"Life In The 21st Century"

I really thought (having worked in broadcast news early on) that journalists were the viewer's educators. Think about it, reporters bring the information you don't know about into your homes...just like teachers do. Although reporters have it a little easy. There are NO..."ooh ooh oohs" from Arnold Horshacks around to doubt their wit or wisdom. Also, how a journalist gets the story really doesn't matter to the viewer either. What I mean is, when do they question something unless someone (like a blogger) pokes holes in the story? The fact is, we educate; although it is technically classified as reporting the news. Where am I going with this? I am not sure. But I do think we should pay homage to people who educate but don't always get credit for it. I learned a lot from attending the School Library Journal Summit this weekend. But most of all I came away with a realization that our dear and fearless librarians are taking on new and exciting roles in educating the 21st Century, Millennials , IM generation students in new and immeasurable ways. They also will be joining arms, and linking with stakeholders (community folks) for the common good of our students. An aside...just thinking about Horshack, I do not remember any episode of Welcome Back Kotter when the Sweathogs were in the library reading. Do you?
Anyway, having spent this past weekend with librarians/media specialists from all over the country, I must say there are exciting initiatives on the horizon. And the beauty is WE are PSYCHED to get it going! The common goal is to educate the 21 st century community and we need librarians to pioneer many of these movements. If you think about it, who better can teach about plagiarism and citing sources? Who better can explain the difference between a database and a catalog? Who knows about the world's information and how it is stored? Let us stand with and beside them to empower librarians in this common goal and let us collectively Welcome Back The Librarian. I love this song....it reminds me of good times (not the show).

"Welcome Back" by John Sebastian:

Welcome back, your dreams were your ticket out.
Welcome back to that same old place that you laughed about.
Well, the names have all changed since you hung around.
But those dreams have remained and they've turned around.
Who'd have thought they'd lead ya (who'd have thought they'd lead ya)
Back here where we need ya (back here where we need ya)?
Yeah, we tease him a lot 'cause we've got him on the spot, welcome back.
Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back.
Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back.