The last few weeks have been an emotional and physical rollercoaster! In addition to dealing with the stress of soon having to attend court to testify against an ex-colleague regarding things I reported at the start of my career, I’ve also managed to dislocate my kneecap while putting together a display promoting Shakespeare on our brand new, you beaut shelves, so I’m off work for a bit. Needless to say, I’m not living my best teacher-librarian life right now.
In a world where teacher librarian roles are misunderstood and at risk of being diminished or dismissed, so much of the TL degree emphasised the importance of being accessible to our colleagues, open to collaboration, and presenting ourselves as reliable, trusted experts who can support their work and make their lives easier. Several researchers highlight the importance of trust, reliability and strong relationships as crucial factors in leadership (Branch-Mueller & Rodger, 2022; Ezard, 2015), which is especially important considering that most TL positions are leading from the middle without formal authority (Cox & Korodaj, 2019). Indeed, the International Literacy Association (2022) argued that there are 3 key factors which boost perceptions of teacher-librarians as essential within a school:
Librarians as collaborators.
Librarians as advocates of literacy equity.
Librarians as providers of access.
To advocate effectively for the importance of our role, we therefore need to become important in the eyes of those around us. We need to be visible and position ourselves as essential for both staff and students, to become reliable sources for support and access to resources, and to build strong relationships with all members of our community based on mutual respect, trust, and recognition of what we do.
But what happens when things go wrong? How can we build this trust and these relationships when we can’t be reliable? What happens when staff are willing to work with us, but factors beyond our control threaten to break that trust?
So much has been written about the need to be reliable, trustworthy, collaborative, and supportive, but I couldn’t find much at all on what we can do when circumstances work against us despite our best efforts! It’s so easy to give in to despair when things constantly seem to go wrong, and so hard to be visible when you literally can’t get in to your workplace!
Over the last fortnight I’ve needed to cancel two senior research lessons and my Wide Reading classes, and since I’m not replaced when I’m absent the library has been shut during the breaks, affecting access to the space, its resources, and the safety it offers so many of our students. All the little ways I support teaching and learning at our school – such as mentoring students, de-escalating heightened kids, making sure students aren’t truanting in the library – as well as the big ones like maintaining the collection and providing valuable learning opportunities have come to a halt as a result of my absence.
Each setback represents a step backwards in the progress I’ve made in centering the library within our school community, with loans and visitor data always reflecting how hard it is to bounce back after extended closures. I’ve witnessed the impact of unreliability with previous librarians as both a student and staff member, and I need to ensure that this doesn’t become my reality.
As such, I’ll need to work twice as hard upon my return to catch up on missed work, repair relationships and rebuild trust in my abilities and reliability. After all, how we bounce back from adversity can be a ‘chopportunity’ to showcase our professionalism and advocate for our continued importance to our school community. It’s also important to model resilience to those around us, and to remember to control what we can and try not to worry about the things we can’t.
I also need to remember I’m lucky that I have built strong relationships with various staff members in my school, and although I might feel I’m letting them down they’re generally very understanding about my situation. I’ve been in frequent communication with many of my regular collaborating teachers during my absence, offering up lesson resources and the library space in an attempt to ensure minimal disruption and continued support of their work. I’m attempting to do as much work from home as I can, which will hopefully make the transition back to work onsite a little less overwhelming.
If anyone reading has further suggestions on how to build reliability and trust as a teacher-librarian in need, I’d love to hear them! In the meantime, I’m going to do my best to be like Dory, and just keep swimming!
Last week was a stressful one, but one big success was the long-awaited installation of our new shelving units in the lower library walkway. I’ve invested a significant amount of time and our library budget in beautifying our library over the past few years, and this was the next step in the process.
When I first came into the library, I managed to scavenge some old desks that were being removed from one of our classrooms and for the last few years they were the site of my new release and themed book displays. While they got the job done, they were messy, didn’t match each other or the rest of the furniture, and required shelf risers to create visual interest. Additionally, students would crawl into the space underneath and staff tended to move the books to sit at the desks during meetings without putting them back afterwards, which created more work for me since I was continuously having to redo the displays.
Before: The old desks which served as a display table – functional but not very aesthetically pleasing.
After: Our beautiful new shelving units!
The new shelves were expensive, but worth every cent! Not only do they now match the other furniture, but they’re easily adjustable to allow for book displays while allowing space for our games to be visible underneath, which will allow me to remove our old, tacky games cupboard. I also love that they have reversible shelves, which means I can have them flat or slanted to create visual interest.
I’m still in the process of adding the finishing touches, but so many people (including our Principal) have taken the time to comment on how nice they look. Along with the new carpet and paint job installed last year, this old 70s library is starting to feel like a modern, professional library! I was so excited I even made a CapCut video to celebrate, which will eventually go on our social media platforms to advertise the space to our school community.
My experience with these shelves just goes to show that our library spaces are important advocacy tools, and creating an inviting, professional-looking space is not just about resource management; it can also go a long way in advertising our own professionalism.
One of the big lessons I took from my TL degree was around the importance of promoting our work as a way of advocating for our value to our communities. There’s no point having an efficiently managed collection or killer programs if no one knows they’re available. Even worse, a lack of visibility means that our hard work goes unnoticed, and our often isolated positions within schools makes us especially vulnerable if we’re not getting out there and spreading the good word. NSW Department of Education schools have recently been hit with new budget cuts, making it even more important that I ensure that my work is understood and valued by those around me, especially by those who hold the power and purse-strings in the school.
