California Teacher Librarians & The Differences They Make

In the premier issue of Learning Hub (an online school library research journal from the San Jose State University iSchool), Keith and colleague Mary Ann Hanlan of San Jose State University published an article titled California Teacher Librarians & The Differences They Make. This article reports an analysis of data from the California Department of Education's 2022-23 School Library Evaluation, focusing on how the presence of full- and part-time teacher librarians shapes school library programs in terms of implementation of the state's Model School Library Standards, library staff activities, class activities in the library, types of library access, print and electronic resources, and library budgets.

Librarians in U.S. Public Schools Without Other Kinds of Specialist Educators: The Scale of Opportunities for Instructional Leadership

Also, in Learning Hub's premier issue, Keith and colleague Caitlin Gerrity of Southern Utah University published an article titled Librarians in U.S. Public Schools Without Other Kinds of Specialist Educators: The Scale of Opportunities for Instructional Leadership. This article reports on an analysis of 2019-20 data from the National Teacher & Principal Survey (NTPS) of the National Center for Education Statistics, identifying schools with full- or part-time librarians without other specialist educators in areas such as educational technology, reading, math, science, and general learning.

Employing School Librarians: What School Leaders Tell Us (2024)

In the November 2024 issue of Phi Delta Kappan, Keith and colleagues Debra E. Kachel and Caitlin Gerrity published an article titled Employing School Librarians: What School Leaders Tell Us. This article reports about the final phase of the SLIDE study, Voices of Decision-Makers: How School Leaders Decide About School Librarian Employment

Linking Librarians, Inquiry Learning, and Information Literacy (2020)

In the March 2020 issue of Phi Delta Kappan, Keith and colleague Leslie Kuhlthau Maniotes, co-creator of Guided Inquiry Design, published an article titled Linking Librarians, Inquiry Learning, and Information Literacy.  This article reports on their analysis of Colorado data on the relationship between school librarians embracing inquiry learning and their teaching of a variety of information literacy skills.  In addition to that analysis, they also interviewed school librarians in Colorado and elsewhere about the value of this relationship.

Why School Librarians Matter:  What Years of Research Tell Us (2018)

In the March 2018 issue of Phi Delta Kappan, Keith and colleague Debra E. Kachel of Antioch University Seattle published a meta-analysis of three decades of school library impact studies in an article titled Why School Librarians Matter: What Years of Research Tell Us.

This article was part of a special issue of Phi Delta Kappan magazine focused on “the other adults who matter” in schools.

On July 23, 2020, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced a Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian grant to Antioch University Seattle (AUS) for a three-year research project entitled SLIDE: The School Librarian Investigation--Decline or Evolution? 

As a consultant with the RSL Research Group, Keith was the project's principal investigator, and his longtime colleague Debra E. Kachel of AUS was the project director.

This landmark study investigated what was going on behind the data indicating a steady national decline in school librarian employment since the Great Recession.  To what extent was it accurate?  To what extent was something more complex going on?

Besides analyzing available data, this study interviewed staffing decision-makers in school districts that appear to have gained and lost the most librarians over recent years to learn what kinds of changes they are making, why, and how those changes are affecting reported numbers of librarians.

In addition to issuing reports, articles, infographics, social media posts, and videos, the project  created a dynamic website--https://libSLIDE.org--that continues to provide annually updated interactive tools allowing users to extract, and chart data they select for geography they define.

The project was supported by an Advisory Council of exemplary library and education leaders, national partners (Future Ready Schools and ISTE), and partners in all 50 states who served as intermediaries to districts selected systematically for study.

The project ran from September 2020 to August 2023.

In the March 2018 issue of School Library Journal, Keith and colleague Debra E. Kachel of Antioch University Seattle published a series of articles about the alarming loss of school librarian positions since 2000 and especially since 2010 as well as the many factors that are reshaping the structure of public education and thus the fate of school librarians:

School Librarian, Where Art Thou? by Keith Curry Lance

There’s Little National Data About School Librarians.  What Happened? by Keith Curry Lance

A Perfect Storm Impacts School Librarian Numbers by Debra E. Kachel

A companion article titled Changing Times: School Librarian Staffing Status, co-authored by Kachel and Lance, appeared in the April issue of Teacher Librarian magazine.

In 2014, Keith and RSL Research Group colleagues Bill Schwarz and Marcia J. Rodney studied the impact of school libraries and librarians on behalf of the South Carolina Association of School Librarians.  This two-part study was titled How Libraries Transform Schools by Contributing toStudent Success: Evidence Linking South Carolina School Libraries and PASS & HSAP Results.

First, the impact of libraries and librarians on state test results was assessed using available data from a 2013 statewide survey of school libraries.  

Second, how school librarians impact the teaching of specific academic standards in reading and language arts was assessed based on original surveys of administrators, teachers, and librarians.  Rather than focusing on the usual subject-level test results, this study is using more detailed standard-level test results.

A 2016 article in School Library Journal, co-authored by Keith and colleague Karen Gavigan of the University of South Carolina, summarized the results of the study.

In 2012, Keith and his RSL Research Group colleagues, Marcia J. Rodney and Bill Schwarz, completed a 2011-12 National Leadership Grant research project funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The report on this study is titled Supporting the Infrastructure Needs of 21st Century School Library Programs. Notably, this project initiated a long-term collaboration between Keith and the project director Debra E. Kachel with whom he later worked on the SLIDE IMLS project.