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Cambridge Rindge & Latin High School Council

In attendance were: Larry Beeferman, Judith Contrucci, Pauline Demetri, Mary Louise Piret, Pepita Soto, Eleanor Farinato, Joanne Ackman, Lucia Somberg, Paul and Deborah Walker, Gary Waldron, Barbara Broussard, Alan Bell, with Aaron Darsa, CRLS Librarian, Sheila Morshead,, CRLS Teacher Resource Center, and Joan Stein, coordinator of elementary librarians, and Ed DeAngelo and Karen Carmean of Library 21

To provide access to all the people of Cambridge and to insure that we manage our resources well, Library 21 is gathering information from as many groups as possible about what the people want.

What would you like in the library?

A. Community Activity Center

  • Enhanced children’s performance space

  • Real production center with multi-media production, including labs for writing and databases, but incorporating images, moving images

  • Computers for production of work. To scan, create own products, write letters

  • Small theater lecture hall

  • Quiet study area with no traffic

  • Cable television production with equipment, space, and all the resources needed to produce

  • Media production for public to use with slides, overheads, color copies, etc.

B. Community Information Center

  • Job Alike group on Media to share information on how to do media and do other things

  • Courses run by library staff on how to use databases, how to access information and new technology

  • How-to flyers on various important topics like: "how to write a proposal"

C. Formal Education Support Center

  • Combine public and high school libraries so that you don’t duplicate the resources, yet stipulate how you use the resources to best advantage

  • Have a high school specialist at the public library to provide what you have at the high school in the public library

  • Coordinate staff so the high school library can be open after school and open late

  • Appropriate coordination between the library and the high school

  • Consider exclusive use of the high school library to the school from 8-3, but then have it open to others later. What would be the issues connected with this?

  • School library is a "real" library. Its mission is to support overall objectives of the schools and curriculum objectives of the teachers. How we do this has changed drastically.

  • Technology has forced us to redefine our roles and to make us more active players as librarians in the school. Now we develop projects

  • Reserve books set up in public library because teachers could communicate with the public library that they are doing research projects on particular subjects.

  • Librarians could plan ahead.

  • Network high school and public library together so that each knows what is in the system

  • Email accounts for teachers and students and library so could communicate more easily

  • Train teachers and media personnel on new technology. Can be a full time job just keeping up with the technology

  • High school uses Macs and public library uses IBM, so problem with compatibility of database

  • Mini workshops for teachers for example: to purchase equipment together

  • Librarians in schools much more involved in work and role of students than before

  • Coordinate with the Technology Advisory Committee

  • Technology has freed librarians to define who we are and what we are

  • Research, how to get into information, using key words, etc. should be integrated into the curriculum

  • Harvard student does research with classics students in coordination with the high school librarian on a regular basis

  • Not enough books in high school library: only 7 books for each student; ALA suggests 20 books per student

  • Excellent reference section in high school library; but insufficient to allow students to take references home to use

  • Coordinate our efforts between the high school and the public library

  • All high school teachers have access to Gutman education library at Harvard with a $500 use fee; there are very limited borrowing privileges

D. Independent Learning Center

E . Popular Materials Lending Library

  • Terminals can be in basements, anywhere there is space.

  • Technology needs support and guidance on how to access it.

  • Multiple resources can be used; people need advice and help selecting which resources to use to solve which problems

  • Community needs access to sufficient technology and in sufficient numbers so that they can access it. Many people will not have computers for quite some time.

  • Internet access needs to be much more and much faster connect time

  • Giving and getting information is very important for democracy, especially in the 20th century

  • How do you allocate popular resources of space and resources? How many hard copies of books should there be in the high school and in the public library?

  • What do you envision in the 21st century?

  • U.S government document repository is in the basement of the Harvard Widener

  • Library and Cambridge citizens should be able to have access to it

  • Programming coordination needed between all the popular resources available

  • Only 8 networked computers, one with Internet access are available in the high school and 12 will be at the end of the year

  • Librarians need to establish usage policies on Internet, technology, etc.

  • High school has an institutional video instruction loop with satellite delivery of courses and instructions which could be used by public

F. Preschoolers Door to Learning

G. Reference Library

  • State and federal services are available that citizens should have access to and know about, for example: Mass Chip, a public health database, a housing database, and a justice database

  • Article searches: need more extensive database to search for articles

  • High school has a first class reference section

  • How to sift out chaff and what is reliable information

  • How to synthesize information and how to criticize it

  • Librarians can help identify web sites to use which are reliable for information

  • Someone to kindly point me in the right direction

H. Research Center

  • Research database, " We need an excellent research database, not necessarily in the Cambridge Public Library but we need access to it someplace"

  • U.N database, government database, foreign database, all needed

  • World class research facilities and tools, need access to

I. Other- important functions missing from list

  • Accessibility of high school library in evening

  • High school library not on-line with automated catalog yet

  • Neighborhood libraries are very important

  • Libraries should be on-line, more high tech, 24 hour access

  • Current site is good for high school, center of city, contiguous with high school

  • Don’t touch the park

  • Don’t take the park

  • Revolutionize the neighborhood library for projects after school,

  • Branch libraries are only for elementary children now, they do not have good enough reference materials for high school students and others

  • Link libraries: libraries can be anywhere. How much of the library should be based on the library site;

  • Lots of people do not have access to library now. Have libraries in the hospitals, all around

  • Supervision of the information would be helpful to people to help them manage their way into the information

  • Notion of library is changing. No longer just guiding people though the physical library but need rich human resources, democratic access, and technical support to the information

  • What can the library uniquely provide?

  • Terminals, library can be anywhere, in the basement, but we need technical support and guidance to access it well

  • Library should teach people how to use it

  • Training for the future use might be the function of the library

  • Technology has freed library to redefine what we are and who librarians are

  • Library is wired now in the high school; what are acceptable use standards?

  • Need networked system with card catalog and circulation on line

  • Shared interlibrary loan system needed

  • Bedford MA has joint school and public library inter use of card catalog and circulation

J. An Important Civic Building

Page was posted on 5/8/2018 8:28 PM
Page was last modified on 2/7/2020 1:10 PM
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