Study Motivates Florida Librarians
Media specialists are urged to improve at least one area of the school library
By Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 4/1/2004
Close to 30 percent of librarians said they would focus on weeding and collection development, while 17 percent said they would increase collaboration with teachers. At the same time, 14 percent vowed to launch schoolwide information-literacy programs, and 13 percent promised to learn more about reading strategies.
Why are so many media specialists following Baumbach's lead? Because she's the author of Florida's equivalent of Keith Curry Lance's Colorado study, which demonstrates a direct link between a strong library media program and student achievement. But Baumbach's groundbreaking study, "Making the Grade" (www.sunlink.ucf.edu/makingthegrade), goes even further, asserting that high-performing elementary schools are more likely to have a certified media specialist, an existing information-literacy curriculum, a school Web site, significantly larger book collections, and more magazine subscriptions than low-performing schools. The survey also shows that media specialists in top elementary schools spend more time collaborating with teachers and are more involved in reading activities.
Many Florida librarians and educators are so impressed with Baumbach's findings that they can't sit still. Joanne Seale, a media specialist at Apollo Elementary School in Brevard County, recently weeded her biography collection and saw a 27 percent jump in the number of biographies being checked out compared to last year.
Sharon Reynolds, another media specialist in Brevard, is presenting the study's findings to school and district administrators, along with an action plan for ways they can all work together to support library media programs. Even Nancy Teger in the Florida Department of Education's Office of School Library Media Services is using the results to build alliances among administrators, teachers, and school librarians.
The study comes at a perfect time. Although Florida's school library budgets and collections are around the national average, its media centers have fewer books, spend less per student, and have far too many old books, says Baumbach, who is also director of the Florida SUNLINK project, a shared database of the state's 2,700 K–12 schools. "By reading the report, librarians can see things that they don't do and should do better," Baumbach adds. "And little by little they can make a change."
The main purpose of the study, which surveyed 60 percent of Florida's K–12 schools, was to examine the status of the state's library media resources. Baumbach decided to seize this opportunity by asking librarians to commit to an area of improvement. The hope is that other states will do the same.
