School Libraries Count! The Second National Survey of School Library Media Programs

Abstract

In 2007, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) initiated an annual survey of school library media programs. The development of this longitudinal survey project was mandated by the AASL Board and advocated by the division’s Research and Statistics Committee and Independent Schools Section. The survey was promoted via a wide variety of venues, including: AASL events at recent ALA Midwinter Meetings and Annual Conferences, AASL e-mail lists, AASL chapters and affiliates, telephone calls and e-mails by selected interested parties, and e-mails by the survey contractor.

The launch of the second year of the survey coincided with ALA’s 2008 Midwinter Meetings in Philadelphia. Almost 7,000 responses to the 2008 survey were received.

This report summarizes the overall results, the results by school level and enrollment, and more detailed results, when statistically significant relationships between the results and selected other factors were found. These other factors include: region, a school’s poverty status, locale (metropolitan versus non-metropolitan), and whether a school is public or private. While the data on the latter characteristic was based on respondents’ reports, data on poverty status and locale were obtained from the National Center for Education Statistics, which is also the source of the public school universe file for this project. (As a result, these two data elements were available for more than 6,000 of the almost 7,000 respondents for 2008.) Other factors did not yield sufficient numbers of cases to look more closely at specific types of schools (e.g., charter, special education, vocational-technical, alternative, magnet).

Respondents to the AASL survey were self-selected. For this reason, it is not possible to generate national totals. Instead, for each statistic, this report presents three percentiles: the 50th, the 75th, and the 95th. The purpose of reporting these three figures is to describe the better half of responding school libraries. The 50th percentile, or median, is the figure that divides the respondents in half—half reported this figure or above, half a lower figure. The 75th percentile is the figure below which three-quarters of the respondents fall and one-quarter above. Finally, the 95th percentile is the figure at or above which only five percent of the respondents fall.