Movement in School Library Media Centers
I. Introduction
Imagine two college professors who have had their teaching and building level library media service in Wyoming and Maine finding themselves in the library media arena of a large, urban, southern school district with students from all over the world. The opportunity to spend time in four schools with a predominant African American student population and many international students was made available to us through a research grant funded by the school district's grant with the National Library Power Program. The two of us have had an exciting first year with this program which we want to share with you. Our research has had a dual purpose: to provide documentation to the school district on the library media reform happening through Library Power and to provide the national education audience an intimate view of Library Power through our publication efforts.
What is Library Power? "The National Library Power Program, an initiative of the DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, is designed to create public elementary and middle school library programs that improve the teaching and learning process in schools," according to the American Association of School Librarians (1995). This seven-year-old program has sites across the United States, including several large urban areas in the Southeast. Library Power's national program goals are:

*To create a national vision and new expectations for public elementary and middle school library programs and to encourage new and innovative uses of the library's physical and human resources.

*To create exemplary models of library media programs that are an integral part of the educational process.

*To strengthen the role of the librarian as a teacher, information specialist, and learning facilitator who assists teachers and students in becoming effective users of ideas and information.

*To encourage collaboration among teachers, administrators, and librarians that results in significant improvement in teaching and the learning process.

*To demonstrate the significant contributions that library programs can make to school reform and restructuring efforts.

*To encourage the creation of partnerships among leaders in school districts, public libraries, community agencies, business communities, academic institutions, and parent groups to improve and support school library programs. (American Association of School Librarians, 1995)

