The concept of the school media center and its services

Abstract

Several terms are being used extensively today in elementary and secondary schools to describe the total media program available to students and teachers. Some terms used synonymously throughout the literature are learning resources center, media center, instructional materials center, and library media center. The instructional materials or media center concept derives from the desire to place appropriate instructional aids in the right hands at the right time.2 This concept of service is implemented best through centralization of all materials and equipment, thus forming a unified program as stressed by the American Association of School Librarians and the Association for Educational Communications and Technology in the 1975 standards entitled Media Programs: District and School. Media services in schools have evolved over a period of time beginning with the first recognition by educators that a library facility in a school could have some educational value. The beginning of the school library movement in the United States occurred in the mid-1830s when the state of New York passed a law allowing school districts to spend small amounts of tax monies to develop school libraries. Because school districts responded slowly to this law, the legislators in New York passed a second law in 1839 which provided a set sum of money to be distributed annually to school districts on a matching-fund basis for the development of libraries. Following New York's lead, other states have since passed laws providing school districts with funds to establish libraries.3