SLJ Catches up with Sen. Jack Reed about Loan Forgiveness for Librarians

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Joan Oleck -- School Library Journal, 4/25/2007

Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) sure likes librarians. You probably remember him as the guy who got federal funding for media centers through the 2001 Improving Literacy Through School Libraries program.

Now he's back—this time to attract more librarians to low-income areas by proposing legislation that would forgive their student loans. Bills have already been introduced in both houses of Congress, and passage could come as early as this year.

SLJ caught up with Reed, sponsor of the LIBRARIAN Act, to talk about his new legislation.

What went wrong in 2005 when you and Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA) first tried to pass a similar bill as part of the Higher Education Act Amendments?

We were able to get it into the Senate version; our problem was reconciling the Senate and the House versions. It couldn't be accomplished with the Republican Congress.

I heard passage is more likely this time because you have bipartisan support.

We hope so. Also, I think what's changed is the priorities of Congress. You've got a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate that really want to enhance access to higher education, provide better support for professionals in the field. And that's a much different emphasis than in the preceding Congress. Individual Republicans, certainly, seemed to be committed to these issues, but it never seemed to be a high priority of the Republican leadership, either in the House or the Senate.

Does it help that you're a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that will consider this bill?

Oh, absolutely. The other factor is staff participation. Our staff is involved directly in the discussions about the committee legislation since I'm sitting on the committee and they're on the staff.

Why are you the librarians' best friend?

Librarians play a very crucial role in education. School librarians are undervalued in terms of their contribution to education. If you look at the data over many, many years, those schools that have good libraries and skilled librarians tend to do very, very well, regardless of economic income measures, regardless of the background of students…The whole notion is to develop a real passion for lifelong learning, reading, using the library. If you can do that, then you've truly educated somebody.

If there anything else on your plate related to libraries?

We've always been trying to push for more resources, in legislation that I've gotten through [Improving Literacy Through School Libraries] that actually helps with library materials. We've had authorizations in previous elementary and secondary education bills that would provide additional resources for acquiring books and library materials. That's something I think we have to do more of.

So you want 'updated' librarians to go with the updated materials?

What's at the heart of our program for loan forgiveness for librarians is that nowadays, given the media and complexity of issues, just having books on the shelves, I don't think, is as important as having very well-trained librarians. Because it's a world where youngsters get access to so much stuff on the Internet. There has to be somebody to give them an idea of how to make judgments about the quality and accuracy of the material. And that's something librarians are well suited for.