"K-20 Librarians"

Your Name and Title: Don Means, Founder/Principal

Library, School, or Organization Name: Digital Village "Fiber to the Library" Initiative

Co-Presenter Name(s): Carol Levers, KCKPL Director,

Area of the World from Which You Will Present: US

Language in Which You Will Present: English

Target Audience(s): School, public & academic librarians

Short Session Description: Librarians collaborating toward integration across full K-20 educational spectrum.

Full Session Description: Historically, the nation’s educational institutions; K-12 school systems, public libraries as well as colleges and universities, have had only minimal success in creating sustained partnerships and sharing resources across K-20 organizations. Obstacles to developing cooperative programs and day-to-day interaction arise from serving varied populations with different needs, plus having widely dissimilar governance structures, funding sources, internal cultures and traditions.

"K-20 Librarians" can become the connective tissue of a new national education continuum where all institutions of learning can function more as a integrated whole to serve the needs of each learner at any level of accomplishment across any distance by providing tailored resources and expanded educational opportunities.

The first local consortium, initiated by the KCK Public Library, begins as a new collaboration of school, public and academic librarians seeking to lower technological and administrative barriers to deeper integration of services from area educational, cultural and civic institutions.

The KCK collaboration aims to serve as a distributed test lab, exploring applications that utilize very fast internet connectivity(Google Fiber's gigabit service), new immersive interactive technologies and multi-user digital environments in support of educational, cultural and civic purposes.

Who better than librarians, with their deep professional kinship and common traditions, to help standardize technological, procedural, administrative and other trans-institutional resources for students and instructors to extend learning opportunities and services!

Websites / URLs Associated with Your Session: http://telestructure.com

http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2012/06/digital-divide/google-gigaby...

Tags: 1:, Learning, Libraries, Physical, STRAND, Spaces, Virtual, and, –