Week 2: The roles of the school library media specialist

Oberg, D. (2009). Libraries in schools: essential contexts for studying organizational change and culture. Library Trends, 58(1), 9-25.

"The school library can and must be a venue for change because its
core mandate is improving teaching and learning within the school, for
all members of the school community, for teachers and administrators as
well as for students."

As the state and national emphasis on standardized testing continues to increase, the academic orientation of schools will become more and more of a priority. Schools will need to continue to embrace programs that are specifically designed to improve student achievement, and that have at their heart the consistent improvement of initiatives that foster student development in literacy. As such, the role of the school media center will remain vital, and classroom teachers will need to regularly find new ways to tap into the resources the library makes available. According to Oberg (2009) the best way for teachers to accomplish this is to collaborate with the school media specialist; that collaboration is best facilitated in a school that emphasizes and integrate school library program.

When schools implement the integrated school library program model the principal, teachers and school media specialists are all effected in numerous ways. The media specialist specifically finds his/her roles quickly redefined. Oberg (2009) posits that the conservative and isolationist mindset that is so prominent in public schools can often hider the collaborative process, but that it falls to the teacher librarian to find ways to break down the established barriers to collaboration and create productive relationships that serve to further student learning. Oberg (2009) further states that while the roles of the teacher librarian in a collaborative environment are well publicized in professional literature and have been, in theory, widely accepted by the library community, many teacher librarians struggle to assume the appropriate stance in a collaboration and do not fully execute the role of a teacher partner. As a result, librarians are still often viewed as support personnel, in spite of their professional status, and consequently the necessary collaborative relationships soon break down.

Oberg (2009) concludes that teacher librarians must function as change agents within their school environments. They must help to redefine the teaching staff's understanding of the role of the media specialist and they must work in conjunction with the building administrator to establish a more collaborative environment. These changes can most readily be attained through careful reflection, classroom observations, and frequent professional conversations.

Turner, P. & Riedling, A. (2003) Helping teachers teach: a school library media specialist's role. Libraries Unlimited, Wesport, CT.

"As teachers go through the process of building instruction from the ground up, they require much more assistance than if they are simply following a textbook selected by someone else."

As public schooling has changed over the past decades, the manner of instruction in the classroom and of the theoretical principals that define best practices has, for the most part, remained uniform. Of course there are local variations, but one would be hard-pressed to find a school that did not emphasize data-driven decisions or high-stakes testing more today than it did 20 years ago. While the changes in education have been broadly applied, there is great inconsistency in the nature of the function of school libraries. The consensus across the profession is that school media specialists should function as teacher-partners and should be leaders in the school, but those functions are not always met. The publication of Information Power helped to define the roles of media specialists and has been a catalyst in the more uniform implementation of the best practices for school media specialists.

In short, Turner and Riedling (2003) state that there are three main functions that school media specialists should strive to fulfill: promote literacy in children and young adults, provide information skills, and help teachers as they design and implement their lesson plans. The third role is perhaps the most significant, as teachers are faced with such complexity in the instructional process. School media specialists can serve as content evaluators, technical consultants, and idea generators. A collaboration of that nature would help to ensure that the end product that the teacher delivers to the students is designed to maximize learning and engagement.

The authors admit that the library media specialist is not yet fully integrated into the instructional process and that there is need for continued growth in both collaboration and instructional planning. However, each small gain serves the greater purpose of steadily improving student achievement.

Website evaluation
Leslie Preddy: reading, thinking, learning, living...

This site serves as a clearinghouse for all things school library related. The site, while less that pleasing aesthetically, is a treasure trove of information for the school media specialist. Especially useful are the myriad links and the emphasis on collaboration and best practices.