The School Media Program: Emerging Multi-Media Services

A M of school media services exists to serve the students, the teachers, and the educational goals of the school.Any description of emerging multi-media services and their evolutionary development is directly related to the trends and problems of education in general.These media services have evolved over a period of many years beginning with the development of schools and learning materials in the thirteen original states.Many agencies, including schools, libraries, boards of education, state departments of education, the professional associations (the American Library Association and the National Education Association and its constituent departments), as well as private foundations and interested citizens have been involved in the development of these services.Historically the first public support for learning resources was given for public school libraries by New York and Massachusetts and dated in the early 1800s.These school district libraries were little used; their meager collections were more suitable for adults than school students, and staff and funds were small or nonexistent.For the most part early school libraries were closely associated with public library service to schools as well as with the development of a literature separate from that of textbooks.The first comprehensive study of library service in the United States deplored the fact that young people below the age of fourteen were not served.lIn the years that followed public libraries developed children's rooms and services2 In reports of the early history of the American Library Association and the National Education Association many studies were made of cooperation for library services to youth, although resources for teaching and learning planned especially for