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Thursday
Dec212006

The Plural of Ancedote

DateThursday, December 21, 2006 at 03:31PM

This request from the Minnesota Library Association’s legislative chair went out on our state school library and technology listserv about 10 days ago:

We've received a request for information from Rep. Mary Murphy. She is the incoming chair of the umbrella committee over all of the education funding divisions (early childhood, K-12, and higher ed) in the House. She indicated that she thinks libraries have suffered some neglect over the past few years and she wants to address that this coming session. She asked us to compile information about the impact of the lack of funding. Please also include any cuts or closures that you may be aware of in your school districts' media centers.

So far I have received information about cuts in about 30 school districts (out of 339 total in Minnesota).

A typical reply reads:

My library media position in the XYZ Schools was eliminated due to budget cuts.  There was always a librarian in all the elementary schools (past 50 years) but due to budget cuts the position was eliminated and presently the position does not exist.  Our elementary students do not have a librarian to help with the purchasing of books, teaching of library media skills etc.
You can download a complete list here.

As you can imagine, this has been sad and discouraging e-mail to receive. Fifteen years of stagnant/shrinking educational budgets, declining enrollment in many districts, expenses involved in meeting the requirements of NCLB, technology and the Internet being perceived by many educators as a replacement for libraries, and large numbers of retiring library media specialists have all taken a toll on library media programs - both on material budgets and on clerical and professional staffing.

And yet, what do such collections of anecdotes really tell us? (As the high school statistics teacher likes to remind me: The plural of anecdote is not data.) Were I a legislator I might be asking questions like these:
  • Why did fewer than 10% of district report cuts?
  • How do these cuts correlate to enrollment increases or decreases?
  • Did you ask for information about districts in which library program funding increased?
  • What evidence do you have that Minnesota schools with good library programs better prepare students than those that don’t?
  • In reality, don’t most kids just use the Internet for research and books just sit on the shelves anyway?

I rather doubt any MN legislator reads this blog so I am not putting ideas into anyone’s head. All I am saying is that while stories like the ones collected are fine as far as they go, they are not enough. But our state does not collect data on school library programs on a regular basis. I doubt anyone in the MN DOE even knows how many school librarians are working right now and whether that number is larger or smaller than it was three years ago.

Bless the librarians who took the time to share their stories. My heart goes out to every one of them. Librarianship is an avocation, a calling, a mission. When our programs are diminished, those we serve, those we care about are hurt. The pain comes through in every story.

But maybe we should have asked for funding for data collection in our legislative platform. Of course, there is always the chance the data will show us something we don’t want to see. But I am more and more convinced we can't each survive in isolation. We need numbers to make our case - numbers we alone can't generate. We must get every library media specialist in the state involved in the legislative process, involved in MEMO, and raise our collective voices.

It will be a long legislative session….

(Oh, for recommendations which are unpopular but practical on how to reduce the likelihood of your library program being cut, see ‘The M Word” <http://www.doug-johnson.com/dougwri/mword.html> and “If Your Job is on the Line." <http://www.memoweb.org/memorandom/MMjobonline.pdf>)

 

AuthorDoug Johnson | Comment1 Comment |
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