The Librain

As this is my blog, I can say what I want! So, I will explain to anyone who is interested why I am having a break from SLN (School Librarians’ Network). Sorry – it is a long post!

First of all, I must say that I think SLN is a wonderful source of support for school librarians and Elizabeth Bentley, the list owner, deserves a medal for starting it and maintaining it so well for more than ten years. However, from time to time things get out of hand on the list. Sometimes I have been part of that myself – I am not perfect! Today was the final straw for me and I decided that the only way to stop myself from sending a message I might later regret, would be to unsubscribe for a while.

What sent me over the top was this comment:

“With the help of SLN, a subscription to SLA and the purchase of its very good Guidelines publications plus bags of enthusiasm anyone can become a school librarian.”

This was part of a message defending the position of unqualified people running school libraries. It was in reply to something I had posted about the need for training. My messages were a bit sharp, I know, but I am astonished that anyone would think that training is unnecessary! We all need CPD – I am not so arrogant that I think that I no longer need any training myself! I was not even talking about the professional education that I, and others on the list, have undertaken.

I was also angry that anyone should think that the knowledge and experience of professional librarians count for nothing. After all much of the “help from SLN” consists of exactly that! So, the writer of that comment, and others like her, agrees that she picks our collective brains, but on the other hand denies that we need qualifications to do the job!

Again, I know that there are exceptions in any milieu – there are some dull, disinterested professional librarians around who should never take up a post in schools; there are also some colleagues, without professional librarianship qualifications, who do a fantastic job in their schools. I have met truly awful, disastrous teachers too, and some brilliant teaching assistants, but that doesn’t mean that I support teaching becoming a non-graduate profession. At the very least school librarians should work to take the necessary training and acknowledge the expertise that has come with professional education and experience.

So, I do not apologise to anyone for my fundamental belief in professional qualifications for school librarians. Enthusiasm is great – we can all go a long way with that – but we also need a grounding that education gives us. Many years ago, I strongly believed that school librarians in the UK did not need a teaching qualification in addition to one in librarianship. Recently, after interacting with our international colleagues I am changing my mind. A teaching qualification can also bring so many facets to the job, that many of us struggle to develop on our own. Realistically, it would be very difficult for us to undertake teacher training in addition – there are no financial incentives or rewards for us to do this. But I think that it would possibly help us, not only to do an even better job, but also with our status in schools. It would also help us to focus on what a school library is about – teaching and learning, extending the curriculum, reading development, using technologies, and so on – rather than book marks, nice competitions, pretty displays – necessary, but not the “meat” of our raison d’être.

A friend has just sent me this – I was about to write exactly the same thing, but she has put it better:

Imagine this scenario. A message is posted to the TES Forums:

“Dear fellow-teachers,

I have recently been appointed to teach at a primary school nearby. I have no experience or qualifications but I am determined to do a good job. The school realistically cannot afford a qualified teacher so they have appointed me. Please give me all the benefit of your expertise and training so that everyone will think I am doing a good job”

Signed, TeacherMiss

One of the most useful Web2.0 things for me is a homepage like Netvibes. I used to use Pageflakes, until there were some issues, but have transferred everything to Netvibes. Have a look at my public pages to see how easy it is to use. My private pages are very similar, except that I have access to Gmail, Google Calendar, my personal Twitter account and to do lists etc. It is really simple to add RSS feeds from the blogs that I follow and it keeps them all in one place, with some organisation. Then I can just scan down the headings and see what I want to read. I can also get to this from anywhere and so keep track of all the things I need from one place.

I may try building a page like this for staff at a later date.

I was really thrilled to receive this award from our Transforming School Libraries course:

Thank- you so much everyone!

First of all, I want to apologise to anyone who saw my previous version of this post. It was not professional to let off steam on here and so I have now removed it completely.

I did finish the course, although I skimmed over the last few presentations and did not post very much to the discussions. This was because my personal life was encroaching too much and I was feeling under pressure.

I will return to the presentations at a later date and think through how I am going to move forward and feed back to the school. As I am new in post, I am not sure of the best way to do this, or, in fact, whether I should just wait for a more appropriate time. My main focus now has to be on developing the new library, getting it up and running in the autumn and then starting the process of encouraging teachers to make use of it and myself. So it may not be until this time next year that I can actually begin to use some of the amazing things that I have learned.

In the meantime, I will continue to try out these things for myself, and maybe draw up a plan of action. I can use tools such as VoiceThread with my Reading Group, perhaps. And, of course, I can enjoy using them in the library website.

Via Twitter, I saw a link to this downloadable book “21st Century Technology Tools : Tutorials“. It looks really useful for helping teachers and others who are not very confident about using a lot of Web2.0 – and in fact I will read some of the chapters myself!

When I have had more time for reflection, I may post some more about the course.