SB 95 Passes Senate

The State Senate passed SB-95 today (see previous blog post about this issue) without amending it to delete the provision that removes the 25 percent limit on computer purchases with Common School Fund dollars. The vote was 17-16 along straight party lines. Senator Jennifer Shilling (D-La Crosse) offered an amendment to remove the Common School Fund part of the bill, and she said that she had been contacted by library media specialists asking for the amendment.

Senator Luther Olsen (R-Ripon), who authored the bill, spoke against the amendment saying that school districts need flexibility with the funds and seemed to believe that digital resources could not be purchased with Common School Fund money. The amendment failed on a voice vote.

SB-95 will now be sent to the Assembly.  There already is an Assembly companion bill, AB-130, in the Committee on Education. That committee failed to pass the bill when it voted in early June. Given the subject matter, SB-95 should go to the same committee, and there could be another vote. Or, either bill could be pulled from the committee through a parliamentary maneuver during a floor session. SB-95 could conceivably be referred to a different committee for further action. At any rate, both the Senate and Assembly must pass the exact same bill before it goes to the governor, and SB-95 has not been through the Assembly.

Stay tuned for more information on this important matter.
--Michael Blumenfeld, Lobbyist, Wisconsin Educational Media & Technology Association

Yet Another Measure Threatens the Common School Fund

Senate Bill 95, a school reform bill, threatens the Common School Fund by eliminating the current 25 percent limit on the amount of CSF money that may be used to purchase school library computers and related software.

The full Senate is scheduled to vote on this bill at 11:00 a.m. today, Thursday, October 20.

Please contact your senator right away and request an amendment to SB-95 that would remove the provisions in the bill that relate to the Common School Fund.  Thank you for your help!
Points to raise:

• The common school fund is the major source of school library resources, both print and electronic. These resources are critical to a quality education for our students to prepare them for work and college.
• It is important to uphold the constitutional intent of the Common School Fund for its intended purposes. School libraries in Wisconsin continue to be a cornerstone of a strong educational system.
• Direct them to the updated Common School Fund recommendations and clarify what the funds can be spent on. This recently updated list takes into account the need for the purchase of learning resources in various formats. For example, Kindles are actually allowable outside of the 25 percent cap.
• Cite the research that libraries staffed with qualified library professionals with strong collections of materials raise student achievement. Qualified library professionals are able to determine the appropriate resources for their library within the revised CSF standards.

HOW TO CONTACT YOUR SENATOR
BY PHONE: Call the legislative hotline toll-free at 1-800-362-WISC (9472) (266-9960 in the Madison area) to leave a message for your senator.  This hotline can also tell you who your State Senator is.

BY E-MAIL or PHONE:  Visit http://www.legis.state.wi.us/ and click on "Who Represents Me?"  After entering your address, your representative and senator will appear along with a phone number or link to email them.  If you send e-mail, include your name and mailing address in the body of the message, or your concerns may not be recorded.

Generally, senators' e-mail addresses use the following format:
Sen.Lastname@legis.state.wi.us  (example: Sen.Smith@legis.state.wi.us)
--Allison Kaplan and Kathy Sanders, Legislative Committee Co-chairs, Wisconsin Educational Media & Technology Association

Common School Fund Threatened: Contact Legislators!

Legislation related to nursing home regulation, introduced as companion bills AB-302 and SB-212, will reduce funding available to the school libraries, if passed. The Wisconsin Educational Media & Technology Association (WEMTA) says the legislation could cost the Common School Fund (CSF) at least $1.5 million per year because it diverts fines and forfeitures on nursing homes from the CSF. 

The Assembly Committee on Aging and Long Term Care will vote on AB-302 on Thursday, October 20, at 9:00 a.m. in room 400 Northeast of the State Capitol. The Senate Committee will meet that same date and time in room 330 Southwest.

If the bills are approved by committee, they go straight to the full Assembly and Senate.It is very important to reach out to legislators in both the Assembly and Senate, and if you are represented by someone on the committees who vote on October 20, your call is essential.

Assembly Committee members are as follows: Representatives Dan Knodl (R-Germantown, District 24), Warren Petryk (R-Elva, District 93), Karl Van Roy (R-Green Bay, District 90), Kathy Bernier (R-Chippewa Falls, District 68), Peggy Krusick (D-Milwaukee, District 7) and Elizabeth Coggs (D-Milwaukee, District 10).