In addition to my displays, social media posts, and Annual Reports (which ended up receiving positive feedback from my Principal), in Term 1 I advocated for the library to our wider community in a number of other ways. Last term we moved to a new website platform for our school newsletter, which allowed me to be a bit more creative than our old pdf offerings. I now have an entire page dedicated to library events and news, and used it as an opportunity to promote the Premier’s Reading Challenge as well as our virtual library. Due to the interactive nature of the new platform, I was also able to include a digital presentation, which I’m also aiming to project onto our library display TV using our Apple TV device during the day for visitors to the library space to see.
We do have a school website but it’s controlled by one person, so every time I need to send an update I need to send the info to her then wait for it to be changed which isn’t all that efficient. One of my Head Teachers raised the idea of having a library website that I control linked to our official school site, featuring study guides, video tutorials, and literacy activities. During the ETL512 subject we had a virtual visit with the teacher-librarians from Lake Tuggeranong College who had a similar library website that I found very inspirational. I think this will be a fantastic opportunity to further share my work and showcase my value, and will definitely be a goal of mine in future.
Term 1 for 2024 has wrapped up, so it’s a good time to pause and reflect on my practice so far this year.
Supporting Teaching and Learning
Supporting teaching and learning across the school is a vital aspect of the teacher-librarian’s role and helps us showcase our value to our colleagues. During Term 1 I was able to display this in four key ways: first, through supporting the NAPLAN testing running in the library; second, through supporting the ongoing programming, implementation, and resourcing of the new 7-10 English syllabus; third, through the provision of one-on-one senior mentoring and assessment assistance; and fourth, through the expansion of the Teacher Reference collection.
However, reflecting on my practice in this area reveals that there’s more I could be doing to support teaching and learning across other curriculum areas, especially if I wish to raise the library’s profile amongst the teaching staff. I have recently conducted a significant weeding of our non-fiction resources, so could restock this collection with more relevant, updated texts to support current teaching units across the school. At the moment my information literacy and research skill lessons are one-off bookings, so I could also approach different faculties to embed these skills into their assessment tasks, or create pathfinders to support staff as they guide students through the research process.
I’ve previously put out surveys to my colleagues asking for feedback on what they teach and what resources they’d like to see from me, as well as asked staff to send me their assessment notifications so I can support their faculties with informative displays and assessment help. However, staff responses are always limited, revealing that when teachers are under the pump and feeling the pressure of heavy workloads they’re unlikely to prioritise such surveys even if they see their value. It therefore might be more effective to visit different staffrooms in person, either by attending different faculty meetings or by booking in time with each Head Teacher to see how best I can support the teaching and learning in their specific curriculum areas. I could also use this time to promote our Teacher Reference section, which isn’t getting much love from our time-poor staff.
Action moving forward: Speak with Head Teachers in person to determine how I can support teaching and learning in their faculties.
Developing a Whole-School Reading Culture
As I’ve discussed previously, some of my colleagues and I are in the early stages of planning a new whole-school reading culture initiative. We’ve made some small progress in this space over the last term and have begun putting together a strategic proposal (inspired by the work I completed during my degree) which we plan to eventually present to the Senior Executives at our school. One of the teachers has also taken the initiative to create a ‘Current Reads’ poster for the English staffroom windows which has already launched several conversations with students about reading for pleasure.
Action moving forward: Collaboratively develop the reading culture initiativeproposal.
On my end, I’ve been working on developing a culture of pleasure reading in a number of different ways. This term I’ve been working on developing the Wide Reading Program for years 7 and 8, with all classes bar one participating. As always seems to be the case, these lessons experienced significant interruptions in Term 1, with 51% of lessons needing to be cancelled because of other programs using the library space, staff illness, public holidays, and other whole-school events. As a result, four of the ten participating classes have less than 50% program attendance, with two of those classes having had only one lesson to access the library and its resources.
To ameliorate the impacts of my absences when I was sick, I supported the classroom teachers in running the program themselves by providing the lesson materials. However, staff feedback suggests that the program runs best when I’m at the helm, reinforcing the value of a trained teacher-librarian’s expertise and skill in spreading a passion for reading!
Student feedback so far this term has also been positive. I’ve placed a significant emphasis on trying to build excitement around reading and on highlighting different reading behaviours in an attempt to get students to self-identify as readers. As such, we’ve played a variety of games such as Never Have I Ever and an adapted mad-libs game inspired by Cards Against Humanity which I’m calling Books Against Humanity. In this game students must obtain a variety of quotes from the book they’re reading and in small teams choose the best quote to complete the prompt I give them. There were a lot of laughs at this one, and it was great to see even reluctant readers engage with the task!
In large part due to the Wide Reading Program, our loans stats are strong so far this term. While this is not a hard and fast indication of reading culture, it does give some indication regarding the number of books ending up in student (and staff) hands. During Term 1 we loaned out 1140 resources from our physical and digital collections, surpassing the total loans for some previous years in their entirety. However, this is compared to the 1250 resources we loaned during the same time last year; the down-turn is due in part to falling student enrolments, the number of interruptions leading to the library’s closure, as well as a decrease in digital loans from our virtual library. Another pertinent fact emerging from this data is the increasing popularity of our magazines, with 31 loaned this term compared to only 2 in the same time last year.
