Challenges for Rural School Districts

The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) convened two focus groups consisting of the CTO’s and Superintendents for rural districts to ask them what their challenges and opportunities were, with the top four challenges being:

1. Broadband access - For rural districts, access is the most pernicious obstacle to taking the digital leap. Even if a school has internet access, it may not be up to par since it’s not cost-effective for telecommunication providers to lay fiber to remote areas where some students live and many students live far apart from each other and the school.

2. Funding - Rural districts are often funded from a smaller tax base and, because of their smaller size, have a larger percentage of per student spending go to overhead costs such as transportation.

3. People - Rural districts have a difficult time recruiting staff, substitute teachers and support services personnel.

4. Understanding the “why” - Finally, some rural communities may be skeptical of the role of technology in their schools and their communities.

The study stated, however, that opportunities exist at the same time.  Rural districts have unique opportunities due to their smaller size.  They are often nimbler and leadership has more ownership of the schools. Rural districts often have community involvement. Teacher retention is strong – often teachers in the town were once students at those same schools.

CoSN (2018). The challenges and opportunities of rural districts in taking the digital leap. Washington, D.C.: CoSN. http://cosn.org/sites/default/files/Challenges%20and%20Opportunities%20of%20Rural%20Districts%20Taking%20Digital%20Leap.pdf

Status of Academic Libraries in 2008

This report summarizes services, staff, collections, and expenditures of academic libraries in two- and four-year degree-granting postsecondary institutions in the United States. The nation’s 3,827 academic libraries held 1,052,531,290 books, serial backfiles, and other paper materials, including government documents at the end of FY 2008. There were 138.1 million circulation transactions from their general collections. About 22 million documents were lent or borrowed from other libraries and commercial services. The libraries employed 93,438 full-time equivalent staff. Two hundred and twenty-six academic libraries held 1 million or more books, serial backfiles, and documents. In 2008, academic libraries’ expenditures totaled $6.8 billion.

Phan, T., Hardesty, L., Sheckells, C., & Davis, D. (2009). Academic libraries: 2008 – First look. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education.

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED507415.pdf

Value of Academic Libraries

This study investigated the value of academic libraries for teaching and research staff. The study showed that libraries are struggling to find appropriate, and systematic, ways to capture evidence of their value for teaching and research staff. Much work is needed to build an evidence base in this area. Libraries can show their value to teaching and research staff most effectively by describing this in terms of benefits, for example, staff time saved, increased quality of student assignments, increased contact hours. The study found that librarians generally understood the needs of their users in very broad terms, and provided services to meet these needs. Embedded information literacy instruction is highly valued by teaching staff. Increasingly, this is developing into integrated teaching and curriculum development activities.

Creaser, C., & Spezi, V. (2012). Working together: evolving value for academic libraries. Leicestershire, England: Loughborough University. https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui/bitstream/2134/13476/3/NDM%205709%20LISU%20final%20report_WEB.pdf