An academic library's purpose is to support the teaching and research of the college or university. Most academic libraries are much larger than public libraries. Generally, non-academic material is not found in an academic library. Popular best-sellers, self-help books, repair manuals, and the like are found in public libraries. Since public libraries rarely have scholarly books or research journals, your research should be done at an academic library.The school library is integral to the teaching and learning process. The school library facilitates the work of the classroom teacher and ensures each student has equitable access to resources, irrespective of home opportunities or constraints. While the role of the school library remains constant, its design, digital platform, strategies and tools change as pedagogy and technology changes.
The highly technological environment of 21st-century schools has significantly redefined the role of school librarians by presenting the opportunity to assume leadership through technology integration. Despite the abundance of literature that has suggested the need for and the importance of school librarians to be a proactive leaders in technology integration, this role is one that has been ignored in the research arena and left undefined for school administrators, teachers, and the school librarians themselves, leading to uncertainty concerning how school librarians enact this role in practice. This research, based on distributed-leadership theory, investigates current practice of accomplished school librarians to identify what factors are enabling some to thrive as technology integration leaders and what factors are hindering others. This report of the results includes the initial identification and categorization of the enablers and barriers experienced by school librarians in enacting a leadership role in technology integration, a discussion of implications for the profession, and areas of future research.