Senate Commitee members are: Senators  Pam Galloway (R-Wausau, District 29) Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin, District 28), Leah Vukmir (R-Wauwatosa, District 5), Tim Carpenter (D-Milwaukee, District 3), Jennifer Shilling (D-La Crosse, District 13)

Key points to address with legislators:

• Nursing home regulation reform is a worthy goal, but such reform should not penalize school libraries and the school children who count on them. 

• Any proceeds from fines or forfeitures should go into the Common School Fund. Though unintended, this bill costs the CSF $1.5 million per year.

• We respectfully request that AB-302 and SB-212 be amended to require that all fine and forfeiture proceeds collected thereto be deposited into the Common School Fund.

You can email your legislators directly from the WLA Legislative Alert center, or get their telephone numbers there. Type in your home address, and it will tell you who represents you and direct your message appropriately.

Unbolt the chairs, but build the library

In a recent Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article, the superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools was quoted as saying unbolting chairs from the floor is the biggest change he's seen in schools' physical spaces, but "I wouldn't build another library."  Mary Wepking, School Library Media Coordinator at UW-Milwaukee SOIS, responded with this letter:

Dr. Thornton:

This letter is in response to your statement, with respect to MPS facility planning, "I wouldn't build another library." (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 9/10/11). The purpose of this letter is to inform you that this is an educationally destructive decision. Over 20 state-wide studies have been done that make a strong correlation between the presence of a funded & staffed school library and increased student academic achievement. Here are the findings of the Wisconsin study:  http://dpi.wi.gov/imt/pdf/SLMP3.pdf . You and your administration need to be aware of this research.

Increasing technology integration may have some educational benefit; school librarians in well-funded and expertly managed schools are the community's technology leaders. Creating more flexible learning environments also seems to be an effective trend  good school libraries have been providing  collaborative spaces for group learning for years.  MPS needs to be reminded that the school library must be the heart of the learning community. School librarians are the technology leaders, instructional partners, and innovators in individualized and group learning that will help to lead the school to success. Further, they are focused on the school's primary role -- teaching students to read and to think, and to enjoy reading for information and enlightenment -- goals that must not be abandoned.

If you went to school in the 60's, 70's, even 80's as I did, you may not be familiar with today's school librarian. I suspect that the majority of the MPS leadership falls into this category, unaware that both the role and the facility have changed. School librarians today are experts in both literacy AND technology, and in the perfect position to guide 21st century learning. MPS's choice to eliminate this valuable educator and important facility from so many schools is both short-sighted and ill-informed.

I urge you to reconsider your position and to provide your schools and school children with the valuable asset of a well-funded and professionally-staffed school library.

Sincerely,

Mary Wepking, MLIS
School Library Media Coordinator

The opinions expressed here are my own.

Potential Change to Common School Fund Spending Raises Concerns

A bill touted as a K-12 "mandate relief" includes changes in the way Common School Funds can be spent. The bill (SB 95) eliminates the current 25 percent limit on the amount of money a school library receives from the Common School Fund to purchase school library computers and related software. In other words, the entire CSF allocation could be used to purchase devices rather than the information resources needed for student learning; e.g., the school librarian is required by administration to purchase new computers but then cannot afford to purchase access to research databases.

The Assembly Education and Senate Education Committees will hold a joint hearing on the draft bill next Monday, May 16, 10:00 a.m. in Room 411-S State Capitol. If your legislator is a member of one of these committees, please call him or her to to voice your concerns.

Edited May 17:
A Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article published May 16 summarized the hearing, or listen to the entire hearing on Wisconsin Eye.

ALA Issues State Fact Sheets

The American Library Association has issued State Fact Sheets on LSTA funding, Improving Literacy Through School Libraries (LSL) and public library data. Formatted for printing and sharing, these handy fact sheets can be used for library users, elected officials and other stakeholders who may need help understanding the variety and importance of these library programs. Thanks, ALA!

Madison Elementary School Library Gets Facelift

Ralph Waldo Elementary Library in Madison received 2,000 new books, new, eco-friendly technology, lighting, flooring and furniture, according to a Channel3000 report. An organization called Heart of America partnered with Target Stores and the Madison Public School District to do the renovation.