Another way I’m trying to build a reading culture is by celebrating reading achievements in our school. I’m updating our Readerboard every month to show the students with the highest number of loans, and giving these students both merit certificates and house points in their roll calls to visibly highlight their achievement and show that we value reading. I’m also in the early stages of planning a celebratory afternoon for the students who finished the Premier’s Reading Challenge last year – they’ve chosen a movie afternoon as their reward, so hopefully other students will see their reward and want to get in on the action too! Another way I can increase participation is by embedding the challenge into the Wide Reading Program through read-alouds, book talks and activities such as the CBCA Shadow Judging.
Action moving forward: Embed PRC resources into the Wide Reading Programand continue developing activities to develop enthusiasm around reading.
Fostering Positive Wellbeing
Our school’s strategic plan has a strong focus on wellbeing; this is therefore an area where I can support the school community while advocating for the value of the library. I recently bought some of Margaret Merga’s books on this topic and intend to add them to our Teacher Reference collection, and can’t wait to read them to gain some more ideas on how to be active in this space.
So far this year, I’ve continued to support social-emotional learning through the provision of social clubs during the breaks. I’ve encouraged students to form their own clubs with my support, and as a result we’ve now added a Trading Card Game Day and Origami Club into our schedule, alongside our regular offerings of the Nintendo Switch Club and Dungeons and Dragons. While the Nerdvana Day didn’t get off the ground this term due to time constraints, this has previously been a great success with students and I will endeavour to make it a priority in Term 2. I have also discussed the possibility of a Year 12 Reading Retreat during their Trial exams to help them relax during this otherwise stressful period.
Action moving forward: Organise the Nerdvana Day and Year 12 Reading Retreat in Term 2.
These clubs and activities have had a significant impact on our daily visitor numbers, with an average 138 students visiting each break. Our biggest day was a whopping 334 students! While these increased visitor numbers contribute to a lot of noise and chaos in the library, they also represent an opportunity for students to be exposed to the reading culture I’m attempting to build, with several students who wouldn’t normally identify as readers borrowing books that they wouldn’t have come into contact with had they not been in the library space. However, the data suggests that our daily visitors and loans were trending down towards the end of term; this is no doubt due to the number of interruptions affecting the library’s ability to open in those later weeks, such as the fact that I’m not replaced when I’m absent. Ensuring continued access to the space is therefore an area for improvement in future.
Action moving forward: Advocate for the library space to be covered like any other playground duty in my absence.
Our Library Monitor program is also expanding, with several students approaching me throughout the term asking if they can join the program. Early in Term 2 I will incorporate these new students into the program and develop their skills as junior librarians in training. Their assistance is vital in helping maintain the library collections, especially as our loans increase.
Action moving forward: Train the incoming library monitors.
Maintaining Effective, Relevant Collections
Collection management is one of the biggest, most underappreciated aspects of our role as teacher-librarians, largely because so much of it is done behind the scenes and is therefore invisible to the majority of our school community. We’ve had an influx of student requests, so in addition to my plans to replace many of the outdated resources weeded over the last few years I’ve had to dedicate a significant portion of my budget to fulfilling these requests. As a result, there’s not a huge amount of money left for future purchases! A more balanced allocation of funds might be prudent in future years. However, one benefit of ordering so much so early in the year has been that we are getting a steady arrival of new resources to process in our systems as stock becomes available. This will hopefully allow us to spread out the accessioning process and reduce the number of orders we need to chase up at the end of the year.
Over the past few years I’ve invested a significant amount of time in updating our collection to ensure it’s relevant to the learning and recreational needs of our school community. When I first started, the fiction and non-fiction collections hadn’t been weeded for several years and the median date of publication was 1981. Last year our average date of publication was 2006, and I’m happy to report that due to my efforts last term this date is now 2010, while our median date is now 1995. While this is still not as up-to-date as I’d like, it’s a significant improvement.
I’m also in the process of cleaning up our catalogue and moving some items to locations where our students and staff are more likely to find them. I’ve set myself the goal of cleaning up 10 catalogue records a day, and while this isn’t always achievable it has made a significant impact on the number of resources with outdated or incorrect catalogue metadata.
In NSW Department of Education schools, we are required to have a Professional Development Plan (PDP). This year I’ve set myself three somewhat ambitious goals.
Goal 1: To raise the perceived status, professionalism and value of the school library by ensuring its effective management. This will be achieved by conducting a needs assessment and creating a strategic plan aligned to the school’s Strategic Improvment Plan by the end of Term 3.
This is a huge goal with multiple steps, which is why I’ve set its completion at the end of Term 3. This term I asked for planning time and was knocked back, so have asked for time again in Term 2. I’ve submitted a proposal through my Head Teacher for this planning time to be during the HSC Trial exam period when the library would normally be closed; hopefully my line managers will see the value of this goal and understand my attempts to support the school while minimising disruption.
Action moving forward: Gain approval for planning time in week 9.
