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NewswireTODAY - /newswire/ -
Inwood, WV, United States, 2009/12/01 - The Library Corporation’s LS2 PAC has received accolades for its design and utility, but users continue to discover new ways to customize the software to expand the role of the library.
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The Library Corporation’s LS2 PAC has received accolades for its design and utility, but users continue to discover new ways to customize the software to expand the role of the library. An educator in Nebraska proved that point recently by devising a way to incorporate LS2 PAC into her school system’s curriculum.
Omaha Public Schools Library Lead Teacher Kelly Arbuckle and the school system’s librarians realized that LS2 PAC’s user review and tagging features presented an opportunity to bolster students’ writing, reading, and critical thinking skills while reinforcing the vital role librarians play in education.
Students in Omaha use LS2 PAC to find titles in their school libraries. They can conduct a traditional search or peruse the book jackets displayed in LS2 PAC’s Book River interface, then read accompanying editorial reviews to bolster their reading and comprehension skills. Once they’ve completed a book, students return to LS2 PAC and write their own reviews. “This is another way of doing a book report,” Arbuckle said. Teachers have the option of grading the students’ work just as they would a traditional class assignment. Also, knowing that their reviews will be posted to the LS2 PAC database and viewed by teachers and students alike, the young writers have extra incentive to correct their spelling and grammatical mistakes before submitting their work.
Arbuckle said LS2 PAC’s tagging feature also presents educational opportunities. Students can assign a descriptive word to any title in the program’s database. For example, they may describe a book that made them laugh as “funny.” But if someone else has already tagged the book as “funny,” children are encouraged to come up with other words that have the same meaning. In doing so, students expand their vocabulary while improving their library’s database of book tags. “Kids love to have some input into their world,” Arbuckle said.
Omaha Public Schools, a TLC customer since 1992, added the LS2 PAC interface to its Library•Solution® integrated library system in December 2008 and Arbuckle said she saw the product’s educational potential “as soon as I saw it.” Now that LS2 PAC has become integrated into the school system’s curriculum, she sees no limit to the teaching opportunities. “Where I see the future, it’s huge,” Arbuckle said.
And those opportunities don’t have to be limited to just school libraries. Dianne Coan, a librarian and TLC strategist, said LS2 PAC in public libraries can also help students.
Coan volunteers at a public library in Fairfax County, Va., where the school system requires high school students who are pursuing an International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma to perform several hours of community service as part of their education. Coan’s library found itself inundated with aspiring student volunteers – far too many to accommodate, she said. Rather than deny the community service hours, the library came up with another idea: IB students could write book reviews and submit them to the library, fulfilling their community service requirement by aiding other library users looking for a good book.
Libraries with LS2 PAC could make the process even easier, Coan said. Since the program’s interface can be accessed from any computer connected to the Internet, students who are required to perform community service as part of their curriculum could write and submit reviews at any time, from any location. Other library users could then read the reviews and find out if a title was available at the library before leaving home.
To learn more about LS2 PAC and the advantages it can bring to TLC’s Library•Solution®, Library•Solution® for Schools, and CARL•X™ library automation systems, call or visit TLCdelivers.com/.
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bbrehm[.]TLCdelivers.com 
