American Libraries

Keith Curry Lance: We want data about the status of school libraries in the United States. We have data about academic libraries and about public libraries, but we have very little data about school libraries. And we especially have very little trend data about school libraries and we're hoping that this will give us a better picture of what's going on—good, bad, and indifferent—o that when we're out there doing advocacy for school libraries, we're able to talk about that with some authority because we have some data to back it up. What we found in the AASL Longitudinal Survey this first year is that the average copyright date for health and medicine information in school libraries is 1994. That's going to be a problem for a lot of kids because that makes the information that they're getting about health and medicine older than they are. I call the business of following through on a survey—issuing reports, getting feedback about them, doing whatever you can to get the input about a survey—closing the circle. It's very important for the people who participate in the survey have an investment in it and to feel like they're getting something out of it. Another issue we have to worry about with this questionnaire—with this survey project—is survey fatigue. People are being surveyed a lot. We have to promote this survey through AASL, through its members, through its chapters because understanding the importance of this survey and why we want this data is one of the things that helps people to get past the survey fatigue issue. If they understand why it matters and what's going to be happening with the data, that will be a benefit to them.