After eighteen years of professional commitment to library media services
for youth, I found myself perplexed by the question, What do schools need?
Perplexed because my personal perceptions were so clear or so I thought.
Yet, I could not focus and translate them to the written word. It became
necessary to sit and recall years of professional behaviors and experiences
in the school and public library. It also became necessary to summon
relationships and accomplishments, gained or lost, due to those behaviors.
What I saw showed growth and tremendous change, but not nearly
enough. It was frightening because I found that the majority of our
problems were due to us; we did not know who we were or what we should
be doing. I turned to research and fellow professionals for help. I had to
know what was being done in the school library media centers of this
country. There was too much fragmentation in my mind and in the
evidence to determine what was needed now and tomorrow. What I discerned
schools to need from librarianship and what I see them needing in
the future was tied to how we perceived ourselves as being and what role we
are willing to play.Institute sponsored by University of Illinois, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, cosponsored by the Youth Divisions of the American Library Association: American Association of School Librarians (AASL), Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), Young Adult Services Division (YASD)published or submitted for publicatio

Pretlow, Delores Zachary

English

Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship Repository

DELORES ZACHARY PRETLOWSupervisor of Media ServicesRichmond Public SchoolsRichmond, VirginiaWhat Do Schools Need?After eighteen years of professional commitment to library media servicesfor youth, I found myself perplexed by the question, What do schools need?Perplexed because my personal perceptions were so clear or so I thought.Yet, I could not focus and translate them to the written word. It becamenecessary to sit and recall years of professional behaviors and experiencesin the school and public library. It also became necessary to summonrelationships and accomplishments, gained or lost, due to those behaviors.What I saw showed growth and tremendous change, but not nearlyenough. It was frightening because I found that the majority of ourproblems were due to us; we did not know who we were or what we shouldbe doing. I turned to research and fellow professionals for help. I had toknow what was being done in the school library media centers of thiscountry. There was too much fragmentation in my mind and in theevidence to determine what was needed now and tomorrow. What I dis-cerned schools to need from librarianship and what I see them needing inthe future was tied to how we perceived ourselves as being and what role weare willing to play.Visualize this scenario. The school doors open at least thirty minutesbefore the morning bell. The children begin to enter slowly, sleepily, butwith a destination in mind. The library media center is warm, cozy, andthere is a person there frantically trying to get ready for the day. Somebooks that really need to be processed came in late yesterday. A teacher iswaiting for them. There are still four unusable media kits from last week,returned with parts missing. An order needs to go out for replacement ofthe parts. A class is coming in at first period and the schedule shows thatclasses will continue until fifth period. Lunchtime work is out of thequestion cafeteria duty. There is a faculty meeting this afternoon so noafter school catch-up. The curriculum team is meeting, and the busylibrary media specialist really wants to prepare some bibliographies for theunits to be studied next, even though not invited to do so. Two projectors141142 Managers and Missionariesneed to be moved from their security location to classrooms for first period,and they need to be checked before going out.The faces appear in the door and see the distressed expression of thelibrary media specialist. Some just want to view magazines, some havereports due, and some are looking for a book that a friend returned. If youwere one of the students, would you ask the library media specialist foranything? If you were the library media specialist, would you want thestudents to ask?James Liesner (1984) in "Learning at Risk: School Library MediaPrograms in an Information World" states a premise school library mediaspecialists should contemplate:Considerable confusion exists regarding the roles library media specialists doordo not perform and the roles they are capable of performing. Roles cannot beperformed and services cannot be used effectively if they are not perceived accu-rately by potential clients or if there is a lack of acceptance of these roles by eitherthe individuals receiving the benefits of them, or the individuals attempting toperform them. Role conflicts of this sort almost inevitably lead to job dissatisfac-tion and ineffective performance, (p. 76)"Capable of performing" is one significant phrase of this excerpt. Mostschool library media specialists have educational backgrounds. They havebeen trained as teachers and, therefore, curriculum theory and instruc-tional design are part of the expertise brought to the field of library media.Skills instruction which by default, lack of acceptance, or ignorance isoften taught in isolation. Library media specialists are not, as a whole,invited or even considered