Editorial-The Mission and Responsibility of SLJ

Youth services in school and public libraries, properly understood, are among the fundamental building blocks of civilization. No sane, caring, rational person could deny this point. Yet school libraries are not adequately supported, and the librarians in school and public library service to children are hardly recognized for their vital professional contributions.

Too often, curriculum demands placed on school libraries have not been met with the resources to carry them out. Too often, school libraries are asked to develop collections to satisfy current educational and political fashions, leaving libraries ill-equipped to meet the fundamental need of nurturing a lifelong habit of reading.

The current politics of education reform dictate smaller class size to improve the ratio of students to teachers. One side effect has been the conversion of some school library space to classrooms. Testing has become the sole criterion to measure reading ability. The impact of these policies and others has been to develop an antagonism between youth services librarians, who want to create an ongoing interest in reading among children, and administrators, who must meet the demands of these new measures. Testing hardly develops a lasting love of reading, the very subject it purports to measure.

Educational policies are easy prey to the oversimplification of complex issues into sound bites for politicians. A crucial job of School Library Journal is to prevent this oversimplification of the issues. Like Plato's dialogues, our discourse in these pages must replace the "truths that serve the moment" with those of more enduring, even eternal value. Youth services in school and public libraries are in the hands of professionals whose voice must be heard over the din of current conventional educational wisdom.

SLJ, the only independent, complete, general editorial publication serving its professions and markets, provides a full range of services to working professionals in library service to children. But the magazine's mission goes far beyond that. We are a central nexus in the communication of ideas and information for librarians serving children and vital to the exchanges between librarians and the business enterprises that serve them.

Like library associations, SLJ has lobbied on behalf of librarians and libraries, both as a profession and a market. School and public libraries are as much impacted by economic and media interests as they are by politics and government. In the U.S., government was designed to reflect the interest of constituent groups and special interests. Government policy bends and shifts with the ebb and flow of the influence of these interest groups.

Therefore, it is imperative that our publication works hard to understand, amplify, and bring to bear, the interests of librarians and those they serve to influence this process of government. How do we carry out that mission? We bring librarians to meet with publishers. We struggle to give the profession equal status in the marketplace with other stakeholders. That work has made librarians now welcome at Book Expo America, once the private province of publishers and booksellers. Firms like Amazon and Barnes & Noble have an awakening interest in libraries. We have fought hard to show the economic movers and shakers the importance of the health and growth of libraries and the professional work of librarians. Our annual awards to librarians and libraries have meant victories in budgets and bond issue elections.

It is the responsibility of School Library Journal to provide the arguments, tools, and information to grow the resources and influence of our readers and to provide editorial content that enhances their working lives. The editorial function of SLJ is, first and foremost, to meet the professional requirements of school and public librarians serving children and to project the best interest of the profession and those it serves to shape government and industry. We will continue to be a practical, relevant publication, a publication that understands that its responsibilities are far greater than to increase the proverbial corporate bottom line.

On a personal note, for the past 13 years I have insisted that the magazines reporting to me be editorially consequential. If we fail editorially, we fail as a business. For a large part of my career I was a teacher, concerned with making some contribution to a more just world. It is a happy situation when one can be paid for contributing to the public good. Like librarians, I am a professional person required to make decisions. I make these decisions in the best interests of our readers and the desire to be responsible to the needs of the profession and market we serve. For longtime readers of SLJ, that point should be self-evident.