Bonus Episode: Agents of Change

Call Number with American Libraries Podcast

For more than a year, educators, school librarians, and administrators have been responding and adapting to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Last spring, Gale, a Cengage Company, and the American Library Association (ALA) partnered to rejuvenate Gale’s guide to best practices for school librarians. For this Agents of Change 2.0 paper, ALA spoke with educators and administrators working through the crisis and surveyed more than 500 school librarians about their processes and perspectives. On this bonus episode of Call Number with American Libraries, sponsored by Gale, Maggie Reagan, senior editor of books for youth at Booklist, talks with Jessica Klinker, head librarian at Franklin Heights High School in Columbus, Ohio—one of the librarians whose feedback helped shape the Agents of Change 2.0 paper. They discuss Klinker's experiences working during the pandemic, the pandemic’s effects on students, the importance of social-emotional learning, and more.