August 2007 — Features
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The New Librarians
Jana Knezek, director of library and textbook services at Northside ISD, the fourth-largest district in Texas, has been on both ends of the digital divide. In 1989, Knezek worked in a small district, "and we were real happy to get microfiche of the magazines in the nearby university so students could see what articles were available. Now we have online database subscriptions, and the articles themselves are online." This is largely due to a decision by the Texas Legislature to give database subscriptions to districts that have a librarian and at least three computers with dial-up internet access.
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That was more than a decade ago. Next year, all of Northside ISD will be wireless. Knezek says the typical Northside media center has computers, digital projectors, whiteboards, video distribution systems, ceiling-mounted projectors, and Playaways (small devices, like iPods, that each play one preloaded audio book). But Knezek recently interviewed an applicant to be a school librarian who came from a district that didn't even have internet access.
This "incredible inequity," as she puts it, worries Springfield Township's Valenza also. While she notes the changes borne by technology with excitement ("I'm so charged!"), Valenza says that some school administrations "are blocking things blindly. They're either unaware or afraid of it." Some teachers, she says, don't even know what a database does.
When budgets don't get in the way, fear can. Jeff Small, library media specialist at Cony High School in Augusta, ME, says a big part of his work is trying to calm teachers who aren't comfortable with the rapidity of the changes. Small, who in the fall will become president of the Maine Association of School Libraries, expects no falloff in the push toward new technologies. "As we get more younger teachers, they're going to expect it," he says. "They grew up with computers; we had to learn about them as they became part of our world."
Small grew up on a farm and carried a paperback in his pocket, which he'd often read sitting under a tree. Today he sees students with graphic novels, Playaways, and online books. The card catalogs have gone electronic, the opaque projectors are now LCD, and the DVDs have given way to video-streaming. "The teachers have to keep an open mind," he says. "These technologies are just different tools in the toolbox. The tools will be different, but the job will be the same."
