Della Curtis

You won't find another media center in Baltimore County like the one at New Town High School—it was created with the help of a dozen media specialists who spent three years working on it from scratch. When the school opens its doors in August, students will walk into a state-of-the-art library equipped with more than 50 computers, a television studio, a multimedia production lab, and an advanced automation system, not to mention a customized 18,000-volume collection and video distribution system to disseminate video programming to classrooms. The collaborative effort behind this sprawling library is certainly a promising sign of things to come: media specialists will soon be expected to play a much larger instructional role than ever before.

The person responsible for securing the county's wide support for school librarians is Della Curtis, coordinator of Baltimore County Public Schools' office of library information services. When Curtis landed this job serving the nation's 24th largest school district in 1997, her first priority was to make librarians the key person in each school. "[Librarians] are artists who craft dynamic instructional programs in collaboration with classroom teachers," she says. "They use the tools of the trade to develop exciting, meaningful, and supportive library collections."

One of the most significant achievements in her career emerged six years ago after a quick bite at a local McDonald's with Paul Jones, chair of the Department of Reading, Special Education, and Instructional Technology at nearby Towson University, Curtis's alma mater. The two soon decided to launch School Library Media Cohort, a program designed to alleviate Maryland's shortage of certified library media specialists by recruiting outstanding classroom teachers.

At the launch of the cohort program, 33 elementary and middle schools in Baltimore County were without school libraries. Now all 165 schools have a certified media specialist, or a staff member who is pursuing certification, and the program has produced a healthy surplus of qualified school librarians to replace retirees or fill other vacancies. Cohort recruits—almost all of who are Baltimore County Public School teachers—must take 36 hours of coursework over three years to obtain a master's degree in instructional technology. While the degree is not in library science, an emphasis is placed on school library media instruction, information literacy, and technology—key ingredients for developing a successful media specialist.

As an adjunct instructor teaching technology courses at Towson, Curtis worked closely with university officials to plan the coursework, making sure to include classes on Web-based instruction in education, administration of school library media programs, collection development, and advanced reference. She also helped make the program affordable; each course costs about $100 plus textbooks, thanks to a tuition-reduction plan by Towson University and tuition reimbursement offered by the school district. In the last few years, the cohort program has expanded to other counties and the University of Maryland.

Curtis knew that New Town High School—Baltimore County's first new high school in 25 years—would be different from the start. Its design is airy and inviting. The library has glass-window walls for better supervision, and natural sunlight floods the room through a soaring cathedral glass ceiling. The school's curriculum is also custom-made. New Town was designed to be a comprehensive high school that would offer a select group of career and advanced technology courses to prepare students for college. So Curtis knew she wanted to try something new. She got approval to bring the latest batch of cohort recruits, including Fran Glick, New Town High School's first incoming media specialist, together with the Baltimore County school district's curriculum office to build a high-tech school library. The team handpicked all books, reference materials, and software. And a design team placed a TV studio and multimedia lab adjacent to the library to promote collaboration with teachers and support staff. The media center was also deliberately placed one floor above the bustling cafeteria, where library traffic would be optimized.

Unlike a standard high school collection, all of New Town's library materials have been specifically customized to meet the needs of its incoming 1,300 students, who will major in subjects such as business and information management, communications, and technology. "This concept of pooling together a team of individuals is an innovative approach to establishing a collection in Baltimore County," says Arthur Stritch, supervisor of the office of library information services and Curtis's colleague. "Everything on those shelves has a direct connection to the curriculum and the students it serves."

The fruits of Curtis's years of labor have resulted in a model, districtwide library program (for a list of programs, see www.bcpl.net/~dcurtis/libraryfacts). And research has proved to be her best defense. In 2000, Curtis and her peers showed the school board how the library materials budget had shrunk to $1.77 from $10.80 per student over 10 years and that book collections in all 165 schools were shamelessly outdated—only 12.4 percent of high school collections and 22.3 percent of middle school collections were copyrighted in the 1990s, well below the standards set by the Maryland State Department of Education. Curtis quickly secured $10.5 million from the school board to buy books for middle and high schools, and the funding continued in 2001 with $25 earmarked per pupil (see "A Recipe For Success ," May 2000, p. 16).

"Della's never satisfied with the status quo," explains Doris Glotzbach, a retired supervisor in the office of library instructional services, who along with Curtis co-authored the school district's Telecommunications Board Policies for safe Internet practices in 1996.

Last year, Curtis saved the district time and money by launching an electronic ordering system to manage how textbooks are ordered and updated (see "Baltimore County Automates Its Textbooks ," November 2002, p. 26). Grolier, World Book, and Bound to Stay Bound now use the online ordering system nationwide.

Curtis's plate is still full, as she travels from state to state to promote the importance of school librarians—not just in Baltimore but nationwide. Librarians can make things happen if they are advocates for each other, she says, and through perseverance. "If you want to be seen as a leader in information technologies, information literacy, reading initiatives, then just do it," Curtis advises. "Find the need and fill it."