It has long been my theory that there are two realities: one is reality and the other is your perception of reality. It may be futile for me to argue that the perception of American Libraries as oblivious to the work of school librarians is wrong, when that seems to be the perception that is making the rounds. But if it weren’t futile, I would argue that American Libraries is very relevant to school librarians and struggles every month and every week in American Libraries Online and American Libraries Direct to include stories that are not only relevant but school-library-specific.

The recent onslaught of criticism is both mystifying and troubling. Brian Kenney’s analysis of American Libraries content in the April issue of School Library Journal seems to back the notion that the editors here simply don’t pay any attention to school libraries. He is incorrect.

I suppose I should be grateful for Kenney’s mention of American Libraries. There was a time when both School Library Journal and Library Journal would seldom if ever mention American Libraries in print. It’s particularly hard to contradict Kenney’s editorial because it is otherwise so incredibly flattering, in a backhanded sort of way. But here goes.

Kenney says he agrees that school librarians are “consistently overlooked, neglected, and omitted from American Libraries.” He says he did a quick analysis of two years worth of feature articles and found only three related to school libraries. He asserts that “libraries” is code for public libraries and “youth” is code for children’s and young adult services, and "students" refers only to college students.

March 2007

The first thing I did after reading Kenney’s article was to look at the March 2007 issue with these objections in mind. March was the issue, after all, that made some school librarians go ballistic because there were no school-librarian bloggers interviewed for the cover feature. In the ALA news section, there were: “Target to Sponsor El Dia de los Ninos,” “School Libraries Count! Survey Begins,” “Army Librarian Creates Story Time Program,” and a piece about children’s author Ilene Cooper winning the Prairie State Award. Of the 14 stories in the section, most were library-type neutral—an article about ALA member libraries receiving the Oprah books, a list of the petition candidates for ALA Council (which included a number of school librarians BTW), etc. etc.

In the March U.S and international news section, there were 18 stories. One was about a high school band at a program at the county public library. Another was about middle school students celebrating Martin Luther King Day. Another was about a school library refusing to remove Lovely Bones from its shelves. And still another was about county schools and public libraries keeping Harry Potter on the shelves. The remaining news stories involved a range of libraries—government, national, academic, and public.

In March, our columnists wrote about a variety of topics. Meredith Farkas wrote about teen-centered podcasting. And in “Youth Matters” Jennifer Burek Pierce talked about ways to sow an enthusiasm for reading in kids. If arguing against the perception that American Libraries ignores school librarians weren’t futile, I would point out that the launch of Pierce’s column this year was American Libraries’ way of responding to an obvious need for a column that addressed the concerns of librarians who work with young people in a variety of settings. Kenney is correct when he says many ALA constituencies are screaming for more ink, and it is impossible to install a column that matches the agenda of each and every one of them. We don’t have that much ink in our well.

Instead, what we have tried to do is install columns and departments that cross all types of libraries and librarians, that reach for common ground. In "Tech News," we wrote about the debut of Windows Vista. In "Technically Speaking," we presented an exhibit hall roundup from Midwinter in Seattle. The "Internet Librarian" column is about Second Life. "Public Perception" includes quotes from the general media about how the public sees librarians; the quotes are often type-neutral, and most prominent in the March issue was “If only there were someone in town skilled at storing and retrieving large amounts of information, evaluating it for the quality of its sources, and helping people to find answers to their questions” (a commentary lamenting the West Virginia Supreme Court’s decision to overturn state laws requiring some county school boards to give a portion of their tax collections to their county libraries). In “Librarian’s Library” there is a great review of Crash Course in Children’s Services, and most of the rest of the recommended professional reading does not apply to any one type of librarianship exclusively. In the “Calendar” there are school-librarian-specific events listed along with all the others.

