Valenza

=Joyce Valenza=

//A school's teacher-librarian is its chief information officer, but in a networked world, the position is more that of// //moderator or coach, the person who ensures that students and teachers can effectively interact with information// //and leverage it to create and share and make a difference in the community and beyond.// Joyce Valenza, "[|14 Ways K-12 Librarians Can Teach Social Media]"

Joyce Valenza is a teacher-librarian at Springfield Township High School in Pennsylvania. She began her work there in 1998, after ten years as a teacher-librarian in the Wissahickon School District. Prior to that, she was a branch manager of the Free Library of Philadelphia. As part of her current work, she maintains the school library website and the //NeverEndingSearch// blog, which was nominated for several Edublog awards in 2010, winning for best librarian/library blog in 2009. She also maintains a page on the TeacherLibrarianNing site.

The home page for Valenza's school library site offers a list of links for research, presentations, lessons, library information, and more. But her "glog" (pictured below) is the heart of the page that invites students to click on the links whether they need to or not!



On her Ning page, Valenza has created discussion groups for "High School Teacher Librarians" and "More Things: Applying 2.0 tools," and contributes to the discussion in many other groups in that on-line community.Although there aren't many recent entries in her groups, members can pick up a lot of tips from previous posts. Links for threaded discussions on various topics are also included on this page.

Valenza's April 23, 2011 entry on her NeverEndingSearch blog discusses digital content curation, or human editorial curation. She says, "I think we've been doing this type of work for a long time in the form of widget-based pathfinders, but now folks seem to be talking about it." The following definition of content curation is helpful in understanding the purpose and value of the websites and blogs Valenza maintains.

//In the near future, experts predict that content on the web will double every 72 hours. The detached analysis of an// //algorithm will no longer be enough to find what we are looking for. To satisfy the people's hunger for great content// //on any topic imaginable, there will need to be a new category of individual working online. Someone whose job it is// //not to create more content, but to make sense of all the content that others are creating. To find the best and most// //relevant content and bring it forward.// Rohit Bhargava, "Manifesto for the Content Curator: The Next Big Social Media Job of the Future?"

The best characterization of Valenza and her work is found In the video below, where Valenza discusses what being "just a librarian" means to her.

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**Links:** Joyce Valenza CV Joyze Valenza NING page Never Ending Search Blog Springfield Township High School Virtual Library

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