by Annie Augustine ’14

A few years ago, Montgomery County had a budget crunch due to the recession, requiring the school system to decrease its spending. An easy target for cuts, MCPS’ media centers have had to make due with less, and media specialists such as Sherwood’s Joe Reiff have put much thought and consideration into their spending to make sure their facility is a place that meets the interests of students.

The school media center’s budget was cut by one third, yet Reiff still manages to spend $11,000 for the rights to online research databases each year.

“I have … consciously purchased fewer non-fiction books over the years and instead have used that money to purchase more online subscription services, also called research databases,” explained Reiff. “It makes sense to spend more on them than on our print non-fiction collection, especially in a school as large as ours. But we will continue to update and upgrade our print non-fiction materials as an extension of our online reference services.” With a 24-hour website featuring research databases available for the students, the media center does everything it can to help the students.

Despite budget cuts, Sherwood’s book collection has been increasing. In 2006 there were 11,421 books and today there are 12,213. Of this extensive collection, 4,000 books were checked out throughout the 2011-2012 year.

The book collection has been modified to meet the interests of students, increasing the amount of shelf space for fiction books. “Our fiction books are checked out a lot, due in part, I believe, to the fact that [this] generation was raised on the Harry Potter series and developed an early love for fiction,” said Reiff

Even in the recession, Sherwood’s media center is still running strong, in large part due to Reiff and the rest of the staff in the media center: Catherine Boshart, Susan Humphrey and John Williams. “I love my job. I get to work with all of the students and all of the teachers. There is always something new to learn or do, a new topic to explore, new software or new technology … I am very happy that I made the move to this part of the education field,” said Reiff.