One could say that comparing the salaries of public, academic, school and special librarians is like comparing football with hockey. A full-time school librarian works ten months out of a year. A special librarian can be anyone from a Ph.D. in a Fortune 500 company to a law librarian in a small town firm. In […]
A consistent finding inresearch about school libraries is the importance of cooperation and collaboration between “librarians”[note]* In these statistics, the National Center for Education Statistics appears to be using the term “librarian” loosely. Almost certainly, individuals counted for this position were not necessarily educated or credentialed as school library media specialists. Had that been the […]
According to Nua Internet Surveys, a recent study by Quality Education Data (QED) found that 39 percent of U.S. schools that provide students access to the Internet use filtering software and 80 percent have some kind of acceptable use policy in force. Similar data on school library media programs in Colorado for 1998 indicate that […]
If you are a young adult librarian, have you ever considered how many of your clients may be looking to you for book purchasing recommendations? According to a recent Publishers Weekly poll of 12- to 17-year-olds nationwide… Librarians rank fourth after friends, teachers, and parents as the people they most credit with influencing their book-buying […]
Relationships between public libraries and school library media centers (LMCs) are somewhat difficult to observe and assess. Consequently, distinguishing between the effects of public libraries and school LMCs on children’s performance in school is problematic. Several recent issues of FAST FACTS have presented evidence of the contributions of LMCs alone and their collaboration with public […]
During the 1997-98 school year, access to the World Wide Web via library media centers in Colorado public schools was widespread, though there were important differences by school level and enrollment range. In the state’s high schools, web access was almost universal. Virtually all LMCs provided web access to library media staff, teachers, and other […]
In 1997, Colorado fourth graders were the state’s first public schoolchildren to be tested on reading via the Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP). Average test scores for a stratified and weighted random sample of 74 (8%) of Colorado’s 908 elementary schools were combined with data about their library media programs to answer the following questions: […]
The National Center for Education Statistics recently released the long-awaited results of its latest survey on school library media programs, School Library Media Centers: 1993-94 (NCES 98-282). Though access to the resulting data file is severely restricted, some of the report’s summary tables by state permit some rudimentary impact assessment when combined with average state […]
In Spring 1998, 133 (85 percent) of the 156 public, academic, and special libraries participating in the CLC program responded to an evaluation survey. By sector, the response rates were: public, 99 out of 112 or 88 percent; academic, 23 out of 29 or 79 percent; and special, 11 out of 15 or 73 percent. […]
One of the few categories in which the North Central Association specifies quantitative requirements for middle and secondary schools is staffing. Among the categories of staffing included is library media. The requirements are, by almost any definition, extremely modest: a half-time library media specialist in schools with enrollments of 1,000 and less, and a full-time […]