Goal 2: To support the diverse needs of our students by working with the Engaged Students for Learning committee to reintroduce a school-wide High Potential and Gifted (HPGE) education initiative.
This is another area where I’ve sadly made limited progress, largely due to the restrictive nature of our committee meeting schedule which has meant we’ve only had one official meeting last term. We were supposed to deliver a presentation during a staff meeting on how to identify and support HPG students, but beyond informal conversations with staff there’s been no movement in this space for me yet.
Action moving forward: Conduct an evaluation of existing HPGE activities with the committee.
Goal 3: To forge strong connections between the library, teaching staff and students by supporting the implementation of the new English syllabus through the expansion of the Wide Reading Program and engagement with research into reading for pleasure and for information.
I feel that this is one area where I have successfully achieved my professional goal. The new English syllabus explicitly references reading for pleasure and our English faculty has embedded the Wide Reading Program into their units as a result of my continued advocacy over the past two years. I’ve also posted previously about my research into reading for pleasure, though more could be done in the information literacy space.
Action moving forward: Continue research into reading for pleasure and information; continue using data and feedback from students and staff to plan engaging activities which provide access and time for self-selected, socially supported reading with the Wide Reading Program.
I’ve just finished another Annual Library Report! This is a time-consuming project but one which I find useful as a reflective tool for my own practice as well as a fantastic way to advocate for my work and the value of the library. I’ve printed out hard copies for our Senior Executive (Principal and Deputy Principals) and emailed a digital copy to all other Head Teachers as well as our School Administration Manager and Business Manager. This year I also included a summary infographic to hopefully whet their appetites to read more.
Having this link on Canva allows me to see how many people actually engage with it; however, even if no one else looks at it, the process of analysing the data and writing the report helps me realise the things I’ve achieved and to hone in on areas to improve in future.
A full copy of the 2023 report can be accessed here.
I’ve long been interested in harnessing the power of social media to engage my students, so this week I signed up to Overdrive’s webinar Getting Students Reading Through Social Media. The presenters, Amanda Hunt, KC Boyd and Melanie Wood, were fantastic and I came away from this video with so many wonderful ideas about how to incorporate these tools into my practice! Here’s some of the top tips I took from this webinar.
1. Identify our audience and target their interests and needs
Social media can be a fantastic way to engage students, staff and parents to help promote reading for pleasure. Parents in particular can play a positive role in helping kids understand that reading can be a positive activity. However, we need to be delibrate in how we are using this toolset to achieve our aims.
The presenters suggested engaging parents by showcasing their children in the posts, and to increase audience participation by asking questions and including interactive content such as “Leave a comment about your favourite book!” to avoid our posts becoming invisible in the endless scroll cycle. The presenters also emphasised that we should space out our content to avoid overwhelming our audience. to consider the times when they’re more likely to be online and receptive, and to keep our content short and sweet.
Interestingly, the presenters also made the point that local politicians can be targeted as one of our audiences, highlighting the power of social media as an advocacy tool beyond our immediate communities.
2. Post relevant educational but celebratory content
Celebrating milestones and reading achievement was one tip that resonated with me, since a lot of what I’m trying to achieve is focused around building positive reader identity in my students. For instance, I already have a Readerboard in my library which notes our top borrowers each month and across the year; it wouldn’t be too hard to turn this into a social media post, or to update parents on their students’ progress towards the NSW Premier’s Reading Challenge.
One of the presenters had an Insta-ready background in their library for students to pose in front of with their current reads; I’ve had my eye on this gorgeous CBCA social media frame, and think that this is something I could definitely incorporate into my own practice to promote personal choice reading material, staff favourites, and recommendations for special events like school programs, faculty topics, featured authors, and upcoming holidays and events.
Tutorials and ‘how-to’ videos were another suggestion for engaging students, staff and parents with the library resources. I hate showing my face on social media, but the presenters made a salient point that being visible helps our students recognise us, and gives us a little mini-celebrity status in our community which helps build connections between us and our audience when we don’t see them every day. Scheduling time and setting reminders for regular content creation was also suggested to ensure consistency in our promotions.
3. Learn through experimentation
Personally, I’m not a massive social media fan. I use Facebook regularly to keep in contact with friends and collegial networks, and during while studying to be a teacher-librarian I created an Instagram account, but I’m a rather private person and still feel very much at sea when it comes to content creation and promotion of my work. The presenters suggested using various social media platforms to tap into whatever your target audience engages with, which is honestly an overwhelming prospect! However, one helpful tip they gave was the ‘Five Minute Promise’ – pick one app you wish to become more familiar with and engage with it for 5 minutes each day. This seems fairly achievable and breaks down an otherwise mammoth task into much smaller, manageable chunks.
Some specific content ideas I could try include…
Short video recommendations (particularly useful for students who might be too shy to ask for help)
I’m reading…
If you liked … try …
This person loves …
Currently trending …
New releases …
Author highlights
Recently recommended
Use fun filters to create themed content e.g. a zombie filter for horror books
Interactive scavenger hunts and reading challenges
Connections to feeder primary schools and community events
Themed and curated book lists
Fun memes encouraging positive interaction with reading
Use social media to inform, define and promote reading program; tell our unique story
One of the things I try to encourage in my school library is student engagement and voice. This year I’ve got several keen beans who have taken great joy in creating book displays, and I’ve worked with them to create social media posts to promote their efforts and advocate for the importance of the library to our school community. Here’s a selection of some of the posts we’ve created so far.
