Resource Guides

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In a previous issue of Educator’s Spotlight Digest, as part of our focus on Community Outreach, we directed you to a set of examples and resources accessible through the School/Public Library Cooperative Activities link of the AASL Website.  As a follow-up, we’d like to point you to some additional research concerning school and public library relationships.

Shining the Spotlight on another AASL Resource Guide

Powerful Partnerships: School and Public Libraries

We’d like to draw your attention to the Publications and Journals section of the AASL website, and a very interesting article detailing a history of successful, and not so successful, relationships between public and school libraries.

School and Public Library Relationships: Essential Ingredients in Implementing Educational Reforms and Improving Student Learning.

This extensive report was commissioned as part of a national study entitled Assessment of the Role of School and Public Libraries in Support of Educational Reform (Westat, Inc., 1998-2000). It explores a history of successful, and not so successful, school and public library relationships, identifying factors that both lead to and inhibit success. The work explored here is based on two assumptions supported by an initial literature review:

1. Cooperative relations improve library services and provide better access for youth to information, knowledge and learning.
2. Cooperation is essential to achieving educational reform and ultimately improved student learn -Westat, 1995
   

The paper explores the historical pattern of cooperative relationships along with current forms of cooperation, including networking, resource-sharing, joint libraries, services and programs, and communication networks. It concludes with some strong recommendations for the future. This is a very long (47 page) and far-reaching summary of cooperative conditions at the time of the study. However it is conveniently divided into eight specific sections for easy access to your individual need.  These sections include:

• Rationale for cooperative relationships
• Historical perspective
• 1990s perspective
• Roles and goals of each library
• Cooperative efforts and relationships
• Joint school-public library facilities
• Suggestions for successful cooperation
• Recommendations for the future

In addition to its accessible format, this paper also includes an extensive (10 page) bibliography of addition research on the various subjects, making it a very useful resource in this important area of study. We encourage you to visit this excellent resource, courtesy of the American Association of School Libraries (http://aasl.org). To access the report, select the link below:

School and Public Library Relationships: Essential Ingredients in Implementing Educational Reforms and Improving Student Learning

References:

Westat. 1995. Literature Review: Assessment of the role of school and public libraries in support of the National Education Goals. Prepared for the U.S. ED. Rockville, MD: Westat.

Reported by Kori M. Gerbig