Managing InfoTech in School Library Media Centers:

Rating:
Summary: Definitive Work in Info Tech
Review: What is Information Technology? It can have varied meanings that are situational and are based on occupation. This work, geared to practicing school/teacher-librarians, district library coordinators, and library science students in the field of school librarianship, includes the author focus. Also know as infotech, it is "interpreted very broadly to encompass a range of technologies and systems used in or available to today's school library media centers." She continues with, "Information technology includes hardware, networks, systems, software, information structures, and information in electronic (digital) form. It includes technologies used to create, collect, process, store, transmit, access, retrieve, and manipulate information in text, numeric, audio, visual, and multimedia formats."

The work explores four major applications of information technology in school library media centers: Library Administration, Communications, Information Retrieval, and Educational and Recreational Resources. There is a chapter devoted to each of these applications. Each chapter uses a variety of tables and diagrams to exemplify the concepts presented by Clyde. The chapters are thorough, easy to read, and provide a wealth of information. These are followed by three additional chapters: An Infotech Plan, Implementing Infotech in the School Library Media Center, and Administering Infotech in the School Library Media Center. The latter chapters carry out the necessities presented earlier.

As information technology becomes more ingrained in school libraries, tradition management approaches need to be altered or abandoned to allow for more efficient techniques. Even though the focus of the work is the school library, the management of information technology can have a positive impact on other areas in the school setting.

Even though the work is intended to supplement other professional materials in the field, it could easily stand alone as a very definitive work on infotech for school librarianship. The work flows nicely, explaining and presenting concepts without losing the reader. Clyde has drawn together very practical approaches.

Highly recommended.

Reviewed by Peter Genco, Teacher-Librarian and Technology Team Leader, Fairview High School, Fairview, PA, USA email: [e-mail]