Forecasting the Future: School Media Programs in an Age of Change

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2000), "Forecasting the Future: School Media Programs in an Age of Change", Library Review, Vol. 49 No. 7, pp. 351-360. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.2000.49.7.351.1

School Librarianship Series 3

This is a topical survey of issues in current school media programme management and planning in the USA. It sees these programmes as fast‐changing, not just because of new technology and curriculum development, but also because of federal and state initiatives to move things towards lifelong learning and information literacy and empowerment. Its focus is the school library media programme: what they can and should be; obstacles to making them work effectively; and the ways in which they are changing, and have to change, given new challenges to information access and intermediation. Wright (at a library studies department in North Carolina) and Davie (his wife and a media specialist in a school there) open up the general issues, move on to the administration (timetables, budgets, facilities, security, evaluation, acceptable use policies), and round up on what good forward‐looking practice should be. There are twelve chapters, well supported by relevant references for further study.

This work will interest people in the field wanting to know the general policy/strategy steer in the USA, and perhaps to compare practice elsewhere. For specifics, apart from going through the references, readers would find more by searching out articles and surfing the Internet. It points out interesting schemes like the Accelerated Schools Project, the National Diffusion Network, and Success for All (at Johns Hopkins University), and professionals will find these interesting to follow up. It is a very generalised book, likely to hit its target with students looking for general approaches. The subtitle captures the book well, but all in all the work represents more of the present than the future.