Della Curtis: when it comes to Baltimore County's school libraries, Curtis has a knack for making big things happen. (Innovators' Spotlight).

You won't find another media center in Baltimore County like the one at New Town High School--it was created with the help of a dozen media specialists who spent three years working on it from scratch. When the school opens its doors in August, students will walk into a state-of-the-art library equipped with more than 50 computers, a television studio, a multimedia production lab, and an advanced automation system, not to mention a customized 18,000-volume collection and video distribution system to disseminate video programming to classrooms. The collaborative effort behind this sprawling library is certainly a promising sign of things to come: media specialists will soon be expected to play a much larger instructional role than ever before.

The person responsible for securing the county's wide support for school librarians is Della Curtis, coordinator of Baltimore County Public Schools' office of library information services. When Curtis landed this job serving the nation's 24th largest school district …