The Librain

Well, this post is following fast on the heels of the last one! I have been wandering around the school library blogosphere today reading extremely thought-provoking posts and comments about an issue that affects us all. So, the thought for today is:

How do we convince our school community that we have so much to offer? Have we allowed the development of technologies to marginalise libraries and librarians?

This quote is from Doug Johnson’s Blue Skunk Blog:

If we take an honest look at what we as librarians have done since technology has come into our buildings, as painful as it is to say, we have dropped the ball – big time. Why?

Why have school librarians not had a bigger impact on information and tech literacy integration?

This discussion is going on all around the blogs. Also have a look at Joyce Valenza’s Neverendingsearch Blog on the same issue.

There are several reasons mentioned why we may not have the impact that we would like. Our issues in the UK are even more serious, I would suggest, than those in the US - so I will add in a few of my own.

1. Sexism - most school library staff are women - most school managers are men.
2. Stereotypes - what is the image of librarians in our culture? Say no more…
3. Schitzophrenia and internal battling. What are we for - reading, information literacy, other stuff? How are we trained and qualified, or not?
4. Strategy - because we usually work alone we tend to get bogged down with the small stuff - working with individual teachers rather than lifting our eyes to the bigger picture. Do we think in a long-term strategic way, or are we running around worrying about how tidy our shelves are?
5. Respect - without school library standards in the UK, we struggle with the widely varying quality of school libraries and librarians. Teachers, in many cases, do not know what a school librarian can do for them, unless they have been fortunate enough to meet a good one. They come to us with often very low expectations of our service. We are not good at telling them what they should expect from us. We are often even worse at telling management what we do!
6. Lack of vision and direction - most of us work alone and largely motivate ourselves. Who is there to give us any direction? Schools Library Services? CILIP?? The SLA? We end up developing a vision for ourselves - often helped by our own informal networks rather than any input from professional organisations.
7. Stereotypes again - what is the view of libraries in our culture? Will the library as a book space lead us to a dead-end? As Joyce says under her headline of “Ubiquity”, we need to think and reach out beyond the physical space of the library - “Library must find a way to be a window on a students’ desktops.”
8. Image (Joyce says Brand - just as good). I now work with an assistant who has come to me from a retail environment. She thinks about promotion and branding all of the time - it is in her blood. She has got me thinking about this more as well - how to we create a unique service that is so central to the school that they cannot imagine being without it and us? How do we make sure that what we do is embedded in the school culture? Read what Joyce says about this as she puts it more fluently than I could.

We know that we have so much to offer in our schools. We know that we have a unique contribution to make that could really help our students raise their achievement.

So, it is our fault that we have not made enough impact?

Well it is while since I last posted - various pressures have prevented me. Anyway, thanks to those librarians who have been sending me links to have a look at and think about.

And there is so much to think about!

So, today’s top thing is:

What is the role of the Librarian in today’s school library and maybe tomorrow’s?

I read this post “So just what should librarians be teaching?” from Doug Johnson’s Blue Skunk Blog. It is interesting to see how he discusses the different roles of the school library:

1. Reading Skills
2. Information Literacy
3. Technology Skills

He tries to work out the different balances that could be made between these areas. The diagrams clearly show his ideas.

In the UK, most school library staff do not have teaching qualifications, although most of us do teach. We may also think in different ways to the teacher-librarians in the US, Australia, etc. However, I have, over the years, tried to think more and more as an educator. I do try to balance out these differing roles - with varying degrees of success.

Some challenges are brought about by my own expertise/lack of expertise or my own skills and preferences - for example: I feel confident when helping students to choose books and have created a reading programme for our students, but would be less confident in actually teaching reading. I am happy to listen to students read and love “waving and raving”, but would not begin to know how to teach phonics. Is the teaching of reading the role of the school librarian? I am not sure.

I am looking more and more at how we can use the data held on the school systems such as SIMs in conjunction with our own Library Management Systems. How can we use our students’ reading levels to help them better? Do our schools even test students regularly so that we can measure our contribution to their reading development?

Similarly - I am happy to work with teachers on teaching research skills - particularly planning the search, thinking around the subject, developing keywords, using search engines and so on. I would not be so confident in teaching students how to write up their research, although I would like to get more involved and I would try! What is the role of the school librarian in the later stages of research? I have been sent a link on this and will return to this issue at another time. Also, I know many wonderful librarians who take Information Literacy Skills far beyond basic research - how many of us are confident that we can teach such things as “Critical Thinking” or group problem-solving and where do we go to learn how?

When I took up my present post nearly nine years ago, my ICT skills were definitely more advanced than most teachers and students. I still try to keep up with new developments and find this a very rewarding and exciting area of the job. Now, I think that more teachers are confident with their skills and many students are also. (Although many clearly are not or are over-confident!). Much of the teaching that I do in this area is on an informal ad-hoc level, rather than part of a formal teaching situation. I am learning about new technologies and am using them for my own personal and professional purposes. But, I would like more opportunities to use them with students. Where so we find the oportunities to try out new ideas?

A lot of questions here - do any of you have answers?