School Library Research Rocks

An Examination of Five Years of School Library Research

Abstract

This research examined the state-of-the-art of research in school librarianship. Similar trends from previous research were confirmed: research in school librarianship is published in two major journals -- School Library (Media) Research and School Libraries Worldwide. Almost 80% of the research was carried out in the United States. There is a small core group of researchers working in the area of school librarianship. About half of all research is by a single author. The main themes from the research included collaboration between teachers and school librarian, technology integration, the instructional role of school librarians, professional development, analysis of materials, information literacy instruction, practices and assessment, hiring, professional development and retention of school librarians, use of multimedia resources, role of school librarians in the provision of health information, motivation of students, and research in other parts of the world.

Frameworks (Aharony, 2011; Koufogiannakis, Slater & Crumley, 2005; Mardis, 2011) were incomplete and the authors present a new framework for categorizing school library research, in particular, but also LIS research, in general.