Reference and the School Library 3 Part RT 1 W hat AT I s R efere FER E nce E A ll L A bou t? Chapter 1 Reference and the School Library: An Overview Introduction Students come to the library with all kinds of questions. Sometimes they are personal and driven by their extracurricular activities, while many times their needs are driven by their classroom studies. The role of reference services in the school library is to help students to use library resources to obtain relevant and credible information that meets their needs. The variety of reference services school librarians provide as part of their daily activities includes helping students define their information needs, creating learning environments for collaboration, teaching students to use the online catalog and databases, and helping students distinguish good information from bad. All of these activities are critical for developing effective users of information and ideas and helping them navigate the 21st-­century information stream. Curriculum changes occur often and the need for information will always exist. Now that students are dependent upon the Internet, the role of the school librarian to assist students in finding the answers to their questions is the key to helping them become information literate. The school librarian must have the ability to translate questions into terms that students can understand and guide them to the proper resources. For school librarians reference services are more than just information skills or activities these services represent significant and meaningful engagement in a profoundly human activity, ministering to one of the most basic needs of humans—the desire to gain knowledge. Reference services revolve around the basic principle of maximization of information resources in all formats. School library collections consist of a variety of information resources what is a resource? A resource is any material, regardless
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