The problem of this study is that of discerning the board positions, the roles, and the perceptions of Black elected public school board members in Mississippi as perceptions relate to racial discrimination, interpersonal relationships, and primary education interests. Major problems in education as perceived ranged from "racism" to "finances." Major contributions to education in Mississippi in the last five years as perceived ranged from "court decisions" to "election of Blacks to education positions." General conclusions are that less racial discrimination exists in school systems with Blacks represented on school boards; however, some racism is still perceived by Black board members.

The main purpose of this study was to identify the major obstacles to cooperation as perceived by school library media specialists in the state of Mississippi and to determine if members of the Coastal Mississippi Library Cooperative (CMLC) believe that there are fewer obstacles to cooperation than do non-members. The secondary purpose was to evaluate the CMLC to some extent to determine if success was achieved through organization when defined by the variables, planning, governance, funding, communication, administration, and evaluation. The population of the study was all of the librarians (academic, public, school, and special) in the six-county area which comprises the CMLC, and a random sample of public school librarians throughout the remainder of the state. All of the school librarians were sent a questionnaire that requested their responses to statements of barriers to cooperation. All of the librarians in the CMLC region were sent a questionnaire to obtain their perceptions of participation in the CMLC. Pour librarians, members of the CMLC, were Interviewed to obtain information on the organizational factors of the CMLC. Data received from school library media specialists were submitted to various statistical tests. The Chi-Square statistic was used on the demographic portion of the questionnaire, …