The Whole School Library Handbook

Citation

Scott, E.S. (2006), "The Whole School Library Handbook", Library Review, Vol. 55 No. 6, pp. 382-383. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530610674857

This very comprehensive collection claims to be “the one‐stop resource for everything related to the school library media centre”. Essentially, it is a collection of over 120 articles, checklists and contact lists arranged into broad themes. Although a few of the articles have been created especially for the book, the bulk of them are adapted and reprinted from other publications and journals. Not all the information then may be new to the reader but it would be a very well school librarian who had come across all of it before and there are advantages to having such a diverse range of materials gathered together in one easily consulted volume.

The material is divided into 15 sections with varying length, starting most appropriately with History (librarians from other parts of the world may be surprised to learn what a long and distinguished history the school library has in the US) and continuing with Professionalism, Materials, Guidelines, Evaluation, Credentials, Technology, Operations, Program, Promotion, Funding, Staff Development, Issues and Diversity, and finishing with “Librariana” and an appendix listing the periodicals from which the articles have been gathered; this in itself is a valuable source of reading for any librarian who wants to investigate the topics further.

Each section opens with a quotation from the relevant part of the American Library Association (ALA) publication information power (more information about these standards is available at: www.ala.org/aaslTemplate.cfm?Section = informationpower, accessed 11 April 2006) which establishes the context and is followed by articles with varying length. The exception is the Guidelines section which contains the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) School Libraries Section Guidelines. The articles within each section cover a diverse range of topics and sometimes decisions about where they have been placed are surprising: a very useful article by Doug Johnson about Internet skills rubrics for teachers is in Evaluation and one about web filtering (Ann Curry and Ken Haycock) is in Issues where I might have looked for both of them in Technology.

Although naturally the majority of the authors are American, there are also contributions from elsewhere, for example, from Ross Todd. Many of the names will be familiar throughout the school library world: Keith Curry Lance and Laurel Anne Clyde, for example. The book is clearly aimed at school library media specialists in the US, but much of the material is of universal interest and relevance. Mark Y. Herring's article “10 reasons why the Internet is no substitute for a library” will strike a chord with many of us and “How to gain support from your board and administration” (Steven M. Baule and Laura Blair Bertani), although using unfamiliar terminology for some, has principles which can be applied anywhere.

Physically this is a pleasing volume. Although there is a huge amount of information, it is clearly laid out and easy to read. The text is broken up by a variety of small illustrations, mainly clip art, but serving the purpose nonetheless, and the fore‐edge has a useful printed thumb index to delineate the different sections making consultation straightforward. This is a volume which will be added to my shelf of regularly consulted materials.