In 1993 the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) and DeWitt-Wallace initiated national efforts to evaluate the Library Power program. From inception, each local site was allowed to budget for local evaluation, research, and documentation efforts, but our Library Power site was the first site to take advantage of that aspect. Now in its second year of a three year $1.2 million grant, our southeastern urban site has had 20 elementary schools involved with Library Power with the final group of schools to be added next fall.
II. Research project
Invited by the local Library Power director and the coordinator of media services to join the team as researchers and documenters for their grant, we went through the formal district research proposal agenda to obtain official permission for access to schools and personnel. As part of our resulting research agreement with the school district, participants had to volunteer for our project and remain anonymous in any publications that might follow our study.
When we arrived at the monthly meeting of Library Power media specialists where we were to present our research project, we listened first to complaints, both informal and formal, about the work load these media specialists were carrying. Understandably, we grew nervous about our potential for recruiting volunteers. With numerous forms to fill out, questionnaires to answer, internal proposals to write, and scrutiny from principals, teachers, and Library Power personnel, we knew that the demands of Library Power on their time seemed immense.
We saw faces of overwhelmed, anxious, and confused media specialists. One media specialist stated in an interview that they all expected a great deal more money for their libraries than they were actually going to get. "They cut the money budget which disappointed [us] . . . . The people did not have any indication there was going to be this much paperwork involved. I think [we] probably thought it was additional funds for buying books and materials and there wouldn't be any of this . . . " (personal communication, February 17, 1995) Another media specialist put it bluntly, "Well, you know, the reason that I got into this was so that we would have more resources, and really for the money, so I could build my collection. Well, you know, I think that ALL of us got a rude awakening when we finally figured out that Library Power is not about money. Some people still haven't recovered from it." (personal communication, March 20, 1995)
At the last minute, we decided to offer our services for three days every other month at each of the schools that chose to participate. These media specialists had no clerical or paraprofessional help. We offered to do anything they wanted us to do from reading stories to entering data in the new automated catalogs to answering the telephone and other professional duties. Skeptical, but willing to try, four schools finally volunteered with a great deal of arm-twisting from the Library Power director and district media coordinator. Thus, our project was launched.
Both of us were apprehensive and knew we would be on trial until proven a help rather than a hindrance. We also knew that the media specialists were equally, if not more, apprehensive. We knew they were wondering: these people from Ivory Towers -- who knows what their reality has been for a number of years? We could tell what was going through their minds by watching their expressions. We were also entering an inner city urban environment, quite different from the school media center experiences we have had. We knew the media specialists felt pressured to participate in our research, creating a tenuous beginning for us. We were aware of the sensitivities of our positions in these programs. We could not push, nor question directly, nor appear too nosy until the media specialists felt comfortable with us. Our choice of methodologies would have to allow us the opportunity to start data collection quietly with the media specialists.
III. Methodology
Phenomenological inquiry, as described by Patton (1990) and Weingand (1993), guided our use of observations, interviews, and written documentation to discover what, why, and how things were happening in the schools we studied. We hoped to be able to make suggestions to improve the Library Power reform movement. As participant observers, our experiences were integrated with those of our coresearchers. Further, the depth and intensity of our research promoted heuristic inquiry (Patton, 1990) into the nature of the our experiences. We anticipate the results of our discoveries will guide us in developing grounded theory about restructuring of library media programs.
Originally, our research questions focused on collaborative planning with media specialists as full members of each curriculum planning team. After a year of watching, listening, and talking, we decided to investigate the amount and rate of media specialist behavior change. What were they now doing differently and how had they changed their philosophy? How had they changed the way they chose their materials? How did they respond to teachers? How did they see their students using the media center differently than before? What kind of behavior changes did they see in their students? What teacher behaviors did the media specialists observe as different?
In a conversation with the National Library Power coordinator, Ann Carlson Weeks, we heard about changes in media programs resulting from dramatic facilities renovations and resource acquisitions. She talked about how culling or weeding collections for out-of-date material, sometimes as much as 80% of the collection, seemed to make a major difference in establishing a new environment. (personal communication, November 1, 1995) This piqued our interest, because we knew our district set a numerical standard for books and materials to meet accreditation requirements, regardless of their quality or usefulness. The district maintained it did not have sufficient funds to keep the accreditation standard if media specialists withdrew too many out-dated and inaccurate materials.
Weeks observed that extensive weeding did not seem to happen consistently at our project site. This concerned her because in her opinion, changes in behavior at the other Library Power sites occurred in the most dramatic fashion for those places that had undergone extensive facility renovation and collection rebuilding. The weaker programs seemed to improve more dramatically than the already strong programs. The improvement of resources and media center environment gave a source of pride to the professionals involved.
Two of our four sites had media programs very traditional in nature directed by long time media specialists who concentrated on book circulation, storytelling, and some individual or small group visitations to the media center for research--but did not actively plan and teach information literacy skills within the curriculum. Collaborative planning interaction with teachers did not happen or was at a minimal level. At the third site, the second year media specialist was exploring the kinds of teacher-media specialist interactions that collaborative planning required and starting to make changes toward that end. Students were coming to the media center to use the resources but not in a heavy stream. The fourth site had a media program already integrated with the curriculum, strong principal support for the media specialist's role, constant teacher and student use of the media center, and an innovative environment throughout the school.
Our four schools had very different environments, ranging from new facilities to one housed temporarily in an old building while the permanent site was undergoing renovation to an old facility that was scheduled for closing. The media specialists varied in their abilities to create inviting atmospheres while working with their existing facilities. Funding from Library Power for renovation of media centers varied among schools depending upon urgency of need; however, we noted that the environment of newness did not appear by itself to change the feelings toward the library media program. Thus, we could not draw conclusions about dramatic changes at our site due to the facilities renovation part of the Library Power grant. What remained for us was to document the events and the themes we saw emerging and watch their growth.
Because our four schools had different environments, we would be comparing our experiences at each school within the context of the individual environment and the media specialist's vision. Three of the media specialists had similar backgrounds, approximately 30 years of service each, and one was quite new to the profession. Two came from the same library program background. The three with similar backgrounds were female, and the newer media specialist was male. He stayed in the position for two years and has now assumed a different role in the school for 1995-96 and has been replaced by a person new to the profession.
Our role as participant observers allowed us to make heuristic inquiry into the comparisons that would provide us with a tool to measure the extent of change. Our participation in the daily life of these media specialists gave us insight into their problems, frustrations, joys, growth, and needs in ways we could not have foreseen by limiting our experience to interviews. This participation reminded us of what it was like to be a building level media specialist and put in perspective all that we saw and heard.
IV. Formative Evaluation Role
As part of our agreement to participate in Library Power project, the district media coordinator and the local Library Power director requested that we contribute an annual technical report each year of the three year grant. In our first report (Tallman & Tastad, 1995), we found that it was difficult to be explicit in what we saw happening with the personnel or program and to maintain the confidentiality of the media specialists. We found that the clash of a large school district's policies and procedures on an innovative program such as Library Power made change hard to facilitate. The red tape held up requests and seemed to stifle creative responses to problem areas. We indicated what we were seeing and the direction we thought the grant was taking, ultimately making suggestions on where we thought changes should occur.
For data, we used our observations of the four elementary schools, our interviews and casual conversations with the media specialists, principals, media coordinator, and Library Power director to form the basis of our collection. With the addition of the written documentation we could gather, we drew a scenario of progress, success, problems and changes.
