What Does a School Library Media Specialist Do?

As a school library media specialist you interact directly with young people, engaging their passions, curiosities, appetite for learning and love of reading. You develop and organize information resources and educate students and teachers to use them. You are an information specialist, a teacher, and an instructional partner with other teachers.

The purpose of the school library media program is to serve the needs of all children with their variety of abilities, learning preferences, and cultural understandings. The school library media center is important as a welcoming place in which students can engage in self-discovery and self-directed inquiry, free to move beyond the familiar, without fear of failure and with the support of warm, personal attention. The school library media center is rooted in and gives form and meaning to the principles of democracy: the right of people of all ages to intellectual freedom and the right of people, regardless of economic status, to equity of access to information.

These values remain central to librarianship in a digital world. School library media professionals serve the needs of students through creating and managing a variety of relationships, resources, and services. As a professional, you select and provide access to a wide range of materials and technologies to support the curriculum and foster the recreational and imaginative as well as educational needs of students. As librarian and teacher, you actively collaborate with classroom teachers and other members of the learning community to integrate resources into the curriculum to meet the diverse needs of students. In so doing, you act as an instructional partner and leader. The school library media specialist assists and teaches students and their teachers to use information technology and to develop information literacy skills. You advocate persuasively for the value of books, reading, information literacy, equity of access to information, lifelong learning, and freedom of inquiry.

Preparing school library media specialists with the skills to adapt and thrive in demanding educational settings is a tradition in Wisconsin. This University of Wisconsin System collaboration combines the strengths of faculty in library media programs at Whitewater, Madison, Eau Claire, Superior and Oshkosh to teach strong skills in information organization, curriculum, technology application and integration, literature, teaching and management. As a graduate of this program, you are prepared to be an instructional leader.

Learning From A Distance

The UWSSLEC program combines intensive face-to-face meetings with work over the Web. It is ideal for those who find it difficult to fit traditional class structures, or for people who are too far away for easy access to university facilities. Face to face sessions are regarded as an important strategy for developing technological skills and experience with automation systems, ensuring student success and building a professional community. For face to face sessions, you travel to the campus of the delivering institution. Everything else is web-based. Each campus also has a traditional program for those in commuting range, with courses available in the evenings.

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