From:


Education Libraries, Volume 34, Number 1, Summer 2011  
3 

 

 
Wearing Many Hats 
By Jacqueline Snider, Editor 
 
Several months ago, a former editor of this journal, 
Scott Walters, sent out a call for chapters for an 
upcoming book on educational librarianship. I was 
intrigued. Education librarians wear many hats as this 
issue demonstrates. From helping students with their 
dissertations, assisting multicultural programs, 
selecting materials that accurately represent Native 
Americans, and using online learning for library 
science education, we do it all. 
 
One task that never changes is to provide intense 
reference service by reaching out to our community of 
education librarians. By way of demonstrating this, let 
me give you an example. Several years ago, a 
researcher asked me to locate an important paper by 
J.B. Sympson and R.D. Hetter presented in 1985 at the 
annual meeting of the Military Testing Association in 
San Diego. A search in ERIC turned up a microfiche 
copy of the Proceedings (ED338627). Much to my 
disappointment the paper was not on the fiche. I shared 
my concern with Anna Marie Guengerich, a testing 
librarian at The University of Iowa’s College of 
Education. After speaking with one of the authors, 
Anna Marie learned that the paper was never published 
in the Proceedings and that a 1997 paper contains the 
same information including the algorithm that most 
psychometricians were after.  
 
The plot thickens somewhat when I ran a search in ISI 
Web of Knowledge and discovered that over 79 
researchers incorrectly cite the Hetter and Sympson 
paper in the Proceedings. In the interim, Anna Marie 
went one step further by talking to the faculty with 
whom she works closely. She discovered that one 
professor actually attended the presentation and had a 
copy of the non-published paper, thus confirming that a 

print copy of the paper exists although not on 
microfiche from ERIC. 
 
So what does this all prove, you ask? First, embedded 
connections and networking saved the day. Without 
Anna Marie’s excellent contacts, we would still be 
stumped. Second, while microfiche is no longer the 
cutting edge of digitization, the format preserved a 
copy of the proceedings which revealed that the paper 
was not included. Third, librarians--academic, special, 
and public--collaborate with each other and the outside 
community to find answers and take advantage of 
opportunities to form new connections. Fourth, I 
welcome a book on education librarians; it’s about 
time. 
 
In the interest of collaboration, I want to thank the 
editorial board for their time, effort and valuable 
contributions. A special note of appreciation is in order 
to Lesley Farmer for her herculean proof-reading 
assistance. 
 
References 
Hetter, R.D., & Sympson, J.B. (1997). Item exposure-

control in the CAT-ASVAB. In W.A. Sands, B.K. 
Waters, & J.R. McBride (Eds.), Computerized 
adaptive testing: From Inquiry to operation (pp. 
141-1440). Washington, DC: American 
Psychological Association.  

 
Sympson, J.B., & Hetter, R.D. (1985). Controlling 

item-exposure rates in computerized adaptive 
testing. Proceedings of the 27th Annual Meeting of 
the Military Testing Association; Held in San 
Diego, California on 21-25 October 1985. Navy 
Personnel Research and Development Center, pp. 
973-977.

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