The School Library Link is published monthly by Michelle McGarry, a former writer and editor turned school library enthusiast. She is a recent graduate of the School Library Teacher program at Simmons College in Boston. She also has a Master's degree in Writing and Publishing from Emerson College. During her studies at Simmons, she realized that promotion was one of the most important, and most overlooked, duties of any school library teacher. With school library programs in constant jeopardy, school library teachers have had to do their own public relations work, most of which is in addition to their normal packed schedule of teaching, maintaining the library, fighting for their jobs, and often carouseling between many different schools. Michelle now works as an elementary school library teacher in the Whitman-Hanson Regional School District in Massachusetts.

Promotion can take a lot of time and energy. If writing, editing, page layout, and Web design aren't your "thing," it can be all the more difficult. I created this Web site and monthly newsletter as a turn-key opportunity for school library teachers to have easy access to quality promotional materials that will help recruit and inform one of their biggest assets: parents. By targeting parents and informing them of the benefits that school library programs offer their children, The School Library Link acts as an advocacy tool.

Try it out! It's free, it's monthly. And if you feel like it, click on a Google ad to help support the site. Thanks!

Questions? Contact me at theschoollibrarylink@live.com.

Michelle is a member of the Massachusetts School Library Association (MSLA), the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), the American Library Association (ALA), Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), and the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC).