GEN: Computer lab?!--Be careful what you wish for.

[hastings <hastings@HPS.K12.MI.US>]

Do to the prevelance of the insidious "computer lab parasite,"  nefarious usurper 
of library space and time, I wish to share my response to your letter, which is 
quoted below:

Gloria,

I highly recommend that you do NOT push yourself into a supervisory position in a 
general purpose computer lab!  You have no business, in my opinion, supervising 
kids using, for example,  a typing tutor, a math drill and instruction package or 
an office suite of productivity tools. Could you do the job? Sure! Should you do 
the job? NO!
If you do this stuff, Gloria, you are abdicating responsibilities in the other 
areas of librarianship aligned with your mission that you will be ignoring while 
attending to these duties. You DO have business teaching kids how to find 
information--real, bona fide, authoritative information, on the INTERNET-- and to 
cite that work properly in their reports.  Many of your database products may also 
be delivered via computer--either off CD-ROM, or via the web...they're your 
business--not
just running them, but teaching kids to use them, understand them and recognize 
their origins as an information sources.  These PROFESSIONAL duties are your 
responsibility.

Your task right now shouldn't be jumping into that lab-- it should be the much 
harder job of making sure that you have all of the available INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY 
ON YOUR LIBRARY FLOOR that you can get; and that it's use is taught primarily 
through you--the best information specialist in the building.

Gloria-- multi-purpose computer labs as appendages in libraries are, in my opinion, 
dumb ideas, anachronisms and are bound to become old, outdated, white elephants.  
Eschew them--push instead for your own INFORMATION work centers!

And Gloria-- I totally respect, by the way, your effort to reclaim what may have 
once been library "territory."  If this is the case, though, the damage has already 
done.  In my opinion, you can only make it worse by muddying up your library 
mission with duties which should be way outside your sphere of concern.  I urge my 
colleagues to resist attempts by districts to turn portions of their libraries into 
general purpose computer labs. It does not make sense.

Respectfully,

Jeffrey Hastings
School Librarian
Highlander Way Middle School
Howell, Michigan  48843

HTTP://hps.k12.mi.us/~hwms

hastings@hps.k12.mi.us

>  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Subject: Libraries & Computer Labs
> Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1999 14:42:48 -0600
> From: Gloria Curdy <GCurdy@MCPS.K12.MT.US>
>
> My Principal is hiring noncertified people to oversee the computer lab
> (which is adjacent to the LMC) and is adding INTERNET and multimedia
> peripherials to the lab.  I need good rationales as to why the lab
> should be supervised by a Library Media Specialist.  (I have some from
> "Reinvent Your School's Library In the Age of Technology)  However, any
> ideas will be greatly appreciated.  I met with him next Tuesday and need
> ammunition. We have 1300 Students in our high school.
>  Thanks.
>
> Gloria Curdy
> LMS
> Big Sky High School
> Missoula, MT  59804
> gcurdy@mcps.k12.mt.us
>
>                                                   
>------------------------------------------------------------------------

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