Our post celebrating Taylor Swift as excitement for her Eras tour swept through the schoolWe always get asked where the Romance and Horror books are, so to test the demand for genrefication I had some students help create these themed displays. Other students volunteered to make a LGTBQI+ display as well as one celebrating the Year of the Dragon.
It’s wonderful to see students excited about books and wanting to make the space their own!
School returns in NSW this week! So far I’ve had a few opportunities to advocate for my role and the value of the school library, which I’ve tried to grab with both hands.
This year I’ve been placed under the Head Teacher of Teaching and Learning, and had the fantastic opportunity to sit with her to discuss my vision for the role and a strategic path moving forward.
I also sent out a welcome email to all teaching staff, outlining the various ways I can save them time and support them in their teaching:
One-off or ongoing research lessons
Collaborative planning, teaching, and/or assessing of an inquiry or PBL unit (Maria and I had great fun with this last year!)
Gamification of units to support engagement
Support integrating literacy strategies (e.g. Super Six, literary learning) into your units
Support integrating information literacy strategies and research skills into your units
Support integrating digital literacy, media literacy, or ICT strategies into your units
Curated book boxes to support classroom learning
Curated digital resource lists or pathfinders to support classroom learning and assessments
Targeted library displays which support your subject units or assessments
Accessioning of senior faculty textbooks to keep track of which student has been issued which resource (we currently do this for English and Science)
Summaries of current research in an area of your choosing
A guided tour of the library, its resources and how it can support you (useful for new staff especially!)
Training in how to use our subscriptions such as Clickview or our digital library via Wheelers ePlatform
Training in how to use our library catalogue to search our collection or the local library collections for relevant resources
Personal delivery of requested magazines or books
Collaborative creation and ongoing support of social clubs developing wellbeing and student voice (I’ve previously worked with staff on the Anime Club, Warhammer Days with great success)
Targeted one on one support for students who might need assistance developing their study skills
Finally, my hard work over the last two years with the Wide Reading Program has paid off. I currently have 10 year 7 and 8 classes booked in for a fortnightly Wide Reading lesson. This is a significant increase from the 1 class in 2022 and 3 in 2023 who consistently attended. Last year we also had positive feedback from the majority of the students who participated, with positive changes to many students’ reader identity and confidence.
Last year was a outstanding year for borrowing, and we broke our previous best record by 455 books largely due to the engagement created by the Wide Reading Program. I’m excited to see what 2024 holds!
Effective 21st century teacher-librarians require strong interpersonal skills alongside the pedagogical knowledge to teach a multitude of competencies and literacies across different curriculum areas. Through proficient leadership, strategic planning, resource management, and innovative program design, modern teacher-librarians inspire passion for reading for pleasure and information while supporting learning and wellbeing in our communities.
Modern libraries are about people, not just resources. Our ability to form effective relationships with students, staff, parents, and professional networks allows teacher-librarians to meet the diverse educational, wellbeing, and recreational needs of our learning communities and to advocate for our value in an ever-changing information landscape.
Part B: Critical Evaluation
My very first assessment for this degree required me to reflect on my understanding of the role of teacher-librarians in schools (Lysaught, 2021a). For this task, I discussed the roles I focused on as part of my then-recent job application:
Little did I know, but this visual would serve as a prescient highlight to many of the issues explored throughout this course.
The early work completed in ETL401 introduced me to several roles expected of modern teacher-librarians, and as a result of my continued learnings in this degree I have consolidated these varied elements into three key themes.
Theme 1: Resourcing and Inspiring Reading for Pleasure
The first theme, resourcing and inspiring reading for pleasure, in many ways reinforces pre-existing stereotypes about the work of teacher-librarians as predominantly dealing with books. I discussed this misconception in my early blog posts, noting that these perceptions were largely based on community experiences (Lysaught, 2021a; Lysaught, 2021b). As a result of the readings and learning tasks in this degree, I have concluded that teacher-librarians must therefore ensure that we provide a multitude of different experiences to our communities to shape their perceptions of our roles as varied and valuable in an ever-changing modern information landscape.
However, Herring (2007, p.31) noted that fulfilling all the possible roles expected of teacher-librarians at one time is impossible. Anecdotal evidence suggests many teachers still don’t know what information literacy is, let alone a teacher-librarian’s role in developing student proficiency; those few who do often lack the time for collaborative planning and teaching. Rather than stress myself out by fighting an uphill battle and overhauling community perceptions completely, at the start of my teacher-librarian journey I’ve chosen to draw on my strengths as an English teacher and my pre-existing relationships with this faculty to lean into community expectations and show my value to our school by establishing a culture of pleasure reading. Once trust in my abilities as a teacher-librarian and strong relationships are formed through this Trojan horse, the plan is to leverage my success and branch out into other facets of my role, such as information specialist, to further entrench my value to our school community.
