LEF Grant Keeps Library Web Site Up and Running – September 2003
By Brian Kelly, Staff Writer / Lexington Minuteman
In this age of technology, more and more students are looking at the Internet as a source to help with schoolwork.

Seeing that trend, a group of Lexington Public School librarians from each school level have designed and maintained a series of Web sites to help students easily access updated school-related information.

Susan Lum, a librarian at Lexington High School, has worked on the Info to Go project that has been around for about five years. She said money to keep the sites updated and make sure they correspond to current curriculum at the elementary, middle, and high school levels is usually provided by the school system, but with the town's financial difficulties, it dried up. However, Lum applied for and received a grant of $3,366 from Lexington Education Foundation to help maintain the sites.

"The LEF has been a outstanding supporter of the library program in the Lexington Public Schools. When it was apparent that we would not be able to continue the annual updating of our resources via the Net they were the logical choice. I had applied to other funding sources but they were the ones that came through for us," said Lum.

"This grant allows us to work together sharing search techniques, sites and resources. During the school year there is little opportunity for us [librarians] to work collegially because we all work in different schools, at different levels. This gives us a system-wide focus where we come together to develop an aspect of the library program for the entire system.

"It enables us to do maintenance and improvements and go into areas we have not before. I worked on mostly sites for East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East. These are countries and areas that people previously had not been teaching, but they are now timely topics, and we needed to have those kinds of sites high-lighted," she said.

Lum said what really makes Info to Go great is that it can be accessed by students, parents, and teachers, and they can use it at school or at home. All of the information found on the sites is annotated, and each school computer is set up to open to its corresponding school level homepage.

"These are resources that enhance what's being taught in the classroom, and work specifically to find sites and materials that are specific to the curriculum that is being taught at each grade level. This is something that constantly needs to be updated and changed and reviewed [to stay current]," she said. "It is important for students to learn that there are many ways to get information, but when using electronic information to realize that it has not followed the procedures that print information follows in terms of the rigors of publishing. That information should be evaluated in such a way that we know where it comes from, how authentic it is, and how relevant it is to their needs. ... I think this is the best use of the Internet, providing quality references. These homepages are almost like having a little reference library."

According to Lum, the feedback has been tremendous, and she said she received e-mails from parents across the country who tell her how helpful the sites are.

"We use the homepages in all our teaching with students during their visits to the libraries for research. This is one of the backbones of our instructional program," she said. "We hope that more parents will explore the homepages and use them with their children for all informational needs."

Peggy Shukur, vice president of programs for LEF, said the grant was awarded because the applicants were able to show how helpful Info to Go is to its users. LEF makes final determination on whether to award grants by making sure the goals of the program are realistic and whether its goals match those of LEF and the Lexington Public School system.

"The applicants were able to demonstrate that this was an extremely useful tool for teachers and students of all grade levels. It allows teachers to use information that wasn't otherwise available to them, and it allowed librarians across the system to work together collegially on the sites," said Shukur. "You realize there is a lot more to developing Web pages that are useful to schools that one would think. There is a lot that goes into it, whether it be information relevancy, reading level, curriculum, differentiated learning. There's a lot of thought behind putting a Web site that is tailored both to students and teachers. It is very beneficial."

Info to Go: lps.lexingtonma.org/Libdept/home.html ; Clarke and Diamond: lps.lexingtonma.org/Libdept/mid.html; and elementary schools: lps.lexingtonma.org/Libdept/elem.html .