Including school libraries in national bibliographic systems

Abstract

Internationally, the development of school libraries, or more properly, school media centers, is both a recent and a modest phenomenon. Nonetheless, the year 1978 may well constitute a turning point in the history of these centers, marked as it has been by the UNESCO publication of “Guidelines for the Planning and Organization of School Library Media Centers,” and by the emergence of a Section of School Libraries within the International Federation of Library Associations. The IFLA conference theme, “Universal Availability of Publications,” provides a forum for the consideration of appropriate roles for school libraries in national programs designed to support this goal. A reflection of the profession’s growing concern for the development of effective media programs within schools, the fledging School Section identifies as a priority the effort to bring school libraries into the mainstream of national bibliographic and network planning. Further, it has chosen to address the double-edged problem of the school library’s function in creation of national bibliography and in national networks tihich support the bibliographic component. A comprehensive national bibliography would contain information about monographs and serials, as well as non-print and other informational materials within a given nation. According to Henrietta Arram, Library of Congress, the process of controlling that bibliographic information includes