Digital Commons Network^™

According to recent Association of Research Libraries (ARL) statistics, the cost of employing a student assistant is approximately 25% of the hourly wage of a librarian (ARL 1997). From this cost perspective alone, there is a strong incentive for academic libraries to staff with student employees rather than librarians wherever possible. It appears student assistants will continue to be an integral part of many academic library departments. Nowhere else, however, is this more true than in academic media centers. Depending upon the scope of the collection and services offered by the particular media center student assistants perform a variety of …