More than just a pretty face....
and other observations on school libraries and teacher-librarianship
BCTLA Bookmark, V.17, no. 5, March 1976, pp.9-11. Reprinted: Intermediate Teacher, Vol.17, No.1, fall 1977, pp. 10-11
Buying a School Library
A medium of instruction must be selected on the basis of its potential for implementing a stated objective.
(Gerlach, Vernon S. and Donald E. Ely. Teaching and Media; a Systematic Approach. Prentice-Hall, 1971, p. 281.)
While the quotation above may form a perfect example of educational jargon,
it is presented as a classic concept, especially when considered in relations
to actual practice in the schools. Our schools do not provide materials
in response to need but rather as the result of a strange budget reality.
Most school library budgets are struck not on the basis of 'how much money
is needed to provide the best educational response to an instructional
need' but on the basis of 'how much is left.' School library budgets
are still discussed in terms of 'how much per student,' be it $3 or $4 or
$10. It is still, seemingly, a more important matter to achieve growth
in the budget than quality collections of materials that relate to the programs
operant in the school.
The school library is the only area in the school that has a budget struck,
not in relation to actual need but by some lofty principle based on a 'static-library'
idea that insisted that books are beautiful, necessary and important.
Most public library budgets are also struck on an 'all-the-public-tax-purse-will-bear'
basis - expressed in statistics based on per capita consumption - both of
dollars and of volumes loaned. Public libraries are justified in relating
budgets to population figures, as their charge is to serve the public.
There is clearly a serious question of identity, of purpose and of
value when the school library amplifies and continues this practice.
"School library budgets should be struck as 'so much per teacher' rather
than the usual practice of 'so much per pupil' is a statement I often include
on a response workshop tool I use with teachers and librarians.
I am always amazed, perplexed, by the total lack of response the statement
elicits. Most cannot understand or fathom the point. While I
had hoped that the response would identify the funds with the teachers
and their programs, most reaction has considered the statement irrelevant
and semantically elliptical. Few have ever considered that entire idea
as representing much that is wrong with the 'practice' of the school library
in modern education.
If we embrace the concept espoused by Gerlach and Ely at the head of this
piece, school library budgets and the purchases resulting from them will
become directly related to ongoing questions of curriculum support (instructional
support). Budgets would then be struck, not on the basis of how much
is left, but on how much is needed. The library would become the center
for the resources needed in the school. Purchasing would, of necessity,
involve detailed planning, evaluating and examining instead of a wholesale
scrambling to spend the funds allocated en bloc before the 'time'.
And perhaps purchasing departments of school boards would learn that the
instructional materials purchased by a school carried academic overtones
rather than innumerable problems.
The 'left' school library budget can indicate fundamental dilemmas for school
librarians and educators who want to see that reality. Few school librarians
are even consulted about budget needs. Fewer are involved indetermining
the 'actual' media requirements of their schools. It is a grim irony
that, while school librarians are given most of the 'loose money' available
to select new material in relations to curriculum needs or the time to determine
those needs. As a result, the money becomes the incredible objective
of the exercise. The 'left' school library budget indicates that 'buy-it-because-you-need-it'
concepts are ignored in favour of a 'buy-it-because-you-have-the-money-to-buy-it'
reality. This, coupled with the sheer idiocy of the purchasing departments'
concepts of efficiency and discount, lead us on annual purchasing sprees
form recommended jobbers. (I learned recently that one large
American jobber urges purchasing agents to consolidate orders for a once-a-year
service!) The money becomes the object - the goods, the inconvenient
problems!
Buying a library should be much like buying food fro a family on a budget.
Everything is acquired to answer specific needs. Quantity buying is
sometimes important if price and quality prevail - and if the commodity will
keep until it is needed. Some 'sweet' nonessentials are obtained on
impulse, but, on the whole, the process is rational, deliberate and responsive,
based on sound nutritional practices.
Buying a library in response to needs is hard work. It demands that
librarians discover what it is they are doing in schools by discovering and
demanding a place in the instructional process within them. It assumes
that purchases will be made not only in relation to the content and literacy
level of the curriculum, but in relation to what they have in hand, in the
community and in the region. Program buying in response to need does
not mean that the librarians will not select and evaluate materials on their
own - but that they will consider curriculum needs in determining priorities
and necessities. Most critical will be the need to involve the teacher
in the whole selection process continuously.
Many teachers still see the school library as a nice place for kids.
They fail to see the materials the library should buy as having direct instructional
import in their programs. It is those teachers who still create impossible
assignments for materials that do not exist (or exist in one paragraph in
an encyclopedia). It is these teachers who create nightmare discipline
problems for the librarian when the children discover a 'media gap' between
the realities of the library and the demand of the assignment. The
result is futility, boredom and restlessness. Those teachers will never
come to understand the functions of the modern school library until they
can feel some responsibility (and need) for it. Surely the expenditure
of monies and the acquisition of materials necessary for a program by a teacher
- with the librarian, will do much to break down that media gap. The
librarian can ask 'what books do you want?' and receive the usual crop of
current suggestions based on the latest in-service newsletter or periodical.
The question must be rephrased and reconsidered and approached through time
until it re-emerges 'what materials are essential to your program?'
The librarian must determine the needs of each teacher's program and relate
the present collection and available materials to the next budget.
Then the process becomes selection rather than acquisition. The word
selectivity implies comparison, critical judiciousness and need. Once
teachers can relate their programs to the resources they need, the librarian
can become an active partner in the educational process.
As long as the school library budget is struck on the basis of what is 'left'
rather that what is needed, the entire potential of the modern school library
for meeting the individual learning needs of children is in jeopardy.
Donald Hamilton