THE ROLE OF THE SECONDARY SCHOOL LIBRARIAN IN VIRGINIA

The primary purpose of this study was to determine areas of agreement and areas of disagreement among secondary school librarians in Virginia regarding the frequency of performance and the preferred frequency of performance of 32 selected library activities. A questionnaire of the activities was mailed to one-quarter (127) of the secondary school librarians in Virginia. Questionnaires were returned by 71% of the random sample.;Significant differences were found among responses for the remaining 26 library activities indicating a lack of role definition for secondary school librarians in Virginia. Respondents indicated a lack of role definition by the addition of twenty-eight activities in response to an open-ended question concerning their function in the school.;The t test for significant differences was used to determine rank order for the performance of the 32 activities and for the preferred performance of the activities. Findings of the study included six areas of agreement among respondents. They included (1) the organization of materials through a classification system, (2) provision of a card catalog of materials, (3) maintenance of financial records, (4) coordination of orders from local and state film libraries, (5) maintenance of a selection policy for materials, and (6) selection and purchase of materials for recreational reading of students and teachers.