Librarians

[Ray Harder <rharder@EIS.CALSTATE.EDU>]

Here is a copy of a letter I recently sent to a district that is considering
cutting library staffs. I hope it is helpful to some of you.

--------------Begin letter----------
Dr. Blas Garza
Superintendent
Santa Barbara School and High School Districts
Administration Center
723 East Cota Street
Santa Barbara, CA  93101


Raymond G. Harder
Educational Technology Consultant
5614 Cambridge St.
Montclair, CA 91763
909-983-4713 Home/Work
714-293-5445 Car/Mobile
714-398-6598 Pager
Internet: rharder@ctp.org
Compuserve: 72160,1373
Prodigy: FKPF15A


March 20, 1994
Dear Dr. Garza:

The world is becoming more and more dependant on information and information
technologies. Our economy has radically shifted from agrarian to industrial to
informational. Our economy has lead all other aspects of the modern world to
follow. Today our whole cultural, political, and social structure has become
dependant on information technologies. One cannot hope to become a vital member
of society without mastering the essentials of information management.
Consequently, education today is no longer the imparting of a specific body of
facts, but rather is becoming the process of teaching students to access,
utilize, navigate, analyze, and manipulate data. Furthermore, one must have the
skills to turn this data into meaningful information in order to be successful.

Most school personnel today realize that something must change. However, few
individuals currently employed by schools and school districts have any formal
training in information management. Schools are in the process of trying to
adapt bureaucracies and structures that are decades old to meet the new
realities. This will take a massive retraining and restructuring effort. Most
current school employees will need to begin to look at their responsibilities
differently. This will be a slow and sometimes painful process. There is
however, one class of school personnel already formally trained in the
organization, manipulation, dissemination, and management of information:
school librarians.

Librarians are in an ideal position to help in the inevitable transitional
phase through which all schools will pass. They are trained to deal with
databases and other large information organizing tools, most have experience
with local area networks and CD-ROM collections. They are familiar with the
various types of indexing, cataloguing, etc. These are among the essential
skills necessary for success in the information age. Librarians were at one
time those who specialized in the finding and organizing of essential
information. When you needed a piece of information, the librarian was usually
the first person that you checked. She could point you to the right resources,
indices, and catalogues and show you how to use them. Then, gradually,
librarians were required to take on additional responsibilities from other
staff cut-backs such as aides and janitorial staff. This left them in the
position of being highly overpaid book dusters. As school budgets have become
extremely tight, administrators have begun to examine the roles of various
staff members. They rightly are questioning the value of $40,000 per year
clerks. However, rather than cutting library staffs, today computers can take
over the mundane task of book check-out and leave librarians more time for what
they were originally hired to do, viz. to help students find and use
information.

In today's transitional phase in education, it is a major mistake to cut the
only staff we have with formal training in information management. Librarians
need to be freed from the mundane tasks of meeting managers, book dusters, and
generally glorified janitors to which we have relegated them and allowed to
once again become the vital parts of the education system that they once were.
As a professional educational consultant who worked in hundreds of schools in
13 states and 5 countries last year, I feel that librarians are an excellent
place to focus a good deal of our energies as we transition to a new
educational environment. Libraries are a good place to test and model the
newest educational technologies without which our children will be ill prepared
for the future --not to mention the present!

Sincerely,



Raymond G. Harder
Consultant

----------End Letter------------


****************************************************************************
* Raymond G. Harder                  "Can't walk today, I don't feel well."*
* Educational Technology Consultant  "Why don't you sit out in the sun?"   *
* 909-983-4713                       "What? People will think I'm lazy!"   *
* rharder@ctp.org                         -- My 92 year old grandmother    *
****************************************************************************