US/ND-5: Re: Aggregation and Competition

Re: Aggregation and Competition

Betty Dawn Hamilton (bhamilt@tenet.edu)
Sun, 22 Sep 1996 20:33:34 -0500 (CDT) 

On Sun, 22 Sep 1996, Ken Hammer wrote:

> promise that.  I'm inclined to doubt the synergy between community
> library and school education functionaries.  Won't they dilute each
> others' purpose?

I'm not sure about other entities, but I see a definite synergy between
public and school libraries -- particularly where the public library may
be distant from the neighborhood of many students and those students may
not have cars or public transportation. The school library is used as a
training ground during the school day so students will be able to feel
comfortable and use the public library once their formal educations are
finished. We school librarians work to get classes from all departments
into the library to use collections that support the curricula. 

If *all* parents were active users of the public libraries, then it would 
follow that *all* students would also grow into active users.  However, 
we know that that is not the case. Hence we strive to form habits in 
school so that as students leave school, they will continue information 
searching and use for the rest of their lives.  In that way we hope to 
break the cycle of non-users breeding non-users. One idea that I stress 
repeatedly is that if students learn to use our school library, they can 
use *any* library anywhere in the world if they can read/speak the 
language because libraries follow international rules of organization.

By the same token, now that we have electronic searching, I stress that 
the *process* of analyzing, organizing, and evaluating for a search is 
the same no matter whether students are using print or non-print.  
*Public* librarians understand the same procedures -- the difference is 
that we in schools have the opportunity to incorporate the skills into a 
required assignment for practice instead of waiting for a real-life need.

Hence, rather than *competing* for clients, I see our roles as 
complimenting each other. As for the *governing* bodies of each entity 
combining their efforts -- that might present a problem!

Betty
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