong Kong. His research interest is in library and information management with a cross-disciplinary approach, involving workflows, software engineering, information technologies, management, security, and databases. The results have been widely published in over 150 papers in international journals and conference proceedings (most of them have been indexed by SCI, SCI-E, EI, and SSCI), including many practical master and undergraduate project results.