Step one in my plan to channel then subvert community expectations was to create a Wide Reading Program for the Stage 4 English classes. To show the value of this program to our school leaders, I aligned it with our Strategic Improvement Plan, foreshadowing the learnings of ETL504 Teacher Librarian as Leader. This program, inspired by the ETL402 Literature Across the Curriculum readings, aims to create a school-wide culture of pleasure reading. Reading for pleasure has repeatedly been shown to improve student literacies and socio-emotional development (Combes & Valli, 2007; Howard, 2011; Allington & Gabriel, 2012; Kid & Castano, 2013; Gaiman, 2013; Wu et al., 2013; Whitten et al., 2016; Ipri & Newman, 2017; Stower & Waring, 2018; Smith, 2019; Merga, 2021; Merga, 2022). Student reading drops off during adolescence for several reasons, including lack of access to quality texts, lack of positive reading role-models, lack of time, and lack of confidence in their reading ability:
This program aims to address these issues by providing students access to appropriate, self-selected texts and by setting aside a 60-minute period each fortnight to allow students time to explore, share, and value their reading in a socially supported positive learning environment (Gibson-Langford & Laycock, 2008; Krashen, 2011; Fisher & Frey, 2018; Merga & Mason, 2019; Allington & McGill-Franzen, 2021). Through this program I aim to create independent, lifelong readers who are set up for personal and academic success.
This initiative was first trialed in 2022, our first year without a school-wide DEAR program. It initially ran with 4 Year 7 classes which dropped back to 2 due to staffing issues and frequent interruptions. Data revealed that overall, the students who participated enjoyed the experience and found it beneficial, and I reported these findings to our Senior Executive via my Annual Library Report (Lysaught, 2023a):
In 2023 the Wide Reading Program was expanded from one teacher to six and now includes our Support Unit and two Year 8 classes, largely due to word of mouth and positive feedback from participating teachers – proving Bonanno’s (2011) argument that we should build relationships with the staff willing to work with us, since others will choose to follow once trust is developed (Crippen & Willows, 2019, p.173).
A crucial element of successfully inspiring reading for pleasure, especially amongst teens asserting their independence and exploring their identity, is the provision of relevant resources which support self-selection of reading materials (Beach et al., 2011; Allington & Gabriel, 2012; Fisher & Frey, 2018). To ensure a robust collection which meets the needs and interests of my patrons, I drew heavily upon the learnings gained in ETL503 Resourcing the Curriculum. Library hygiene is an important element of ensuring an enticing, relevant collection (Fieldhouse & Marshall, 2011), and thus at the end of 2022 I completed a stocktake and significant weed of our Fiction and Quick Reads collections (Lysaught, 2023a). This was the first stocktake since 2018 and the median age of deselected resources was 1999, necessitating a serious update of our collection to ensure continued relevance. This was followed by subsequent stocktakes of our Picture Book and Graphic Novel collections at the start of 2023. Once these stocktakes were completed I introduced dynamic shelving to make the shelves more enticing and facilitate browsing (Bogan, 2022).
I also implemented patron-led acquisitions to increase circulation and user connection to the library’s resources (Hughes-Hassell & Mancall, 2005, p.9; Kimmel, 2014; Johnson, 2018; Aaron Cohen Associates, 2020, para.6; Crawford et. al, 2020, p.2), with 49% of newly acquired fiction resources specifically requested by staff and students in 2022 (Lysaught, 2023a). Drawing upon my experiences during my practicum, this year I bought 131 Hi-Lo books for our Quick Reads collection, and plan to use them for future Book Club activities during the Wide Reading lessons (Lysaught, 2023b). I am also in the process of genrefying our Quick Reads collection for easier browsing and selection, trialing the learnings gained in ETL505 Describing and Analysing Educational Resources (Lysaught, 2022a) in one of our popular, manageable collections.
Fisher & Frey (2018) argued that interventions designed to increase reading volume should rely on four factors: access, choice, classroom discussion of texts and book talks. The initiatives described above aimed to incorporate these four factors alongside efficient collection development and management. Loans statistics indicate that circulation has increased on the days when the Wide Reading lessons run, and as a result Oliver data shows we are on track to meet or beat our previous loans records since I became the teacher-librarian in 2020, despite our removal of a whole-school DEAR program in 2022.
Theme 2: Resourcing and Developing Reading for Information
As mentioned above, despite the importance of reading for pleasure in developing literacy, the role of a modern teacher-librarian should expand beyond the realm of books and into the crucial realm of information literacy to avoid the misunderstanding that our roles are limited and unnecessary in modern schools. I personally was guilty of this misconception prior to starting this degree, so I can hardly blame time-poor classroom teachers and senior leaders for not understanding our role, especially if they’ve never seen it in action! It is therefore necessary that we provide a variety of different experiences to our communities to shape their perceptions of our roles and ensure they understand our vital importance in developing our students as ethical, efficient users and creators of information. We cannot risk becoming an “invisible profession” (Valenza, 2010; Bonanno, 2011) and resourcing our libraries to develop information literacy is a path forward for teacher-librarians to show our value in a shifting infosphere increasingly filled with mis- and disinformation (Floridi, 2007, p.59; Lysaught, 2021c).
