Local governments around the world are exploring different strategies to become smarter: more efficient, sustainable, and highly interconnected. However, many actors outside government need to be involved too. For instance, public libraries have the potential to play a very important role in the development of smart and connected communities, due to their strong legitimacy in the eyes of citizens and the types of services and programs they are already providing, which in many cases go well beyond what could be considered traditional library services. This paper analyzes innovative practices in public libraries and argue that they already show the potential of public libraries to become catalysts for smart and connected communities. Together, these innovations represent an opportunity for governments and communities to engage and a new way to think about public libraries as very important actors in smart community initiatives.
Teachers' use of formative and summative assessment to document and enhance students' learning and teachers' instructional practice is firmly established throughout educational research as integral to the teaching profession. However, knowledge about how school librarians, also referred to as teacher librarians, or school library media specialists, use assessment information to shape and inform their instructional practice is far less understood. This study, conducted in a large populous state in the northeastern region of the United States, describes how significant and insignificant results, based on a state-wide web survey of public-school librarians aligned with student achievement data at respondents' school building level, reveal school librarians' assessment practices. Findings reveal that although school librarians use formative assessment to gauge student performance, they rarely share assessment results with teachers or administrators within their buildings. School librarians' demographic factors including prior experience and educational background appear to be associated with assessment practice. The article discusses the need for school librarians to become better versed in how to use assessment information to document evidence of their practice and reveal the contributions they make to various stakeholders within their school communities. Statistical analyses include descriptive statistics as well as regression modeling using school-district-level outcomes and covariates. The results of this study are limited to school librarians in this state and may not be generalizable to all school librarians.
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