Relating Information Services to the Mission of Media Centers
 Two questions to get us started:
1. What are information services?

 
2. What does this have to do with Instructional Technology? 
I want to be a media specialist. What's all this instructional technology stuff?

 
"Instructional technology is the theory and practice of design, development, utilization, management, and evaluation of processes and resources for learning." (Barbara B. Seels and Rita C. Richey, Instructional Technology: The Definition and Domains of the Field (1994).
Here are several building blocks to lay the foundation for Information Services and this class: roles of the SLMS, mission of the MC, Library Bill of Rights (with interpretation for children), and research-based justification for SLM work. Keep these as items in your tool box; you will draw upon all in this class and in your job.

Information Power: roles of the media specialist (remember that IP is our Constitution)
  • Learning & Teaching Principles
  • Information access and delivery
  • Program administration
  • Instructional partner

Mission of the Media Center

"The mission of the library media program is to ensure that students and staff are effective users of ideas and information. This mission is accomplished:

  • by providing intellectual and physical access to materials in all formats
  • by providing instruction to foster competence and stimulate interest in reading, viewing, and using information and ideas
  • by working with other educators to design learning strategies to meet the needs of individual students."

--Information Power: Guidelines for School Library Media Programs (1988), p.1
ALA Library Bill of Rights
Another important document in terms of information services. 

AASL's Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights from the SLM perspective.
This statement contains multiple important principles.

 
Justification for what we do, when you need it:  Lance, Welborn, & Hamilton-Pennell, 1993:

  • The size of a library media center's staff and collection is the best school-based predictor of academic achievement.
  • Among school and community predictors of academic achievement, the importance of size of the library media center staff and collection is second only to the absence of at-risk conditions (particularly poverty and low educational attainment among adults).
  • This study was revisited in 2001, and similar results were found.
  • School Libraries Work! Scholastic Research Foundation Paper - this paper is a loose compilation and synthesis of the state-based correlational studies patterned after Lance. If you need evidence linking effection SLM programs with student achievement, you will find some here.
 

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Checked on 3-26-08: basics still ok although citations could use refreshing.
Page expires 3-26-09

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