to be a part of the school curriculum team.This brings up another issue in Liesner's excerpt which is "rolescannot be performed accurately by potential clients or if there is a lack ofacceptance of these roles by either the individuals receiving the benefits ofthem or the individuals attempting to perform them." Although thelibrary media center has been called the "hub" of the school, the actualityof this occurring is not universal.The role designation of the specialists is not seen as a support posi-tion. Olson (1984) in "Unassailable Truth? A Look at the Concept ofSchool Library Media Specialists as Teachers," cites "the problem is thatwe have been too literal in our interpretation and demonstration attemptsat curriculum support....such support should be far more direct. Infact. ..the library is a part of the curriculum" (p. 55). He submits that wemust stop thinking about the library as a resource, a service, and startthinking about it as a subject, a course requiring direct instruction toachieve its objectives" (p. 56).The need is evident for library media specialists to accept themselvesand to determine their "place" in the scheme of educating children. Inher-ent in this acceptance is the need to educate teachers and administrators,What Do Schools Need 143not just of the importance of the school media program, but, more signifi-cantly, the role the library media specialist plays in the accomplishment ofthe total program. Only with this sense of being needed and expected toperform can both the school and the library media specialist attain thedesired results.In order for job satisfaction to be a basic part of the work life of thelibrary media specialist, evidence of self-confident professionalism isnecessary, even if forced. This self-confident professionalism is shownwhen library media specialists come out of the center office performingclerical tasks only and enter the mainstream of the school's instructionalprogram.Hambleton (1982) offers another response to role designation as seenthrough an analysis of studies on school library media specialists andprograms by various school-based individuals as well as by media special-ists themselves.In the numerous studies carried out in the past twenty years, a number ofconclusions are common: that the school librarian's perception of that role differssignificantly from that of others in the educational system, that the school libraryseems to play only a marginal role in the total educational program, and that thelow regard for the school librarian militates against a direct involvement in theinstructional program of the school, (pp. 18-20)The impact of the perceived role designation, or lack thereof, of thelibrary media specialist was further cited by Judy Pitts (1984) in "A Cre-ative Survey of Research Concerning Role Expectations of Library MediaSpecialists." Four of these findings are summarized below:1. Today's library media specialists preferred the traditional services ofacquisition and distribution, as opposed to instructional development,evaluation, and utilization.2. Professional media specialists could communicate to teachers theinstruction role they played much better than part-time or nonprofes-sional library media specialists.3. Librarians with more diversified interests exhibited more involvementin the curriculum.4. Librarians with low self-images spent more of their work time in themedia center doing clerical tasks and less work with students (pp.164-69).These findings, coupled with the research excerpt of Hambleton,create the frame of mind necessary to eliminate the negative aspects of whatwe need to be to and for schools and promote planning for the future.Understanding this research may be just the impetus for library mediaspecialists to become more aggressive in their discipline. We must beaggressive in order to promote the field and its necessity, not merelyrelevance, to the educational arena by showing the achievements and144 Managers and Missionariesbenefits to young people. "School library media specialists and children'slibrarians have long had specialized programs to meet special needs; thensome degree of specialization in other areas became the rule" (Hannigan,1984, p. 24). The specialization, more than likely, has been in a contentarea, or in general elementary education/teaching.Just as we promote freedom to read, we have promoted putting mecha-nisms into place to allow personal participation in what children read andview outside the library media center walls. "Technological advancementshave redefined the role of the school media specialist in the 1 980's from thatof a collector of resources and administrator of a facility to that of a teacherand instructional designer" (Hortin, 1985, pp. 20-21).Reading any of the literature enhances the knowledge that schoolmedia specialists, along with being teachers and instructional designers,are setting priorities as participants in the instructional program. We arebringing to the table personal expertise in research skills, teaching metho-dology, curriculum development, etc. We are integrating the standards oflearning and collection development into the overall pattern of classroominstruction, which is as it should be. Consequently, the role of the librarymedia specialist becomes a more integral part of, and reinforces the role of,the classroom teacher.Liesner states that it is time to accept and develop the informationintermediary function that we perform and not worry about whether