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What is the School Library System?
In 1984 the New York State Legislature established School Library Systems. Currently 42 School Library Systems exist around the state. The systems are based within each BOCES and the five Big City School Districts. School Library System is a state funded program providing a variety of resources for the school library and the school librarian. Funding comes from the library component of the New York State budget. Resources available from the School Library System include system wide databases, and regional resource sharing for all member libraries.
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Who can be a member of the School Library System?
The School Library System at Eastern Suffolk BOCES includes 51 school districts, 223 public school library media centers, 16 nonpublic school library media centers for a total of 239. There are 13 members of Council and 54 liaisons. The Council provides policy advice to the School Library System Director. The liaisons serve as the communication link with the local school library media specialists in the districts.
What is the function of the School Library System?
It is the function of the School Library System to develop and maintain a union catalog, provide interlibrary loan, continue professional development for library media specialists, communicate professional concerns through newsletters, faxes, email, and liaison meetings, and support cooperative collection development and electronic databases.
At Eastern Suffolk BOCES Coser 516 Library Services/Media is a shared service for the purchase and use of online databases to the students, teachers and librarians in each of the participating buildings. New for the school year 2002-2003 was the virtual reference collection. This is a selection of databases and special software that permits the user to log in with the same password for each of the different databases, and then continue to search moving from one to another. This access is available from the building site and home. The ease and frequency of use at all levels has increased.
Library Automation Coser 508 assists districts in automating the library collection so students and staff can easily access information electronically. The automation systems from INNOPAC/MILLENNIUM, Follett's Catalog and Circulation, and SIRS Mandarin are supported. User group meetings are held to keep the participants updated on the features of the system software. As of May 2003 over 80% of the buildings are automated and several are in progress.
More than 60% of the buildings have been designated electronic doorway libraries, EDL's. According to the New York State Library an electronic doorway library is an integral part of the statewide community that makes use of computers and telecommunications technology with a full range of library resources and skilled library personnel. The school library media specialists help their students and staff to evaluate and use information within and beyond the building walls.
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