A decade of studies reviewed in School Library Research volume 21 opening article

CHICAGO – Volume 21 of School Library Research (SLR), the American Association of School Librarians’ (AASL) peer-reviewed online journal, opens with a new article providing a review of a decades worth of studies in school librarianship. SLR promotes and publishes high-quality original research concerning the management, implementation and evaluation of school library programs. Articles can be accessed for free at www.ala.org/aasl/slr.

In their article, "Still Polishing the Diamond: School Library Research over the Last Decade," Melissa P. Johnston, associate professor at the University of West Georgia, and Lucy Santos Green, associate professor at the University of South Carolina, provide a follow-up to Delia Neuman's influential article “Research in School Library Media for the Next Decade: Polishing the Diamond.” In 2003, Neuman developed questions grounded in the research and called on researchers to “polish the diamond and make it shine more brightly in its own right and sparkle more valuably in the larger field of education.”



In their study, Johnston and Green follow Neuman’s guiding questions through a systematic review of the literature from 2004-2014, and find there is still much “polishing” to be done by school library researchers. Like Neuman, the team defines new “facets” that provide future direction to “move forward both the field’s research agenda and its effective practice.”

School Library Research (ISSN: 2165-1019) is the successor to School Library Media Research (ISSN: 1523-4320) and School Library Media Quarterly Online. The journal is peer-reviewed, indexed by H. W. Wilson's Library Literature and by the ERIC Clearinghouse on Information & Technology and continues to welcome manuscripts that focus on high-quality original research concerning the management, implementation and evaluation of school library programs.

The American Association of School Librarians, www.aasl.org, a division of the American Library Association (ALA), empowers leaders to transform teaching and learning.

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