More Services, More Staff, More Money: A Portrait of a High-Service Library Media Center
Drs. M. L. Miller & M. L. Shontz -- School Library Journal, 5/1/1998
If you're a school library media specialist who manages a large number of services for students and teachers, you probably also have more money for resources compared to your colleagues who manage fewer services. Regardless of your funding sources -- local, federal, gifts, or fundraising -- school library media programs in what we define as "high-service schools" have better materials budgets. How much better? Well, these high-service schools spend, on a national average, $8.80 more per student on resources than do non-high-service schools.
High-service schools are those in which the library media specialist (LMS) regularly provides at least 17 of 22 identified services (see Table 3). We gathered the services -- which encompass traditional services such as interlibrary loan to those related to technology -- from national, state, and regional standards, plus research studies and practice. Data for this report, the second in a series of three, are based on responses to a 1996 School Library Journal biennial survey on resource expenditures. For more information, see "The Story Behind the Report."
This article looks at how 141 of these high-performing library media centers (LMCs) function. We found that, besides having better budgets, the library media specialists in these libraries spent significantly more time working with teachers and met frequently with their principals.
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To no one's surprise, this study shows that all library media specialists -- in high-service or non-high-service schools -- spend more time planning with classroom teachers informally than formally (Table 6).
Yet fully implementing teacher/librarian collaboration involves much more than instructional planning. Barbara Stripling and Marilyn L. Miller, both former presidents of the American Association of School Librarians, have written that "collaboration required for school change goes much beyond mere compliance or cooperation."1
The draft of the new edition of Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning, which is expected this summer, defines collaboration as shared:
1. Stripling, Barbara and Marilyn L. Miller. "Library Power" unpublished manuscript on the DeWitt Wallace-Readers Digest Library Power project, submitted as an appendix for Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning (ALA, summer 1998). |
You're more likely to work in a high-service school if you:
Work in a high school
(Table 1) Thirty-seven percent of high-service schools are high schools; 31 percent are elementary.
Work in the South
(Table 2) Forty-eight percent of high-service schools are in the South. The next largest concentration -- 23 percent -- are in the North Central region.
Work in a mid-size school
Although not shown in a chart, mid-size schools edge out other schools when it comes to the amount of services offered: 33 percent of high service schools have an enrollment of 500 to 699 students. Only six percent of schools with more than 2,000 students and four percent of those with fewer than 300 report having high-service programs.
People, Money, Materials
We found differences between the two categories of schools -- high-service and non-high-service -- in all three basic library media center elements: staffing, funding, and resources. Here's what set high-service schools apart:
An edge in LMS experience
While all schools that participated in this report have, on average, at least one LMS, school librarians in high-service schools had 16 years of media center experience compared to 11 years for LMSs in non-high-service media centers.
Full-time paid clerks
The most noticeable difference in staffing between the two categories of programs is support staff. Although not shown in a table, twice as many high-service LMSs have full-time paid clerks. Non-high-service schools make more use of adult volunteers.
More Money
A comparison of materials expenditures from all funding sources in both high- and non-high-service schools reveals significant differences in spending between the two categories. High-service schools across the country spend more per pupil on all materials than do their counterparts.
That disparity shows up most clearly in the North Central region (Table 4). High-service schools spent $18,578 on materials during the 1995-96 school year -- the highest expenditure nationally -- while their non-high-service counterparts in the region spent $10,450.
When you look at local expenditures only, however, the gaps are less apparent. Book collections in Northeastern high-service schools are slightly larger than collections in non-high-service schools. In other regions, the difference in the size of book collections between categories is hardly noticeable.
Nor is there a pattern for non-print resource spending, with the exception of video collections: they are larger in all high-service schools than in non-high service schools. We see no evidence that high-service LMCs are spending vastly more on electronic resources than their colleagues in non-high-service programs.
Time with Teachers
Library media specialists have talked about working with classroom teachers for the past 50 years. Although more needs to be done if we expect students to be able to use information and think about it critically, LMSs are making strides with collaboration (see "Is Informal Planning Enough?").
Our data reveals that:
More high-service LMSs plan instruction with teachers.
