Letter to the First Lady

Dear Mrs. Bush:

I would like to commend you on your strong commitment to librarianship, highlighted by your decision to host a White House conference this month on the importance of school libraries. As a former school librarian, you possess firsthand knowledge of the challenges facing library media specialists in their quest to be recognized among education's frontline players.

Although you're focusing on school libraries, I also want to bring to your attention the critical role that public librarians play in early learning and reading readiness initiatives and training programs at preschool centers nationwide. These efforts are at the heart of President Bush's "Early Reading First" program.

Extending your invitation to 175 principals and superintendents from across the nation is an exceptional idea: it is they who need to be told the hard facts about how librarians impact student learning. With such an influential audience of K–12 educators, it is regrettable that at least one or two dynamic school librarians are not among the esteemed collection of speakers.

That said, I'd like to tell you about an emerging research effort, a Rosetta stone of sorts, that will reveal the incontrovertible link between school librarians and better performing students. I applaud the efforts of one of your presenters, Keith Lance, in conducting statewide studies that correlate strong school libraries with student performance. Yet librarians still need a mechanism that enables them to dispassionately report to their administrators how they are making a difference with students in their own schools . Now we will have the opportunity not only to connect good school libraries and rising student test scores, but to show how school librarians positively influence learning on a local level, in their own educational milieu.

This unprecedented research will yield findings that have less to do with passion, P.R., or advocacy and everything to do with bottom line results. The commitment to results, or evidence-based practice, lies at the heart of a promising new research project launched by professors Ross Todd and Carol Kuhlthau of Rutgers University's School of Library and Information Science. Perhaps you came across Kuhlthau's work during your time as a student at the University of Texas's library school. Kuhlthau, widely recognized in the field for her contributions to the information search process and the information-age school, has written four books, most notably Seeking Meaning: A Process Approach to Library and Information Services (Greenwood Press, 1993).

Todd, a native of Australia who made his mark internationally as a preeminent researcher of adolescent information seeking and use, has traveled more than halfway across the globe to form a dynamic partnership with Kuhlthau at Rutgers. Their collaboration has yielded the Center for International Scholarship in School Libraries (CISSL). CISSL is launching several initiatives around its core mission: to develop a transportable model enabling the library media specialist to articulate exactly how the efforts of the school library staff formidably impact student achievement.

Mrs. Bush, without the least bit of hyperbole, I can assure you that the CISSL research will have a profound effect on elevating the school librarian's standing in education. I hope you and your staff will join me in publicizing the results of this promising new research initiative. I look forward to your conference as the purposeful first step of a sustained national strategy to affirm school librarians' seminal role as educators.

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