Conclusion

Each visit was a learning experience for me. I was not sure what to expect for each visit, but was pleasantly surprised. I knew from Media Council meetings that each specialist would give me a different perspective from his/her years of experience, situation, and technology expertise. They did confirm that there is not one exact way to run a media center. Depending upon administrative support, budget constraints, grades served, and personal preference, the media center can vary dramatically from school to school.

Personally, I believe I would choose to be the media specialist at the high school. I could focus in on one age group, and really push myself to stay on top of technologies. Of the three schools I visited, the high school seemed to have the most students seeking guidance from the media specialist. I would want to continue what he has started with collaboration, seeking ways to improve the facilities to best meet students' needs, and looking to provide materials to students in formats that fit their world.

My Recommendations
I feel the high school media specialist is on the right track. He should continue weeding and improving his collection, expanding it as new technologies develop. He admittedly is stronger with technology than books, but that is an asset in a media center.

The other two specialists have good reading programs going, but I recommend they push to be more involved in education by truly collaborating with a few teachers. The success of a few projects will slowly trickle out to others by word of mouth. Settling for unwillingness from the teachers in not acceptable. Realistically not everyone will be willing to welcome the specialist into planning and implementing lessons, but being more proactive in their approaches to collaboration would be a good start. Perhaps reading Carol A. Doll's book would be a good place to start.

One point that was emphasized in many ways at the ILF conference was to advocate for ourselves. I think not documenting what we do to contribute to the learning community is a disservice to our profession. I think it can have lasting affects. The need to document, whether highly detailed like the high school media specialist, or more informally, is crucial for maintaining library media positions. As more media specialists retire, corporations will be looking at the programs and evaluating what personnel matches the program. In many corporations, this may mean replacing the LMS with a paraprofessional, giving more administrative tasks to other media specialists in the corporation. Advocating for profession through documenting and demonstrating our impact is needed.