School Libraries Count! A National Survey of School Library Media Programs

Abstract

The American Library Association’s divisions for academic and public libraries—the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and the Public Library Association (PLA)—have long collected and reported annual statistics about the types of libraries they represent. This year, 2007, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) joins its sister divisions by initiating 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 placed by selected interested parties, and mass mailings by the survey contractor.

The survey launch coincided with ALA’s 2007 Midwinter Meetings in Seattle, Washington. Over 5,000 responses to the survey were initiated, over 4,500 responses were completed, and the respondents include almost 4,000 regular public schools and over 200 independent schools.

This report summarizes the overall results as well as more detailed results, when statistically significant relationships between those results and selected factors were found. These factors include: school level, enrollment, region, a school’s poverty and migrant statuses, locale (metropolitan versus non-metropolitan), and whether a school is public or private. 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). Statistical significance was assessed using the t test of independent samples and the standard minimum criterion, p < .05. (Translation: No more than five percent of the time would repeated and infinite samples yield meaningfully different results.)

As with its sister surveys by ACRL and PLA, respondents to the AASL survey were self-selected. For this reason, it is not possible to generate national totals. In this inaugural effort, for instance, 16 states (two-thirds) generated three-fourths of the responses.