The learnings gained in ETL401 Introduction to Teacher Librarianship were crucial in forcing me to revise my misunderstandings regarding the role of the modern teacher-librarian. For the second assessment I focused on how social media platforms affect our relationship with information, and discovered that improved internet access has changed information-seeking behaviours to favour passive information acquisition which uses the path of least resistance (often relying on social interactions), significantly impacting users’ ability to determine fact from fiction (Bates, 2010; Herbst, 2020; Liu, 2020; Kuhlthau et al., 2021). Teenagers are particularly likely to gain information from online, social sources and, far from being ‘digital natives’ equipped to navigate online information, are uniquely vulnerable to misinformation (Combes, 2009; Jacobson, 2010; O’Connell, 2012; Common Sense Media, 2019; Australian eSafety Commissioner, 2021). As a high-school teacher-librarian, I therefore have an ethical responsibility to ensure that my collections and programs equip my students with the skills and competencies they’ll need to be information literate in an increasingly digital world. Anecdotal evidence suggests that for many secondary classroom teachers, the fact that teacher-librarians don’t teach to a specific curriculum demeans our value. The recently released Information Fluency Framework (NSW Department of Education, 2023) offers an exciting way to legitimise our work moving forward, showcasing that we can be the glue which brings learning areas together, and will form the focus of my professional learning after finishing this degree. In the meantime I will continue to run one-off research skill lessons for my colleagues as requested.
Inquiry learning was another key aspect of our role explored in ETL401. While I had been familiar with concepts such as Project Based Learning from my time as a classroom teacher (Lysaught, 2021d), other methods such as Guided Inquiry Design were eye-opening and revealed a new pedagogy full of potential for my students (Lysaught, 2021e), since information literacy is foundational to inquiry learning (Fitzgerald, 2015). I greatly enjoyed reworking our existing Year 7 Shakespeare unit into a Guided Inquiry Design unit and look forward to the opportunity to co-teach it in future (Lysaught, via Guided Inquiry in Australia, 2020), alongside the digital narrative I created for ETL533.
However, implementing inquiry learning and developing information literacy programs has not been without significant challenges in reality. Early on I identified that high staff workloads and minimal free time would likely hamper potential attempts to implement collaborative inquiry learning (Lysaught, 2021f). As such, there has been limited staff uptake. However, largely due to the relationships and trust developed through the Wide Reading Program, I have finally been asked to work with one of the English teachers and her Year 8 class in Term 4 on a unit exploring suspenseful narratives. The ETL512 Study Visits emphasised the importance of emotional intelligence and persistence as key traits for teacher-librarians, and my personal experience shows that we must be resilient in the face of setbacks and persist in the hope that we can eventually have the opportunity to showcase our value to our colleagues.
Effective collection management is another crucial aspect to developing information literacy in our community. ETL503 Resourcing the Curriculum and ETL505 Describing and Analysing Educational Resources reinforced the importance of efficient resource management for supporting curriculum learning. In 2021 I completed a stocktake of our non-fiction collections – the first since 2018. The shelves were overflowing, messy, and not conducive to easy selection of relevant material:
Prior to this stocktake, the median date of publication was 1981. I weeded 2468 outdated or damaged resources, almost halving the collection and bringing the median date of publication to 2000 – an improvement, but indicating that there is still significant work to be completed to ensure a current, relevant collection which meets the needs of my staff and students. Foreshadowing the learnings of ETL504, I published the findings from this stocktake in my 2021 Annual Report and shared it with the Senior Executive to highlight the complexities of my role to our school leaders (Lysaught, 2022b).
In 2022 we started accessioning English novels to support their resource management, leading to it becoming our third largest collection:
This year, due to the success of this initiative, we have also had requests from the Science Faculty to assist with the management of their Stage 6 resources. While not without challenges, this provides a way for me to showcase my value to my colleagues, support curriculum learning through effective resource management, and interact with students who would otherwise possibly not utilise the library.
Theme 3: Promotion and Advocacy through Leadership
Two of the most used tags on my blog are ‘promotion’ and ‘advocacy’, so it’s only appropriate that the final theme discussed focuses on these issues.
Early in this degree the readings revealed the importance of advocating for our positions (Lysaught, 2021g), meaning that right from the start I’ve developed an awareness of the importance of perception and relationships in our role. This was consolidated throughout this degree in every unit.
In an early blog post for ETL503 Resourcing the Curriculum I noted that, due to the teacher-librarian’s often poorly defined role and lack of clear curriculum direction, we are often utilised in different ways to support whatever the school requires (Lysaught, 2021h). It is therefore crucial for us to collaborate with our colleagues so that they understand our varied roles, ensuring our continued visibility and effectiveness to our school community. As seen through the frequent ‘promotion’ and ‘advocacy’ tags in my blog, so much of our work gives us the chance to increase our visibility; while it can be tempting to give up in the face of colleagues who view us as having the “cushy job”, we need to change our mindset and instead reframe challenges as “chopportunities” (Weisburg, 2020) and look for ways to make our work seen, valued, and understood (Valenza, 2010; Bonanno, 2011).
