INDIANA UNIVERSITY PURDUE UNIVERSITY INDIANAPOLIS

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EMPLOYERS COME KNOCKING ON DOOR OF MEDIA SPECIALISTS

As a new teacher, Brandon Kepley struggled to find a job.

After he went back to graduate school to become a media specialist, schools came knocking on his door, months before he graduated, hoping he would consider working for them.

Kepley's situation isn't unique. The same Indianapolis township school corporation that hired him snatched two classmates in the IUPUI Master of Library Science degree program to fill media specialist job openings.

Media specialists trained through programs like the one at IUPUI are a hot ticket item as schools seek to equip children with the knowledge and skills to obtain, evaluate and present information.

Indiana University's School of Library and Information Science has already moved to address the shortage by expanding enrollments, recruiting full-time faculty and developing distance education initiatives at the IUPUI campus.

"There will be twice as many openings for school library media specialists in Indiana this year than certified educators who can fill the jobs," said Dr. Daniel Callison, who was appointed Professor of Library Science and Executive Associate Dean of SLIS at IUPUI, effective July 1, 2001. "As more people become aware of job opportunities and the growth in positions in public and academic libraries, enrollment will increase."

"My experience is that there are more openings than people to fill them," said Kepley, who has one remaining class to complete before graduating from the MLS program in December. "Having been through searches for teaching positions, and struggling to get my foot in the door, I found the opportunities for media specialists unbelievable."

Kepley taught English at the Juvenile Center since 1998, a position that also required him to run the facility's library. He found he obtained great satisfaction in helping students find information and select books. "That's what got me interested in Library Science."

Kepley will leave the Juvenile Center shortly to move to Pike Township Schools' Lincoln Middle School.

Another MLS classmate, Sally Hamlin, is already at work at Snacks Crossing, a new elementary school in Pike Township. She also was brought on board months before she received her degree in order to assist the school with obtaining media related materials it needed to open its doors last month.

She has joined a field she once thought about getting a degree in years ago as an undergraduate, but changed her mind when the college she was attending closed its library science school, as did a number of other colleges and universities at the time.

A veteran teacher who taught second and fourth grades for 15 years, Hamlin said she reached a point where she decided she still wanted to teach, but didn't want a full-time classroom.

As media specialist, she oversees the school's library, computer lab, media retrieval system, laser disc players and video disc layers, sends videos out to classrooms, and hopes to begin broadcasting announcements throughout the school. She also is in charge of a distance learning room, equipped with a camera and television that enables kids at her school to talk to kids in other schools or participate in special televised events at other facilities, like the Indianapolis Zoo.

When students come to the library, Hamlin, in collaboration with their teachers, is able to show them how to find the information they need and how to take that information and present it, using computer tools such as power point presentation to enhance their work.

Hamlin said the challenge is to integrate all of the technology that is available into a school setting and teach kids not only how to find information, but how to evaluate it once they find it.

"They can find whatever they want, but the problem is that not all that information is correct," she said. "Our job is to show them not only how to search for information, but to distinguish between what information is good and what information is not so good."

As media specialist, Hamlin said she has the advantage of working with children throughout the school, rather than those in one class. "I am affecting more kids than those in a single classroom."

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