Haves, Halves, and Have-Nots: School Libraries and Student Achievement in California Page: 61

Deusen & Tallman, 1994), had significantly less support staff than did libraries with flexible
scheduling.
In a self-sampling study in which eight elementary, middle and high school library media
specialists collected data about their activities, McIntosh (1994) found that among study
participants, the three who did not have clerical help showed a "marked decrease in the
percentage of time spent in either the role of teacher or instructional consultant" (p. 107).
Similarly, Farwell (1998) noted in a study of collaboration practices at elementary and middle
schools that teachers, principals, and library media specialists all acknowledged collaborative
planning can only happen in the presence of adequate clerical staff in the library media center.
In Indiana (Callison, 2004), full-time library media specialists at all grade levels K-12 were more
likely to participate in instructional planning than were part-time library media specialists. In a
case study focusing on the leadership role of four library media specialists, Underwood (2004)
observed that collaboration between library media specialists and classroom teachers often
comes on top of all other roles and responsibilities, and that "without paraprofessional staffing,
the collaborative programs are doomed to failure" (p.46). Beaird's (1999) study on collaboration
practices of library media specialists included reflections from library media specialists about
inhibitors to collaboration, including this representative comment: "For collaboration to work...I
now believe an aide is necessary to maintain library services" (p. 92). McCracken (2001)
reported from a survey of over 500 school library media specialists that they believe they are not
able to fully implement their roles, and that one of the most frequent barriers to fully
implementing their roles was the lack of clerical staff, resulting in professional staff having less
time for activities such as partnering with classroom teachers to plan lessons and teaching
information literacy skills. In a case study of the change process involved in one high school's

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