By Ed Karvoski Jr., Contributing Writer
Southborough – Sharon Lux, library director at Fay School for pre-kindergarten through grade nine, received the Ellen Berne Pathfinder Award at the Massachusetts School Library Association’s annual conference, held March 1 at the University of Massachusetts Conference Center in Amherst.
The award’s namesake, Berne, is considered a pioneer in the field of digital school librarianship in the late-1980s and ‘90s. Lux was honored for her efforts to bring an affordable and versatile e-book platform to Massachusetts school libraries. She’s pleased to have been recognized alongside her peers.
“It was wonderful to see the dedication among the professionals in the field – and to be one of them,” she said.
Lux earned a bachelor’s degree in Russian language and literature at Middlebury College, and a master’s degree in curriculum design and elementary education at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. She also received a master’s degree in library and information science at the University of Rhode Island (URI).
“Russian was just an avocation,” she noted of her early studies. “At the time, I lived in rural Vermont and there wasn’t a lot of opportunity, so I started working part time in the college library after graduation. That’s where I decided to try library school.”
From 1995 through 2008, she worked in various capacities at La Salle Academy in Providence, R.I. She began as a school library media specialist from 1995 through 2002. Her responsibilities included instruction, collection development and outreach for grades seven through 12.
“I loved working with the middle school students,” she said. “They were so open to everything.”
When a position opened to work with middle school students, Lux taught information literacy and humanities in grades seven and eight from 2002 through 2008.
“That’s where I first fell in love with the idea of teaching kids to recognize the power of media,” she said. “We were moving into this age where the Internet was becoming very interactive. Kids could take control. They could create blogs and their own websites. They could be dispensers of information rather than just passive consumers. That was really exciting to me.”
In August 2011, Lux stumbled upon a job posting on the URI Listserv for a library director at Fay School. She was offered and accepted the position.
“It was about two weeks before school started,” she recalled. “I thought this was a great opportunity for me to get back in the library with the right age group.”
Her home is in Rhode Island and she has an apartment on the school campus.
“I love the peaceful environment,” she said.
Lux began attending e-book discussion meetings in the summer of 2012 with the Massachusetts Library System. She helped formulate the criteria for a statewide e-book program, devoting her own time to ensure that school libraries had a voice in the development of the pilot program known as the MA eBook Project.
“I’ve always been committed to resource sharing,” she said. “I can’t believe that every library should be a silo onto itself. We’ve got to share because of the cost. It’s the only way school libraries will be able to access these kinds of resources at an affordable price.”
Of the 51 participating libraries in the pilot program, Fay School was one of six schools. The pilot has become a program called the Commonwealth eBook Collection, Lux noted.
“Some people are not recognizing that libraries are a large part of teaching kids how to navigate information overload,” she said. “It’s not like we’re the gatekeepers of information anymore; we’re now the instructors on how to make sense of sifting through all the information that’s available.”