In return we were asked to participate in workshops and other staff development opportunities by the district coordinator and Library Power director. Two of our activities were a summer collaborative planning workshop for media specialist/teacher teams and inclusion in a workshop presented by an international leader in collaborative planning. We had the opportunity to experience as instructors what the media specialists thought were collaborative planning and curriculum integration of information literacy skills. What many of them articulated as collaborative planning and curriculum integration fit the requisite definitions of these activities. However, when asked to plan units and translate that planning into goals, objectives and student activities, the outcomes were for the most part quite different from the definitions.
As a result of our activities in these areas and for our future acceptance as researchers in this program, we think the participants in this Library Power program view us as educators, helpers, documenters, aides, and, we hope, colleagues. We have discovered that there is an awkward difference among acceptance by the media specialists as one of their own, our responsibility to the grant organizers, and our research objectives.
V. Results
The most sensitive issues or themes seemed to stem from administrative leadership and personality types that contribute to program success or failure. From national research (Haycock, 1995; Tallman, 1995), we knew that principals were a significant factor in promoting, forging, and supporting the acceptance of media specialists as collaborative planning partners with teachers. Including the media specialist as a planning and teaching partner with the teaching team from a unit's inception to evaluation was as new an experience for many teaching staff as it was for their principals.
Many of the principals, as well as teachers and media specialists, did not have backgrounds in the collaborative process or a perspective of the media specialist as a collaborative partner with classroom teachers. The principals in this study, as well as in the entire Library Power site, held widely divergent views on collaborative planning. These views ranged from the media specialist as a full teaching and planning partner to the media specialist as a resource locator exclusively and sometimes literature specialist.
The Library Power staff development for the principals emphasized the collaborative planning role but, we felt, did not give the principals enough exposure to the model of a media specialist as a collaborative planning partner. Those principals who came with the traditional view of the media specialist as manager and not teacher struggled with the need to provide leadership to their own faculty and media specialist for the transition process.
For example, one principal, after a year in the Library Power program, still considered the main role of a media specialist to be that of resource provider. "My definition of collaborative planning is when the teacher will have planned the Qualitative Core Curriculum from the book and know what needs to be taught. Then the media specialist will be able to reinforce what the teacher has to [teach] by state guidelines . . . for which she will then [choose the] resources she has in the media center . . . that can help the teacher with those lessons. . . ." (personal communication, June 21, 1995) This view limited the support of the principal for the media specialist to become a full collaborative partner with grade level teachers.
The principal's attitude, acknowledgment, and supportive actions were the most important factors for the media specialist to receive acceptance for this role from the teaching staff. If these factors did not exist, the media specialist usually served solely as a resource person after goals, objectives, and teaching strategies were set for the unit. The harm that came from this was the inability of the media specialist to include information literacy skills, including technology skills, within subject areas where they naturally fit and were best learned.
If the principal's style was autocratic, or action originated from the principal's office, the faculty had little chance of ownership of initiatives to develop new approaches to problems. One principal, when asked what role was played in implementing Library Power in the school, stated "Well, I'll just say that I think I am the catalyst for everything that happens in this school. I think I set the tone with the staff by laying out a set of expectations at the beginning of the year, during the year, and then following through in terms of monitoring." (personal communication, June 15, 1995) In our observation, this principal was having the greatest difficulty in reaching the collaborative planning goals of Library Power. This person knew that the media specialist needed to change behaviors as well as the teaching faculty but did not know how to guide either the media specialist or the faculty.
When the principal's leadership style was facilitative and supportive in our group of schools, the faculty felt free to suggest and make changes where needs occurred and expected to participate in problem solving. This principal's style was supportive with faith in the staff's ability to perform. "This school is a community that really nurtures me," said the principal. "There may be a kind of dynamic, mutual support that all the constituencies provide for each other. It's a very energizing place, a place where I think we all feel and derive a lot of support from each other. The staff is professionally driven. . . . really able to use heterogeneity of this community to create something that is not a competitive environment which I think would kill us. But one where we . . . hone our work collectively and not individually." (personal communication, June 15, 1995) Not surprising to us as observers, this school had an integrated library media program with the media specialist fully involved with collaborative planning.
The next major theme we discovered was the impact of personality and creative vision of the media specialist on media program development and relationships with teaching faculty. We discovered the importance of the media specialist's motivational style. Those in our study who appeared to have intrinsic motivation as displayed by their seeking of new skills and knowledge for professional responsibilities had a process for updating their skills throughout their professional life not dependent on their district's guidance. They also absorbed and sought new knowledge and skills for responsibilities that were changing for them, such as computer information literacy and technologies. For those who had extrinsic motivation dependent on external sources, their needs, new skills, and vision development came only at the behest of others. They did not seem to initiate change without stress, pain, and some reluctance.
Our observation of the types of media specialist responses in relationship to motivation was one of the most sensitive areas for us to record. These differences in media specialist motivation kept appearing as an overriding theme in all that we saw. We concluded that motivation was one of the strongest reasons why some media programs, in spite of the physical environment, made great progress toward building a program incorporating collaborative planning while other schools progressed very little, if at all.
We saw the need for changes in program direction in ways that we did not anticipate. In fact, some of the greater changes took place within our own philosophies as we watched what was happening. Both of us felt our observations and participation in schools gave our teaching new meaning and direction. We developed a greater awareness of our need to emphasize the role of the media specialist as an equal and integral partner with the classroom teacher.
We could see what happened in situations where this did not exist and the continuing effects it had on the media specialist's ability to integrate skills and resources into the curriculum for the most effective learning situations. The media specialists were frozen into their management tasks and seen as peripheral to the business of teaching and learning. We gathered the impression that teachers and students considered the media center as a diversion from regular classroom activities instead of an extended learning environment. The location of some of the media centers, ironically in a corner of the building away from the action, served as visual proof of the status of the media program isolated from the curriculum.
VI. Implications
We discovered that motivation had a major influence on the ability of the media specialists to absorb the changes requested through Library Power. Intrinsically motivated media specialists sought solutions to problems that arose through Library Power. Perhaps because of a persistence toward seeking new knowledge, they more readily accepted changes that needed to take place. Others hesitated to explore new processes presented through staff development or to take the initiative to understand areas which confused them. Motivational type seemed a significant agent in the acceptance of change, not just in the media center, but also in relationship to the teaching staff at large.
We found that participants reacted strongly to the types of communication among grant administrators, school leadership, and media personnel. Many times, those communications created strains that fostered frequent misunderstandings. The media specialists sometimes felt that their needs were not met or even articulated. They saw requests for more and more paperwork coming their way without observable benefits in return.
With the advent of the Library Power program, the school leadership personnel were introduced to the potential for media programs to support their curricula. However, principals were not always able to transfer their resulting vision and desire for action to their faculty. Developing new skills and roles, some of which the media specialists and the faculty had not tried before, were given priority by this grant. Their insecurities made them vulnerable and sensitive to the slightest requests for change.
The principals did not always have the right tools to make individuals feel secure with these changes, as the following quote from one of the principals made clear:

