The evolution of Curriculum Materials Centers (CMCs) in supporting teacher education is reflected in the use of specialized resources, outreach, and collaboration. A survey of 68 CMCs highlights diverse outreach strategies, programming efforts, and faculty partnerships while identifying challenges such as limited staff, funding, and time. Best practices for adapting CMCs to evolving educational standards and resource constraints are discussed, ensuring their continued critical role in shaping future educators. The analysis provides insights into how CMCs navigate current trends and overcome obstacles to maintain effective support for teacher education programs. Keywords: curriculum material centers, teacher education programs, collaboration, outreach, programming
Pre-service teachers increasingly require access to current instructional materials, test-preparation resources, and hands-on manipulatives to meet rising state expectations and certification demands. This article presents a case study of the multi-year renovation of a School of Education resource room at a mid-sized regional university in the south-central United States. Through a sustained partnership between an Education Faculty member and the Education Librarian, the space evolved from a cluttered storage area into a structured, student-centered Curriculum, Assessment, and Learning Materials Lab. The narrative outlines the historical context, redesign process, cataloging system development, collection weeding, student worker training, and ongoing assessment plans. Lessons learned and future directions highlight the importance of collaboration, intentional design, and data-informed decision-making in supporting pre-service educators.
Curriculum Materials Centers (CMCs) play a vital role in supporting teacher education programs by providing instructional materials, educational technologies, and professional development resources. However, despite their importance, CMCs remain an underexplored area of academic research; specifically, there is a lack of quantitative assessment of CMCs’ practices. This study employs an exploratory survey design to examine trends in curriculum materials centers and collections within U.S. academic libraries, focusing on information literacy instruction, instructional formats, technology integration, and faculty collaboration. Findings indicate that CMC librarians and education liaison librarians are actively engaged in information literacy instruction, particularly for undergraduate and master’s students, typically through in-person sessions. Differences across institution sizes were observed in access to educational technologies, use of instructional formats, and collaboration between librarians and education faculty. Respondents reported only partial alignment between CMC technologies and PreK–12 classroom practices, and larger institutions were more likely to provide dedicated technological infrastructure and more frequent, targeted instructional sessions. Although many respondents described collaboration with education faculty, perceptions of equal partnership were mixed. This study contributes to understanding CMCs’ evolving roles and underscores the need for strategic adaptation to enhance their continued relevance in teacher education programs. The article represents Part One of a two-part analysis, reporting on the structural and demographic aspects of CMCs, information literacy, technology, and collaborations. Keywords: CMCs, curriculum materials centers, education libraries, survey, educational technology, information literacy, teacher education programs
This case study explores the strategies used to redistribute materials among available shelves in a curriculum materials center after deaccessioning and relocation projects. The librarian estimated imposed fill ratios based on collection segments which were then mapped onto a floor plan to efficiently shift materials. The estimated imposed fill ratio allowed for the consideration of variables that are often overlooked when using a strictly mathematical approach to calculate a fill ratio. Strategies to improve browsability of shifted collections such as call number range breaks on shelves and front-facing covers were key factors included in the project.
Library staff developed a project to reclassify the Curriculum Materials Collection of a specialty library on the campus of a regional comprehensive university from its custom classification system derived from those developed during the 1960s and 1970s to Dewey Decimal Classification. While this system had the advantage of browsability for patrons who were familiar with previous use, its unusual nature made training patrons and staff challenging. The transition to Dewey is expected to ease training and use, enhance resource sharing, and allow student teachers to transfer their library skills to their new schools.
This paper will examine the findings of a survey on the job roles and responsibilities of Education librarians (academic librarians with liaison responsibilities for the field of Education). Existing literature on Education librarianship has focused on particular facets of the job role, including the unique instructional needs of Education students and specific instruction and outreach initiatives. However, the literature lacks a comprehensive picture of the full spectrum of contemporary Education librarianship. This article provides a snapshot of the diverse educational backgrounds and varied responsibilities of Education librarians related to instruction and instructional design, reference, embedded librarianship, outreach, collaboration, and collection development.
Project-based learning (PBL) allows students to identify and find solutions to real-world problems using inquiry-based learning. With the exception of Correll and Bornstein (2018), very little has been written about using PBL to redesign college and university Curriculum Resource Centers. The authors of this article used PBL in conjunction with the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Guidelines for Curriculum Materials Centers (CMCs) and the three themes for PBL success in higher education identified by Lee et al. (2014) to work with a small class of upper-level elementary education pre-service teachers to redesign an academic library Curriculum Resource Center.
This case study will describe the labor and collaborative efforts to-date made by an embedded librarian to pilot an OER textbook creation and/or adoption program in her liaison area—a school of education serving approximately 850 graduate and 150 undergraduates at a private Catholic university on the West Coast. This case study will explore the initial project goals, successes (e.g., administrative support and graduate student enthusiasm), and challenges (e.g., faculty buy-in, unbalanced labor, OER creation support) encountered in this project. The study will also discuss the librarian’s professional development undertakings in effort to fill OER creation and platform knowledge gaps. Finally, the study will discuss the librarian’s next steps for this project in the upcoming academic year.
School librarians work with students across their organizations, including those with disabilities such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, little is known about how prepared school librarians are to serve these students. Using a mixed-methods survey, this study sought to explore training school librarians have taken about ASD and students with disabilities, as well as the effects of training on librarian confidence and library services. Based on results, librarians who received training through their school district or professional development outside of coursework reported being more confident in supporting students with ASD in the school library.
This overview demonstrates the need for school librarians to consider supplementing coding instruction with ethical discussions. School librarians are increasingly incorporating coding into library instruction through play, tutorials, collaboration in content areas, and design thinking projects. To enhance students’ ethical decision making and empathy for others, school librarians can also incorporate ethical decision-making into coding activities. In this article, the authors explain why this is important, and present an ethical discussion model. These strategies may help school librarians work towards teaching social justice issues as part of coding programming.
Improvisation is an effective tool for developing actors’ skills. It is also a powerful tool for enhancing customer service skills in the contemporary academic, public, or special library environment. Interactions between library users and librarians / library staff can often be complicated and require excellent listening and communication skills. This article explores how improvisation training can help reinforce customer service skills while also enhancing team building, team cohesion, and interpersonal engagement skills for these library employees. Such exercises are not only enjoyable and entertaining for library employees, they also help develop essential skills which enhance their customer service interactions.
In this project, co-investigators explored how college and university curriculum centers are addressing challenges with K-12 electronic textbooks (particularly acquisition, cataloging, and access) and implementing technology-focused services for pre-service teachers. The results of this research have provided guidance for planning the future of the curriculum center in Milner Library at Illinois State University, which comprises 2.5% of the library’s holdings and accounts for almost 25% of the library’s circulation. We identified service gaps and opportunities for improvement and are in the process of acting upon our findings, such as leveraging campus partnerships, integrating makerspace technologies, and exploring different models for ordering and processing the collection