weare teachers or not. Of course we perform a teaching function, but it shouldbe based on our own discipline and related to the essential intermediaryrole we are playing and need to expand and improve (Liesner, 1984, p. 85).No longer do we need to carry the self-imposed weight of feeling likesecond-class teachers or of considering ourselves as "enrichment for thebasics rather than as the fodder on which learning can thrive; enrichment,like butter on bread, can be scraped off or done without when times gettough" (Loertscher, 1982, pp. 415-21). Loertscher goes on to say: "If librarymedia specialists can take the best programming ideas they have now andintegrate them into the instructional program... they will be demonstratingtheir worth instead of just talking about it" (p. 421).This, then, is what we need to be to schools. The library mediaspecialists, moving toward expansion of services to meet the intellectualneeds of a more technologically advanced society, demanding higher levelskills, and more complex means of integrating those skills into a multifa-ceted curriculum design is, indeed, what we should be accomplishing.It is universally understood that "the keeper of the books" is now the"information keeper/retriever/disseminator." "The older concepts of pas-sive culture repositories or centers for the development of an enjoymentand appreciation for reading good books while identifying very importantfunctions, do not appear to be actively responsive to the entire range ofWhat Do Schools Need 145needs identified as crucial for survival and achievement in an extremelycomplex, information and rapidly changing world" (Liesner, 1984, p. 69).What are school library media specialists doing to secure their effectivenessin the twenty-first century? It is safe to say that if we are professionallyastute, we are:1. soliciting the support of school administrators;2. sponsoring and presenting in-service programs for the teachers withwhom we work;3. producing much needed instructional materials not available throughcommercial sources or too expensive to purchase;4. managing media centers with computer programs designed to providethe much needed time for student and teacher joint efforts;5. training students to use the electronic formats of information retrievalso that a broader base of research is at their fingertips;6. accepting responsibility for and asking to be part of contributing to thecurriculum design effort of the school program;7. providing, for preview purposes, newly produced/ printed materials inan effort to bring teachers and administrators into the selection process;in this manner they gain a commitment to and a responsibility for theimportance of collection development based on the educational philo-sophy of the program;8. acknowledging that we may be our own worst enemies in not activelyseeking and establishing our role in the total scheme of educatingchildren;9. sharing with each other goals and dreams for what can be done andwhat has been done, and, in so doing, learning from, with, and for eachother;10. adamantly stating personnel worth and justifiably taking credit foraccomplishments;11. developing curricula of library skills to be integrated into the subjectcontent areas; thus showing the significant impact of the field on allothers, and broadening the scope of educating youth, and;12. reaching out to other libraries and agencies to supplement needed mate-rials, gain additional support, and make them active participants in thegoal and knowledgeability of the role of the library media specialist.If the twenty-first century is to look bright, library media specialistsmust become not only accountable, but accomplished in their role andwith the impact of it on the education of youth. The confusion over roledesignation has not kept library media specialists from moving forward.What we should be doing is evidenced by the apparent knowledge andunderstanding of what we have been doing, the desire to determine whatthe schools need, and the determination to reach that need, mitigate thenegative effects of what has not been done and cause us to move forward.146 Managers and MissionariesNOTESHambleton, A. (1982, May/June). Static in the educational intercom: Conflict and school li-brarian. Emergency Librarian, 9, 18.Hannigan, J. (1984). Vision to purpose to power: A quest for excellence in the education oflibrary and information science professionals. In Libraries and the learning society:Papers in response to a nation at risk (p. 24). Chicago: American Library Association.Hortin, J. A. (1985, September). The changing role of the school media specialist. TechTrends, 36, 20-21.Liesner, J. W. (1984). Learning at risk: School library media programs in an informationworld. In Libraries and the learning society: Papers in response to a nation at risk.Chicago: American Library Association.Loertscher, D. (1982a, February). School library media centers: The revolutionary past. Wil-son Library Bulletin, 56, 416.Loertscher, D. (1982b, February). The second revolution: A taxonomy for the 1980s. WilsonLibrary Bulletin, 56, 421.Olson, L. W. (1984, Fall). Unassailable truth? A look at the concept of school library mediaspecialists as teachers. School Library Media Quarterly, 12, 55.Pitts, J. M. (1982, Winter). A creative survey of research concerning role expectations of li-brary media specialists. School Library Media Quarterly, 10, 164-169.

What do schools need?

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