March news topics and news photos were carefully selected from dozens of articles we learned about from daily newspaper and website searching. The articles for ALA and national news sections are culled from American Libraries Online and American Libraries Direct, which in a year’s time has totally transformed our ability to cover news. For example, every single ALA news release from every single division, round table, and office is delivered to the membership in American Libraries Direct.

A magazine is more than its cover features. Look at the April 2007 issue: the top news stories (the criterion for their selection being their news value to librarianship in general) were: "Newbery-Winner's 'Scrotum' Reference Raises Ruckus," "Sports Illustrated: Libraries Don't Need Swimsuit Issue" (school libraries, that is), "Deficits Bedevil Nation's School Librarians," and "Social Networking Under Scutiny."

November 2002

April 2005

September 2005

Earlier in my stint as editor of American Libraries, it did seem to me that we were not doing our best to make sure that our selection of news stories and features was as inclusive as it should be. Past AASL president Helen Adams really helped turn things around. We had talked several times about the need for American Libraries to do more on children’s services and school libraries in particular. We cooked up an article on the privacy rights of minors, which Adams wrote and the magazine published in 2002. It was a cover story and a huge hit. She then served on the American Libraries Advisory Committee in 2004, and that really made a difference. We have even tried very hard to be sure we include school libraries in our annual April showcase of new and renovated facilities. In April 2005, the cover featured a public school library in New York. In September, we featured the cover story “Why School Libraries Won’t Be Left Behind.” Very few American Libraries covers are type-of-library specific, having been deliberately created to be about topics that are as inclusive as possible: planned giving and volunteerism, the next generation of librarians, books, retirement, awards, Hurricane Katrina, balancing the online life, race and place. The forthcoming May cover and accompanying story will be about Harry Potter.

American Libraries has never tried to compete with School Library Journal. What would be the point? School Library Journal does a fantastic job of covering the field, and in fact, school librarians are the only ALA division members who have anything that comes close to SLJ in comprehensive coverage of a special area of librarianship. It would be foolish for American Libraries and Library Journal (which covers school libraries less than AL) to try to duplicate the work of SLJ. If ALA has an SLJ equivalent, it would be AASL’s Knowledge Quest, which, though it does a fine job, has a way to go before it catches up to SLJ, which has built a readership and advertiser base over many years of quality content delivery.

American Libraries receives dozens of feature-length article manuscripts that it cannot publish. Often they are too specific to library type and we refer them to a division journal—most often to Public Libraries, the Public Library Association division magazine. But these articles—or even proposals for articles—are almost never by school librarians.

In 2005, American Libraries named the funding crisis in school libraries as one of the top 10 library stories of the year (December issue, #6 “Funders Fail School Libraries"). Back in September 2005 we had struggled to put together the “Why School Libraries Won’t Be Left Behind” feature. We finally decided that Senior Editor Beverly Goldberg—who chose her two children’s elementary school based on the quality of its library—would write it herself. Every time one of us writes an article that is school-library specific, we realize how inextricably bound school libraries are to the school and hence to the field of education. Thank goodness for people like Barbara Jeffus, California Department of Education school library consultant, who are able to make sense of that interconnectivity and to break out the school library story. AASL Executive Director Julie Walker helped us find people to interview, and we were very proud of what we dug up for that story, though baffled about why the school library story (as opposed to the school story) is so little represented in the mainstream media. But I have to admit, we were more than a little disappointed that reader response to the "Left Behind" feature was pretty much silence.

A while back, after being scolded by so many groups for neglect, we published some suggestions for how to help American Libraries’ coverage be more diverse. The squeaky wheel does get the grease, so in that way I am glad that school librarians spoke up about being left out of “Mattering in the Blogosphere.” Because they did, we have published a second installment, which will be in your mailbox in May. I urge you however to take a closer look before you conclude that anyone is “keeping school librarians out of AL,” as Kenney has suggested.

And while you’re here, read more about a school librarian who changed lives. American Libraries is a conversation swimming pool. Jump in, the water’s warm.

—Leonard Kniffel, Editor in Chief, American Libraries