Brewer librarian named to national committee

BREWER – A Brewer High School librarian has been appointed to a national committee helping needy school libraries buy books.

Marilyn Joyce is one of 10 members on the advisory committee of the Laura Bush Foundation for America’s Libraries, which plans this fall to begin awarding grants to school libraries so they can increase their collections.

Representing Maine as well as the Northeast region, Joyce is the only school librarian on the advisory group, which includes educators, administrators, public librarians and literacy specialists.

Joyce will help determine the guidelines under which schools can apply for the grants, she said Saturday during a telephone interview from her home in Lincoln.

Other advisory committee members have been assigned to come up with a statement about the purpose of the grant and to decide on the application process.

Individual allocations the first year could be about $3,000, according to Joyce, who said the foundation so far has raised $5 million and plans to “reach out to some pretty powerful businesses and corporations.”

Notified in May about her appointment, Joyce last week attended the first-ever White House Conference on School Libraries where Laura Bush announced the creation of the foundation.

It wasn’t only her nomination to the committee that delighted Joyce, but the “clear message” that emerged from the conference that the more a school invests in its library the better students’ grades and test scores will be.

Administrators and researchers provided “incontrovertible evidence that there’s a link between student achievement and strong library programs,” said Joyce.

One researcher said both the size of the library staff and the collection “is a direct predictor of reading scores,” she said.

Getting that news to administrators who may consider libraries as simply “an added expense” instead of an investment is vital, according to Joyce.

The challenge for Maine is not only to acquire grant money to help poor communities, “but to improve the libraries in communities that don’t meet the criteria,” she said.

The first lady was moved to establish the foundation after traveling around the country as part of a reading initiative and noticing “so many poor areas where kids don’t have access to books, where books are falling apart and where some science books date back to the 1970s,” Joyce said.

Laura Bush is determined that the money be used solely to purchase printed material, the Brewer librarian said.

“Yes, the Internet is wonderful and gives us access to materials, but nothing replaces a book and a librarian and a library,” Joyce said.

Before librarians purchase a book, they ensure its quality by poring over reading lists and book reviews, Joyce pointed out. “With the Internet it’s hard to determine quality,” she said.

A former English teacher and librarian at Stearns High School in Millinocket, Joyce, 52, said she was chosen to serve on the prestigious committee partly because of a book she helped write several years ago.

Used in a number of colleges, the “how-to” book, as Joyce calls it, includes real-life examples of Stearns students who went through a step-by-step process in which they learned how to gather information and use it to make decisions and to solve real life problems.

Joyce, who teaches the procedure in workshops and online, said it underscores the changing role of librarians.

Laughing as she recalled the stereotypical image of a librarian as “a woman with her hair in a bun, telling everybody to shhh,” Joyce said librarians once focused mainly on helping youngsters locate information.

“But now we’re researchers too,” she said. “We’re partners with teachers, helping kids process information and showing them strategies that help them better understand the information and how to apply it.”

The White House conference pointed out the stark difference between the new and the old, she said.

“Libraries no longer are warehouses for books. They’re also not just computer labs. They’re active places where kids are interacting with the librarian, with the teacher, and with each other – learning and doing projects together.”