Section Seven

7.3 Todd, R.J., Kuhlthau, C.C. (2005). Student Learning Through Ohio School Libraries, Part 1: How Effective School Libraries Help Students. School Libraries Worldwide, 11(1), 63-88.

I am hesitant to fully critically analyze this. As someone focused on becoming a school media specialist, it would seem counterproductive to go against an article suggesting what a great influence my intended profession has within the education community. An article written by respected members of the library community, no less. And while I am certain very few people within the blogosphere actually read this process journal, I would be foolish to think that only people within my Human Information Behavior class are going to read this. I would love more than anything to be able to suggest what a clear, unbiased representation of school libraries is found within the pages of this article, but I also do not like lying.

That being said, I found the framing of the survey used to collect the data highly biased. No where can students imply that the school library did not help them whatsoever. A phrase with less negative connotations, "Does not apply," is given, yet that may or may not encompass that the library was counter-productive to the students' needs. I believe in representing the library positively, but I also propose that we are able to do so while allowing patrons the possibility of putting us down. It is only with such an option that the true opinions of library users can be properly documented. A section where I feel a fully fleshed out survey would have been really helpful is in Block 5 (p. 71). With reluctant readers on the rise, I would like to know more about the 15-25.6% of students that found the library did not apply to them in terms of their general reading interests. If certain areas are graded more negatively, then so much the better for us as a profession because only then can we utilize the data to become even better librarians instead of showboating data that suggests we already are doing the best job we can.

The actual commentary on the findings was more helpful by far. The inclusion of qualitative data to supplement the interpretation of the raw quantitative data definitely increased the credibility of the research, as it added several students' extrapolations of exactly what way the library was helpful. And yet, the general reading block is still skewed to paint the best possible picture of school libraries. Even though a large percentage of students found that the library either somewhat helped, helped a little or did not apply to them in this category, all of the qualitative evidence provided suggests otherwise. In fact, there are five student responses all describing how the library has helped their reading outside of the curriculum. Again, I wish I knew what the students that did not find it to be very helpful said in order to step up to the challenge of becoming a great media specialist.