Ready… Aim… Aim Again

"Education presents multiple targets," one of my UCLA mentors used to say, "and it doesn't matter if you hit the bull's-eye if you're aiming at the wrong one." I'm reminded of that saying every time I look at school library advocacy efforts. Ironically, the target we're hitting best is our selves. Our finest research and advocacy materials often appear exclusively in library journals, where only library media specialists will see them.

But librarians' advocacy efforts also need to reach their fellow educators. Library-related research articles in nonlibrarian journals are increasing. For example, Ken Haycock, a professor and the director of the School of Library Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, guest edited a 1999 edition of the National Association of Secondary School Principals Bulletin. But how many articles demonstrating the value of school libraries have appeared in the Bulletin since then or, for that matter, have appeared in any other teacher or administrator publication? Very few, if any.

As good as it is for librarians to make concerted efforts to capture administrative support, there's a long-run problem in just targeting practicing educators: they resign, transfer, get promoted, get fired, and retire—sometimes in large numbers, all at once. For example, many of the teachers and principals you've taught to appreciate school libraries will retire within the next decade.

That brings us to a target that librarians have long neglected—the only one that can ultimately make a lasting difference in educators' perceptions of the value of librarians: college and university professors like me. We're the people who prepare new teachers and administrators, shaping their initial professional values in the process. Unfortunately, most of us aren't teaching them to understand that well-funded school libraries staffed by trained media specialists make a significant difference in student achievement, help teachers do their jobs better, and even enhance administrative practices.

It won't be easy to hit the bull's-eye with this audience. Higher-education faculty are a diverse group—and to influence them, school librarians will need to recruit university-level library media researchers and get help from state and national library associations.

Library science and library media professors must be encouraged to publish their findings in teacher education and administrative research journals. University professors deal in research evidence; it's their stock in trade. But in order to understand the importance of school libraries and librarians, they need to see the research that is currently being published solely in library research journals.

At the same time, library associations need to develop new advocacy strategies, targeting teacher education, administrative, and accrediting associations, and state departments of education. Professors will respond if these organizations, which are instrumental in developing professional training guidelines, state standards, and accreditation measures, require higher-education programs to include library training. Similarly, if state education departments require certification seekers to demonstrate an awareness of the library media center's value before they'll issue professional credentials, and if accreditation organizations require a certain level of library awareness in every school, university professors will be forced to incorporate library media awareness into their curriculum.

Want to give it a try? If you're a school librarian, the best thing you can do is to press your professional associations to develop a higher-education accreditation organization and a state education department advocacy program. Nothing will happen quickly—but nothing will happen at all if school librarians don't take the first shot.