School Library System

What is the School Library System?

In 1984, the New York State Legislature established School Library Systems. Currently, 40 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 databases, and regional resource sharing for all member libraries.

Download the following documents in Adobe Acrobat PDF

Information about School Library System

• New York State School Library System brochure
• New York State School Library Systems Program section revised Jan 2024
• Our Cooperative Collection Development (CCD) Plan
• Our Five Year Library System Plan of Service 2021-2026
• Eastern Suffolk BOCES School Library System By-laws
• SLS End of Year Evaluation 2023-2024 (blank)
• SLS End of Year Evaluation 2023-2024 (completed)

Information for Administrators supervising School Librarians

• New York State Education Department School Library Services Program page
  • NYSED School Library Services FAQ includes answers to:
    • Is my school required to have a library used by students and teachers?
    • Can a school withhold student grade reports for overdue school library books or school library fines?
•  NYSED School Library Program Rubric 2020 site
  • Direct Link to 2020 NYSED School Library Program Rubric (Word Document)
• Handbook for Summer School Administrators and Principals
  • School Library Services are mentioned on page 22 of the 2024 [PDF].
• eBook [PDF]: The Day the Librarians Disappeared (2022)

General Information

• Summer Reading at New York Libraries

• Regents Advisory Council on Libraries Vision 2022

Who can be a member of the School Library System?

  The School Library System at Eastern Suffolk BOCES includes 51 school districts, 230 public school library media centers, 9 nonpublic school library media centers for a total of 239. 

  There are 13 members of the Council and 51 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. Of note, we have 10 districts with fewer than 250 students in their schools, mostly on our East End forks. We also have one the largest districts on Long Island with just over 19,000 students.

 

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 loans, continue professional development for library media specialists, communicate professional concerns through newsletters, email, and liaison meetings, and support cooperative collection development and electronic databases.

At Eastern Suffolk BOCES Co-Ser 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. The Virtual Reference Collection (VRC) 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. Video streaming services that are appropriate for grades K-12 are available as a Supplemental purchase and are added to the members' VRC page.

Library Automation Co-Ser 508 assists districts in automating the library collection so students and staff can easily access information electronically. The automation systems from Media Flex, Inc. (OPALS) and Follett (Destiny) are supported. User group meetings are held to keep the participants updated on the features of the system software.

The School Library System Directors:

Dr. Janet Barr, 1982 to 2006 - 2006 SLSA Distinguished Service Award winner

Gail Barraco, 2006 to 2016 - 2016 SLSA Distinguished Service Award winner

Carl Vitevitch, 2016 to present - 2018/19 SLSA President

 

 

 

 

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