I don't know how to get the media specialists who have been in the system for years to see themselves as doing something other than circulation. Circulation still continues to be what she wants to do, you know, and she views that as primary and I view that as a secondary kind of the thing for the media specialist and I don't know how to change that. I don't know of anything that happened this year. You see, change doesn't just happen over night, and regardless of how many workshops you have, it just doesn't change the way people think about their role, especially if they have been doing that role for 25 years. . . . I really don't have an answer for how to make that happen. I wish I could do that for teachers, too. . . . Really, most of the ones that I have seen, who have been in these schools for over 20 years, that has been all that they have been required to do. That is all they know how to do. (personal communication, June 15, 1995)
One of our most important roles this last year has been to observe communication of problem areas between media specialists and grant administrators. Our observations have resulted in several changes of direction within the grant, such as increased emphasis in collaborative planning staff development. Even so, our work as go-between was not an expected role for us at the beginning of this research. Valuable as it is for the grant administrators and for us, it has made our position with the media specialists seem more vulnerable and more important. The grant administrators have continued to stress to the national Library Power movement the critical importance of our documentation and advisement role.
Our research perspective from this experience sometimes seems almost secondary to the experience we have had as witnesses to the types of changes possible in traditional and innovative media programs. The traditional media specialists we have observed have had trouble understanding the new expectations of their role and translating those understandings to programs that result in partnerships with teachers in curriculum planning, teaching, and evaluation. The media specialists who developed their roles in these directions before Library Power appeared to be people who continued their self-learning throughout their careers and who constantly applied their knowledge to their roles.
Motivational style was the ultimate theme running through all that we discovered. Intrinsic motivation enhanced the ability of media specialists to incorporate and welcome changes that led to growth, expanded opportunities, and program development. Intrinsic motivation made it possible for teachers and principals to see the value of media specialists as full curriculum partners. At one school, the principal was the first to tell us that her teachers had elected the media specialist as "teacher of the year." The media specialist went on to place in the top five for the entire district for "teacher of the year" based on her portfolio of media center activities and curriculum planning plus her interview about involvement within the curriculum. That kind of recognition makes her job continually progress toward the goals of the national guidelines for library media specialists.

References
American Association of School Librarians. (1995). National Library Power Program. [Brochure]. Chicago, IL: Author.
Haycock, K. (1995). Research in teacher-librarianship and the institutionalization of change. School Library Media Quarterly, 23(4), 227-233.
Patton, M. Q. (1990). Qualitative evaluation and research methods (2nd ed.). Newbury Park: Sage.
Tallman, J. (1995). Curriculum consultation: Strengthening activity through multiple context area units. School Library Media Quarterly, 24(1), 27-33.
Tallman, J. & Tastad, S. (August, 1995). Annual report of the Library Power program. Unpublished manuscript.
Weingand, D. E. (1993). Grounded theory and qualitative methodology. IFLA Journal, 19(1), 17-26.

7
Library Power Reform

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