What is OSLIS?

What is OSLIS?

OSLIS is a gateway to the Internet designed for Oregon students and teachers while maintaining the school library at the heart of student research. OSLIS was established and has operated since 1998 with a variety of partners.

Currently OSLIS is a partnership between:

OASL (Oregon Association of School Libraries), formerly called OEMA (Oregon Educational Media Association)

OSL (Oregon State Library)

ODE (Oregon Department of Education)

UW (iSchool at University of Washington)

The vision of OSLIS is to provide an appealing, useful Internet portal to licensed databases accessed within an information literacy curriculum structure. Whether students are from an affluent suburban school or an isolated rural school, they deserve access to high quality, authoritative resources via licensed databases.

OSLIS was developed with two goals:

1. provide low-cost access to high quality information resources
2. provide information literacy curriculum for students, teachers, librarians, and other educators

OSLIS makes a difference in student achievement:

• OSLIS is a SAFE environment for kids to do Internet-based research.
• Quality licensed online databases are now accessible to all K-12 Oregon schools.
• There are a large variety of reliable information resources available at one location.
• Online tutorials and access to information resources help Oregon?s students learn.
• There are age appropriate articles with reading levels defined for K-12 (lexiles).
• Information skills practice provided by information literacy curriculum framework.
• It provides the resources to instruct students on citing work and how to research.
• Home-schooled and private school students can use OSLIS and EBSCOhost from home.
• Content is varied and includes a multitude of magazine, encyclopedia and newspaper resources that most school libraries are unable to afford.
• It provides the most current and constantly updated information.
• All Oregonians have equitable access to OSLIS through their schools.
• Access from home is available so students can do research at night and on weekends.
• Student achievement improves on the Oregon statewide assessment in schools where OSLIS is used.
• Fosters habits of scholarly research.

The OSLIS committee welcomes your input.

The members are Sheryl Steinke (chair), Melanee Lucas, Mary McClintock, Victoria McDonald, Patty Sorensen, Marlene Hagen, Kate Vance, Gregory Lum and Kathryn Grant. OSLIS is the product of the hard work of teams of Oregon school librarians who wrote the grants that financed OSLIS, created the ?How To? curriculum pieces, and conceived the activities for students, especially the highly acclaimed Citation Maker. Funding for OSLIS was a combination of LSTA grants from the Oregon State Library and federal technology grants administered by the Oregon Department of Education.

OASL appreciates the contributions to the development of OSLIS by other educational partners no longer involved in the project:

OETC Oregon Educational Technology Consortium (fiscal agent, database negotiations)

OPEN Oregon Public Educational Network (web design, site host)

TR Teaching Research at Western Oregon University (evaluation & assessment)

For more information see OSLIS History