In November the fourth annual SLJ Leadership Summit was held in Hollywood Florida.  Gerri Fegan, Ann Perham, Kathy Lowe and I attended the 2 day conference. The focus was “Remixing Library Collections for Digital Youth.” This is a topic we hear more about at national and state conferences as we come to realize that the digital natives, our students, are now moving miles ahead of the educators who work with them everyday in their schools. Kids come in each morning to classrooms where they are told to “power down.” None of the digital tools-- no cells, no ipods, filtered youtube, facebook, myspace, instant messaging-- that are a substantial part of their daily lives, everywhere, except in school can be used.

Anastasia Goodstein’s keynote was titled, Meet Judy Jetson: Digital Native. She told us what we already know, all teens play digital games, instant message, 70% of them send an IM or text message rather than a phone call. They live on myspace, facebook and live journal. However, contrary to what some might believe, according to a PEW report, kids engaged in gaming are more civically involved.  Instead of filtering, we should be educating them and our colleagues about cyberbullying, trolling, and other harmful behaviors and offer ways to handle it just as we teach outside of the cyberworld. The most memorable quote was “educate not legislate.”

Interestingly, kids are not hanging out in virtual worlds like Second Life. Teens are more in involved in sites called gaia, webkidz, wee world and mtv. By 2011 it is predicted that 50% of all kids and teens will exist in virtual worlds. Today, myspace is becoming more content based where facebook is used more for communicating with friends. The skills that they use outside of school are the skills they will need when they leave school in the 21^st century world. If we block the social medias, under-privileged kids are not getting equitable access. Once again we are creating a community of haves and have-nots.

Some of the things we can be doing to begin to close the gap between the generations:

• Create a profile on some of the social websites to understand how these sites are used and their functionality.
• Have kids sign up for text messages for new books
• Provide homework support via IM
• Talk about appropriate use, use inappropriate examples as “teachable moments.”
• Teach about new ethics and good uses of the social networks such as use of portfolio sites for their work, sharing good resources via sites like delicious, creating their virtual image or reputation in a positive light.
• Teach them the ethics associated with plagiarism, that nothing is private online and to think twice before posting their personal images and information.

In the breakout session, Nonfiction Matters, science writer Vicki Cobb said, “Technology can allow an author to network with their readers and develop relationships and links, but the book becomes the center or highlight of that relationship. She showed a video that kids made demonstrating some of the experiments in her books. It was an easy suggestion to try in your own library to extend the nonfiction books kids are reading. Marc Aronson who writes reviews and articles for SLJ talked about Rick Riordan’s new series, 39 Clues as an excellent example of how the digital world is helping the book. Each book comes with 6 cards. The first card pack comes with 6 cards randomly pulled from a pool of 55, as well as a game guide with tips on how to play. Each card comes with a unique identification code. Kids enter this code on a website to create their own online card collection!

In, Opening the Book: Matchmaking Nonfiction Books and Educational Technology in the Digital Age, the presenters said high interest nonfiction is replacing a curriculum driven collection. Emphasis is on recreational reading. Electronically, online accessibility is key. Much of reference is now available digitized in a combination of subscription databases and free. The real task for users now is not to locate information, but rather to evaluate it. Students create content, and therefore drive the collection. We should question how much library real estate we are now devoting to the print reference collection. Can this space be used in more valuable ways? What is a book – a story or cache of information comprised of written words and/or pictures with a clear intentional organization. We know books, they are collectable, we can hold them, but the disadvantages include: warehousing them, the environmental impacts of paper use, and the fact that they can be as expensive as can digital resources which often need upgrades or involve added costs for new features. All of these considerations now come into play as we make purchases for our libraries.

Memorable quote: “Books left on the shelf can last a lifetime.”

Other sessions included Doug Johnson on copyright and fair use, a topic he often addresses on his "Blue Skunk" blog, always an interesting read. Doug feels we are all consumers and producers of intellectual property. Everyone should be using the Creative Commons as a resource for students to use and remix to produce their own work and then post it back to the commons sharing their work for others. On the other hand Doug feels how we as librarians deal with copyright and fair use gives us an image problem, and we need to change our role from cop to counselor. Fair use guidelines are just that, guidelines not laws. We should be advising about what is permitted not what is forbidden.