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Vol. 10 No. 4 — September 2003

­David Hoffman

Does your library media center meet the needs of students? This is a very important question that all school and district administrators in the nation should ask themselves, especially in light of higher state standards, student assessments, and the No Child Left Behind legislation.

In answering the question, one must first address how the role of the library media center is defined.

• If the area in a school referred to as library media center is treated simply as a warehouseofbooks where students go to check them out, read them, and return them on time, the needs of students are not being met.

• If the library media center is not well stocked and managed by a certified library media specialist, the needs of students are not being met.

• If learning about and using technology does not play a major role in your library media center, the needs of students are not being met.

• If your library is not a beehive of activities for students, teachers, and community members, the needs of students are not being met.

• If teachers and certified media specialists are not functioning as an educational team, the needs of students are not being met.

• If there is not a high book circulation rate, the needs of students are not being met.

• If administrators are not giving total support for the media center, the needs of students are not being met.

• If students are not excelling on state and national reading tests, the needs of students are not being met.

• If students don't rank going to the library as high a priority as recess or lunch, the needs of students are not being met.

Never before in the history of education have well- functioning library media centers been more important. Still, some schools and districts reduce funding for those areas, place restrictions on the amount of time library media centers are available to students, and staff them with personnel who have little or no training or experience in teaching students.

In their Oregon study entitled "Good Schools Have School Librarians; Oregon School Librarians Collaborate to Improve Academic Achievement," Keith Curry Lance, Marcia Rodney, and Christine Hamilton-Pennell reported that research clearly shows that students achieve more in those schools which have strong library media programs. They state, "Oregon schools with the best reading scores tend to have stronger library media programs than schools with the lowest scores." In the Medford School District, where strong media programs and certified library media specialists exist in all elementary, middle, and high schools, students taking the state assessment examination in grades 3, 5, 8, and 10 exceed the state standards in reading proficiency. Furthermore, when student performance was reported by the Oregon Department of Education, four of the district's 18 schools were rated "exceptional," 10 were marked "strong," and four "satisfactory." Additionally, while Oregon has ranked either first or second in the nation for several years in SAT test results for graduating seniors in those states who test greater than 50 percent of their students, Medford School District's graduating seniors exceed both the state and national averages.

Lance, Rodney, and Hamilton-Pennell offer the following five recommendations for action as a result of their Oregon study:

• Library media programs should have funding for adequate professional and support staff, information resources, and information technology. Such conditions are necessary, if not sufficient alone, to generate higher levels of academic achievement.

• Library media specialists must assert themselves as leaders in their schools. It is their responsibility to take the initiative required for information literacy to become an integral part of their school's approaches to both standards and curriculum.

• Principals can do much to make this possible, including adopting policies and practices and communicating expectations that encourage library media specialists to act as professional educators and classroom teachers to accept them as colleagues.

• The library media program cannot be limited to the library media center as a place. Just as library media specialists must involve themselves in the design and delivery of instruction, information and technology must be used to make information resources available to teachers and students wherever they may be in the school.

• While Internet access is important, the library media specialist has an important role to play in ensuring that teachers and students have access to high-quality licensed databases from which authoritative information may be obtained. Library media specialists can provide the necessary training to ensure teachers and students know how to use the information tools and how to access an information resource.

Good library media programs don't just happen, they are systematically planned. The role these programs play in meeting students' needs must be clearly defined for all to understand. Certificated media specialists who are strong, capable teachers must be selected based on their knowledge of print and nonprint material, teaching strategies, motivational skills, and ability to relate to students of all ages, as well as to professional staff and community members. Ideally, they'll possess an abundance of energy and be good salespeople. From the school and district administration must come a commitment to provide well-funded, well-stocked, and well-staffed media centers. The community must demand not just adequate library media centers, but ones that possess all the ingredients described in the research and literature.

The American Association of School Libraries and the Association of Educational Communications and Technology noted in their publication Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning, "The mission of the library media program is to ensure that students and staff are effective users of ideas and information. We must teach students to be learners because in their lifetimes so much new knowledge will be generated that they cannot expect to stop learning when they leave school." The publication points out that the goals of a good library media program include the following:

• To provide intellectual access to information through learning activities.

• To provide physical access to information through a carefully selected and systematically organized local collection of diverse learning resources.

• To provide learning experiences that encourage students and others to become discriminating consumers and skilled creators of information.

• To provide leadership, collaboration, and assistance to teachers.

• To provide resources and activities that contribute to lifelong learning.

• To provide a program that functions as the information center of the school.

• To provide resources and activities for learning that represent a diversity of experiences, opinions, and social and cultural perspectives.

A library media center should be a place where children love to go for reading pleasure and to conduct research. It should also be a valuable resource where teachers obtain materials to present better and more exciting lessons. It must be inviting in its decor and functional in every way.

When all of this is accomplished, only then can one say, "We are meeting the needs of students."

Editor's Note: Greetings from your new editor. That's right. After 5 years as editor of MultiMedia Schools, the peripatetic Ferdi Serim has moved on. You won't need to look hard to find him, however, if you travel in education technology and policy circles. He's hard at work on the multiple writing, speaking, teaching, and advocating projects that he's always had going. For one thing, he has recently published his book Information Technology for Learning: No School Left Behind [http://oii.org/IT4L/].

As editor, I'll now be spearheading the effort to bring MMS readers more of the practical and supportive information we've been publishing under Ferdi's editorship. And we're looking at some changes for the magazine in the near future, so watch this space.

­David Hoffman