This article describes a research center established by Professors Carol Kuhlthau and Ross Todd of Rutgers University in New Brunswick to promote the study of the impact of school library media centers on student learning and the dynamics of effective school library programs. The Center for International Scholarship in School Libraries (CISSL) is located in the School of Communication, Information, and Library Studies and builds on a fifty-year tradition of quality education and research for school library media specialists at Rutgers. In the 1950s, Rutgers Professor Mary Gaver founded the specialization for school librarians in the M.L.S. program and conducted the watershed research on the effectiveness of centralized library services in elementary schools. The Rutgers school library program is currently the top ranked ALA-accredited program in the country. The research initiative of CISSL is to develop practical, replicable methods to assess the impact of effective library media centers on student learning so that school communities can assess the tangible benefits of their library media centers.