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L.A. Community Library Information Collaborative Will Link Teachers, Students to the Rich Resources of the World's Libraries Via the Internet THE LOS ANGELES EDUCATIONAL PARTNERSHIP and Libraries for the Future recently announced the formation of the Los Angeles Community Library Information Collaborative (LA-CLIC) a three-year project to make the information resources of the world's libraries available to teachers and students through the Internet. Funded by a grant from the Annenberg Foundation, LA-CLIC will provide important support to schools that are using the Internet to increase access to information for students in urban schools. Los Angeles area teachers and students will use the Internet to develop high quality curriculum projects using primary texts, photographs, recordings and other resources usually found only at the largest public and research libraries. Students in historically isolated and underserved Los Angeles schools will undertake individual and collaborative research projects using resources that have rarely been available to them. "This project will make available a vast new array of information resources that teachers can use to improve curriculum and enhance teaching and learning. It will also open the door to high quality information and resources for students without regard to where they live or their family's income level, " said Peggy Funkhouser, president of LAEP. "We are tremendously excited about joining with Libraries for the Future to empower teachers to research and develop new curriculum materials that can better serve the needs of their students." L.A.-CLIC will be piloted at an urban high school in the Los Angeles Unified School District and staffed by an Internet information coordinator, working in collaboration with a school librarian and team of teachers. This team will identify information resource needs, find and access information resources through institutions such as Los Angeles public, university and research libraries, and develop methods for making them easily accessible to teachers and students. L.A.-CLIC staff will also work with teachers at the school site and in LAEP's Teacher Networks to develop curriculum materials for their students. Those materials will be shared at the L.A.-CLIC site and with other teachers and schools through the Teacher Networks and via LALCNet's Learning Exchange, LAEP's wide-area telecommunications service that provides educators with low cost access to the Internet. "All young people should have access to the enormous information resources available via new communications technologies," says Libraries for the Future's Executive Director, Diantha Schull. "We believe that L.A.-CLIC will demonstrate the contribution that libraries can and should make to ensuring this access for the education of young people and the professional development of educators." The project will be administered, evaluated and disseminated nationally by Libraries for the Future and will be a part of LFF's national network of CLIC sites, benefitting from training, technical assistance, and networking with innovators around the country working on community information systems. LAEP will support the development of curriculum materials, provide Internet access and training for participating teachers, support teacher network activities and disseminate information to teachers and schools across Los Angeles County. L.A.-CLIC is supported by a grant from the Annenberg Foundation, the successor corporation to the Annenberg School at Radnor, Pennsylvania, established in 1958 by Walter H. Annenberg. The current focus of the foundation is on K-12 education. For further information contact John McDonald at the Los Angeles Educational Partnership (213) 622-5237, ext 123, or by email at jcm@lalc.k12.ca.us, or Kim Robinson at Libraries for the Future at (212) 352-2330 or by email at krobinson@lff.org