Media specialists in short supply

By Anne Kibbler
Herald-Times In School Reporter
February 11, 2003

Permission to repost this article was granted by the Herald-Times Online version, located at HoosierTimes.com

With more than a quarter of the nation's 125,000 librarians expected to reach retirement age by 2009, libraries are worrying about recruiting the next generation of professionals.

Schools are already feeling the effects of the dwindling supply of school media specialists, the term now used to describe school librarians.

"In Indianapolis schools, unless the bottom falls out of the budget completely, we will have 12 to 20 openings in Marion County in the coming year," said Daniel Callison, director of school library media education at Indiana University's School of Library and Information Science.

"With our program, we will just about meet the demand, but we will still fall short across the rest of the state because of retirements."

Schools trying to fill media specialist positions are running into two problems--the shortage of applicants and the lack of money to fund positions.

In January, the Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corp. cut $11 million from its budget. On the chopping block: school nurses, instrumental music instructors and school media specialists.

Twenty-two K-8 media specialists in the district have been replaced by part-time clerical aides whose job is to check out and shelve books.

Sharon Roualet, school media specialist at Edgewood High School, said she and her colleagues are receiving mixed messages from the state.

"You've got all this data that says kids with school libraries do well, and on the other hand, it's all expendable," she said.

Callison said studies in several states show a correlation between the presence of a school library media center and strong student achievement.

"Where school media specialists are integrated as teachers of information literacy, basic reading scores go up, reading comprehension goes up and writing scores go up," he said.

Several years ago, California cut all its elementary school media specialists. "The bottom fell out of reading performance in elementary schools across the state," Callison said. "Schools need to think for a long time about what they are doing away with."

Callison said the current librarian shortage and drive to attract new people to the profession presents a unique opportunity for schools to scale up and retool their media centers.

"For the economy to close the door on us would mean another 20 years for that opportunity to swing back around again," he said.

H-T In School reporter Anne Kibbler can be reached at 331-4369 or by e-mail at akibbler@heraldt.com

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Posted February 12, 2003