Study to Show Impact of School Libraries

Staff -- School Library Journal, 7/1/1999

The American Association of School Librarians is testing a survey that would give media specialists something they now lack: up-to-date statistics measuring their library's performance and how it stacks up against others.

Thanks to a $5,000 planning grant from World Book, the association hopes to launch a 10-state pilot in the fall of 2000, says June Kahler Berry, chair of AASL's research committee. The surveys will be done online, so any librarian with computer access can view the results.

AASL is still discussing how to develop the project over the next few years, but the point now is to show school librarians there's a relatively easy, inexpensive way to collect data, says David Loertscher, professor at the School of Library and Information Science at San Jose (CA) State University.

Librarians say "'we make a difference,' but they don't have any data to prove it," Loertscher says. "This is an effort to help them develop the instrumentation to start measuring their work."