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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

Information for Administrators supervising School Librarians

General Information

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. 

Map of showing Eastern Suffolk districts

  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.

Graph showing grade level breakdown of component 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 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.

Image of the Virtual Reference Collection landing page

 

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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Staff

Carl Vitevitch, MLS
Administrative Coordinator
cvitevit@esboces.org
631-286-0891  

Melanie Keller
Principal Office Assistant mkeller@esboces.org  

Donna Moss
Senior Account Clerk
dmoss@esboces.org

Elizabeth Trapasso, MLS
Library Media Specialist
(PT Tues-Wed-Thurs) 
etrapass@esboces.org

  

For VRC or OPALS Assistance slshelp@esboces.org