Last updated: 2015
Introduction
The school library program is critical to the learning process. The necessary skills for college and career ready students include being literate in a wide range of digital, visual, textual, and technological formats. Students need to be able to access, evaluate, and process information strategically and methodically in order to make informed decisions and create products involving critical thinking skills.
Highly qualified teacher librarians, working in collaboration with content area teachers, provide research- and inquiry-based instruction in order to develop the students' ability to find and use information to support their academic learning and personal development. These Utah Standards for Library Media were created by certified teacher librarians to demonstrate the integration of information literacy skills across all curricular areas.
The standards are organized into three clusters:
1. Literacy: Reading Engagement
2. Literacy: Research and Information
3. Literacy: Media Engagement
These standards, which incorporate inquiry-based learning as well as other research model strategies, will be taught in collaboration with content area teachers, not in isolation by the teacher librarian. This collaboration will deepen student learning, foster independent reading, develop reading stamina, build task resiliency, strengthen text-dependent writing, and increase the students' information literacy knowledge. Informative handouts, tutorials, and implementation tools are available through the Utah State Board of Education website and the Utah Education Network.