WLA 2009: Canoe the Open Content Rapids

Canoe the Open Content Rapids
Dorothea Salo, UW System Digital Content Group

• http://www.slideshare.net/cavlec/canoe-the-open-content-rapids [under Creative Commons Attribution license]

Instruction

• Digital storytelling - copyright issues over pulling from files found on Google Images - sets a bad example
• Scholarship reasons to provide copyright education, provide proper information sources
• Different from country to country
• Instructors tend to violate copyright, as well as avoid activities that are probably fine

Copyright

• Limited monopoly over original works that are fixed in a tangible medium (includes stuff on Internet)
• It's in the Constitution - not about making money, about promoting "progress of science and the useful arts"
• Life of author + 70 years; 95 years corporate entities
• OK to copy for scholarship, parody/satire, library preservation, classroom use; limited copying for other reasons = "fair use"
• You can: a) sell in whole/part, b) give it away for free, c) license it for free/payment
• Faculty generally fall into (b) without realizing it - they think because they wrote an article, they own it
• Fair use - only way you know for certain is if you're sued and win
• General guidelines do exist
• Legislation has become more and more restrictive; results - culturejamming

Public domain

• Prefer to think of things as "rising" into the public domain, not "falling"
• Google Books - includes items clearly in the public domain (pre-1923), others clearly under copyright, others are "orphan works" because we don't know who owns copyright (or if they're alive etc.)
• Hathi Trust will decide whether items Google is vacillating about are actually in the public domain
• Musopen - building collection of online recordings - raise money for your group to record a piece (long-dead composers, score acquired legally) and upload
• Flickr Commons - photographs in public domain; allows libraries and other digitizers to share and receive comments
• Project Gutenberg - one of the first; scanned, transcribed public domain texts
• Gov docs - work produced by fed employees in course of jobs is in public domain (except classified works); includes images
• State gov docs = depends on the state

Open access

• Includes peer-reviewed works, digital collections, working papers, technical reports, conference presentations, crowd-sourced solutions to mathematical problems
• "Green" open access - "self-archiving" (not really), repositories (Dorothea doesn't like the term)
• "Gold" open access - originally published open access, no subscription fees, no cost to access
• "Mandates" - FACULTY granting to their institutions the right to post their research results online (some places aren't considering publications towards tenure unless they're deposited in repository; controversy over whether open access publications are getting a citation edge); FUNDERS especially federal agencies want taxpayer-funded research results to be available freely to the public; LIBRARIES at research institutions]
• Biggest tool to find OA materials = OAIster (soon to become part of WorldCat); also DOAJ, Google, Google Scholar
• Open Courses - controversial - http://ocwfinder.com
• Learning materials - OER Commons, MERLOT (long-standing) - points to materials stored elsewhere, ODEPO directory
• Creative Commons - generate license granting specific rights for your works (attribution, no derivatives, non-commercial use, requirement to release the new work under the same license)
• Flickr has a Creative Commons search, or Flickr Storm has advanced CC license search
• Music (ccMixter, Incompetech, Jamendo)

To Do

• When you accept a work for digitization, educate the creator and ask for their desired status for the items
• Read all publication agreements, and ask for what you want - Dorothea hasn't heard of any publishers taking back their decision to publish based on copyright addenda
• Instead of libraries and librarians being the "copyright cop" - promote Creative Commons

Sheboygan School District to cut 11 library media specialist positions

In a May 14 letter to families and staff, the Sheboygan Area School District announced the school board's decision to reduce the number of school library media specialists from 16 to 5. The remaining positions include one at each high school, one at the middle school level and two at the elementary level. The letter also announced plans for a meeting of staff, including the "core group" of media specialists, to meet during the summer to develop a plan for teaching essential library skills at each level.

A letter to the editor from Jo Ann Carr, director of the Center for Instructional Materials and Computing at UW-Madison and president of the Wisconsin Educational Media & Technology Association, appeared May 29 in the Sheboygan Press. Carr outlines the essential skills and important role that licensed media specialists bring to the school setting, including work with teachers in planning curriculum, knowledge of a range of databases and software, and direct instruction to students. She asks that since media specialists are licensed teachers whose absence will impact students directly, the school board use the same guidelines for reducing media specialist positions as they would for eliminating other teaching positions.