Week 6, Part 2 Technorati and Tagging

I went to Technorati and typed in "school library learning 2.0" and got zero results. Nothing. Nada. So I typed in "classroom learning 2.0" and got zero results, too! I typed in "school library learning" and got an error message, "There is a temporary issue with search. Please try again in a few minutes." I am feeling as impatient as some of the teens I work with because I waited the so long, at least five minutes (okay, maybe slightly less) then typed in "school library" in the search and got the same error message. I am a little disappointed. I have searched Technorati before so I switched from searching for blogs to searching for posts. I found one that raised a lot of red flags. On Alan Gibbon's blog, his post was titled "School libraries-an endangered species?" Well needless to say I went right for that one.

Alan Gibbons is a writer that lives in the UK. School libraries in the UK seem to have a "shaky future." Politicians are looking for places to cut spending and school libraries are the latest target. Alan Gibbons, founder of the Campaign for the Book, has a petition on the web to make school libraries statutory. School libraries are very vulnerable. The interesting thing I found out is that in the UK, libraries are statutory in prisons but not in schools. How can that be?

Maybe we need a national school library czar in the U.S. Department of Education. Someone who can advocate nationally for the need for both school libraries and public libraries. Maybe the best way for school and public libraries to coexist is to coordinate some services to reduce wasteful spending. Just as teachers and media specialists need to collaborate more, perhaps public librarians and school library media specialist should be doing the same. By pulling together we can be stronger and louder voice in our communities. We cannot afford to be silos standing next to each other and not know what the other is doing.

So, what are my thoughts about tagging? Definitely important to searches! An advantage of tagging is when a blog, website or any other resource has more tags associated with its content, there is a greater chance of finding that blog, website or resource. A disadvantage is coming up with the many accurate tags.