Lillian Lewis Batchelor
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Lillian Lewis Batchelor | |
|---|---|
 Batchelor in 1930 | |
| Born | November 17, 1907 Camden, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Died | June 28, 1977 (aged 69) |
Lillian Lewis Batchelor (November 17, 1907 – June 28, 1977) was an American librarian, known for her advocacy for the creation and proper staffing of elementary school libraries.[1] She was president of the American Association of School Librarians and served as a councilor to the American Library Association.[2]
Batchelor had worked in libraries since high school, and was a public and school librarian in New Jersey and Pennsylvania before becoming the supervisor of high school libraries for the Philadelphia School District's Board of Education.[1] She served in this position from 1948 through 1966 when she became the Assistant Director of Libraries for the district.[1] She was also an adjunct professor at Drexel University's School of Library Science.[1] She was formative in creating the American Library Association's Standards for School Library Programs in 1960.[1]
Batchelor is also credited with creating 166 elementary school libraries within Philadelphia throughout the mid 1960s.[1] These libraries were created, but were difficult to staff with trained librarians; Batchelor, through her work with Drexel University, created an internship program to educate school librarians, a position partially funded by the Philadelphia School District's Board of Education.[1]
Batchelor wanted librarians to look at books as "the gunpowder of the mind" to encourage and excite young people.[1] She was an early advocate of instructional materials centers, which combined traditional libraries with ways to access multimedia materials useful for teaching.[3] She was particularly interested in students who were motivated and/or gifted and edited and assembled a collection of papers entitled Reading Guidance for the Gifted in 1962. Designed to be useful to the non-specialist, this collection combined theory and practice to encourage schools to have enrichment activities for their gifted pupils.[4]