Nearly all LMSs -- 91 percent -- in high-service schools plan instruction regularly with teachers. An impressive 64 percent noted that they planned with more than 30 percent of their teachers and another quarter of librarians reported working with more than 70 percent.
Those numbers drop when studying non-high-service schools. Sixty-seven percent of LMSs in these schools plan regularly with teachers; 42 percent worked with more than 30 percent, and 16 percent collaborated with more than 70 percent.
High-service LMSs spend double the amount of time planning with teachers.
Librarians in these schools spend 5.5 hours per week in both formal and informal planning with teachers, compared to non-high-service LMSs, who spend 2.76 hours per week with teachers.
Virtually all high-service LMSs use flexible scheduling.
Ninety-six percent of these LMSs use flexible or combined flexible/fixed schedules, compared to 75 percent of LMSs in non-high-service schools.
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"More Services, More Staff, More Money" is part two of a three-part series of statistical research articles that we create for School Library Journal. Part one, "Small Change: Expenditures for Resources in School Library Media Centers FY 1995-96" appeared in the October 1997 SLJ (pages 28-37). Part three, a report on technology in library media centers, will appear in the October 1998 SLJ.
Our methodology is explained on page 36 of the October 1997 article. Readers should note that we typically use median figures because the mean is susceptible to skewing by a few schools that report very high numbers. Because of this, the median is a more desirable measure of central tendency.
All data related to planning and scheduling were statistically significant at the .05 levels, on either the Chi Square or the ANOVA tests. -- Drs. Marilyn L. Miller and Marilyn L. Shontz |
Principals & Perks
In 1993, Daniel Callison, a professor at Indiana University's School of Library and Information Science, surveyed library media specialists in Indiana and found a significant relationship between the frequency of conversations between the LMS and the principal and the average dollar amount, per pupil, invested from the general fund in LMC books.
"In schools where the LMS reported very frequent discussions (on a weekly or monthly basis), there were greater average per-pupil investments, up to 60 percent higher in elementary schools, 15 percent higher in junior high schools, and 20 percent in senior high schools," reported Callison in "Restructuring Pre-Service Education," in School Library Media Annual (Libraries Unlimited, 1995).
Callison also noted in the same publication that the principal's attitude toward the role of the LMS affects whether the latter is involved in cooperative planning. That attitude, Callison found, also determines whether a principal clearly communicates to classroom teachers to what degree they should participate in cooperative planning and teaching with LMSs, as well as in flexible scheduling. Our study has too few schools reporting (Table 9) to support definitively Callison's findings on budgets. However, our data shows a strong link between LMS/principal communication, the number of LMC services, and materials expenditures:
More communication equals larger book collections
Library media centers with LMSs who regularly communicate with their principals have larger book collections than LMSs who remain more distant from them. They also spend more on all materials per pupil than those school librarians who are in less frequent contact.
More communication equals larger nonprint collections
Highly communicative LMSs have larger video, software, and CD-ROM collections than do their colleagues. In the case of software and CD-ROMs, the collections are twice the size of libraries in high-service schools but have LMSs who are less active communicators. It is encouraging to note that 47 percent of high-service LMSs have weekly or monthly meetings with their principals, compared to 25 percent of their less communicative colleagues (see Table 7 for their communication techniques).
Generally speaking, active communicators are moving forward faster than their colleagues who don't take the time to communicate or to identify the skills they need to develop in order to be better communicators.
Spread the Word
Why do some library media centers flourish, while others offer adequate, but undistinguished service? To be fair, there are a host of reasons. The LMS's level of education, as well as his or her philosophy and commitment, are crucial in determining the kind of program offered. But so are the quantity of LMC staff, the ratio of students to staff, and the growing demands on staff for computer technical support.
If your long-range goal is to increase services, but you work under less-than-ideal conditions, there is hope. Research tells us that communication with colleagues is a key element in spreading the word about the value of a high-quality library media program. After all, it is your colleagues who help forge the curriculum, develop budgets, and design learning activities. If you don't make your case, the money will go elsewhere.
Marilyn L. Miller is Professor Emeritus and former Chair of the Department of Library and Information Studies at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.
Marilyn L. Shontz is Associate Professor in the same department.
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