My final unit, ETL504 Teacher Librarian as Leader, emphasised the different leadership styles that we can leverage to maximise our effectiveness to our colleagues. Effective leadership, regardless of the approach or title, should focus on building strong relationships with others through mutual trust, respect, and effective communication (Holmes et al., 2012, p.271, 276; Moir et al., 2014, p.37; Ezard, 2015; Gleeson, 2016). My very first blog post had outlined my intent to support both staff and students (Lysaught, 2021i), and thus Servant Leadership appealed to me from the start (Lysaught, 2023c). In particular I was drawn to Servant Leadership due to its focus on empowering and developing others, humility, commitment to growth and community building, highly developed interpersonal skills, stewardship, healing, conceptualisation, and foresight (Arar & Oplatka, 2022, p.83-87; Crippen & Willows, 2019; p.171-172), and found that its guiding questions – ‘do you want to serve or be served?’ and ‘do those served grow as persons?’ (Blanchard & Broadwell, 2018; Greenleaf, 2008, p.36) – aligned well with my personal traits and values, and could help me support and heal cynical, time-poor staff and to act as mentors for both staff and students (Branch-Mueller & Rodger, 2022, p.46-47; Reinsel Soulen, 2020, p.39-40; Uther & Pickworth, 2014, p.21-23).
As a result of the learnings in this degree, I’ve experimented with a variety of different promotions and advocacy methods. I began this degree in mid-2021 when NSW started online learning followed by cohorting, which made collaboration and promotion particularly challenging early on; this has been further compounded by the current teacher shortage and high staff turnover at our school. Some of the early initiatives I implemented to raise the library’s profile include the Student Media Team, a Babble, Books and Breakfast club working alongside the Wellbeing faculty, and a Staff and Student Book Club (Lysaught, 2021j). While the book club fell apart due to lack of interest and time after online learning finished, the other two initiatives are still going strong. My early attempts at strategic planning appear quite amateurish in hindsight, though the alignment of my initiatives to our Strategic Improvement Plan and promotion of my work through Annual Reports foreshadowed the strategies suggested in ETL504 (Lysaught, 2023d). Our school recently experimented with the idea of holding all Stage 6 exams in the library, which if enacted would necessitate its closure for over 2 months of the school year. I was able to successfully leverage leadership strategies and use visitor and loans data collected each day to show the impact library closures would have on our school community, convincing the decision makers to choose another option:
Looking to the future, I will continue to experiment and expand on the learnings gained from this degree. First I will create a library operations folio to ensure effective management and strategic planning moving forward (Braxton, n.d.; National Library of New Zealand, n.d.; Oberg & Schultz-Jones, 2015). I was particularly inspired by the idea of hooking in new and current staff via mentoring (Cox & Korodaj, 2019; Reinsel Soulen, 2020), and building community ownership through a library committee has been a long-time goal of mine (Lysaught, 2021h). Inspired by ETL505 and the ETL512 study visits, I’d also love to create a library website to increase visibility and support teaching and learning by providing easily accessible pathfinders and research lessons. This journey is a marathon, not a sprint, and this degree has shown countless potential pathways to follow in future.
Part C Reflection
At the beginning of this course, we were asked to consider what makes a teacher-librarian (Lysaught, 2021a). My understanding of the role has expanded significantly since those early days:
However, despite the complexity of our role, our work is still widely misunderstood. This degree has shown me that to be seen as professionals, we must act as professionals and take every opportunity to advocate for our role through the work we do in our school communities. The professional standards developed by the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) and the Australian School Library Association (ASLA) provide a useful framework for evaluating our professional practice and ensuring that we remain relevant and visible to our peers.
As a classroom teacher with experience teaching both the English and History syllabi from Year 7 through to Year 12, including the Extension courses for both subjects, I feel quite confident in my abilities as a teacher with strong professional and pedagogical knowledge who meets the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers, many of which align with the ALIA/ASLA Standards through their similar professional domains (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership [AITSL], 2022). While I already had a strong understanding of reading practices, assessment, and ICT, this degree introduced me to the wonders of information literacy and collection management which have allowed me to be even more effective in my classroom practice and developed my understanding of how to support my colleagues more efficiently in my library role.
As a relatively new teacher-librarian, I feel that I still have a fair way to go regarding my professional practice, particularly regarding our role as information specialists. While I believe that I have created an environment where learners are encouraged to engage with our resources for understanding and enjoyment, I need to do more to ensure an information-rich learning environment which meets the needs of my community. I’ve worked hard over the last 2 years to build an environment which fosters positive wellbeing and strong reading culture, and due to these relationships and the trust I’ve developed with our teaching staff I’ve finally got the opportunity in Term 4 to collaboratively develop and teach a Guided Inquiry unit. Likewise, while I’ve previously done some strategic planning and budgeting (Lysaught, 2023d), the skills gained in this course will leave me much better equipped to plan for the future and ensure the library’s continued relevance and value to my school. In Term 4 I therefore intend to create a Library Operations Folio, including strategic and operations plans alongside policies for collection development, ICT use, and potential challenges.
I am already a member of several professional organisations, and fully intend to take advantage of their professional development. This will focus on the development and delivery of information literacy programs and wellbeing programs, broadening my understandings further and allowing me to showcase the potential in our practice to our wider school community.
Advocacy through action and alliances is my path forward in what could otherwise be an isolated, misunderstood role. While building my Wide Reading Program I have relied heavily on the action research process to ensure that my practice is evidence-based, innovative, and meets the needs of my staff and students. I have used this research to showcase my professionalism and the potential of my role to my colleagues, particularly to my school leaders. However, evaluating my work against the ALIA/ASLA standards shows that more could be done to develop my leadership capabilities. ETL504 emphasised the importance of leading from the middle by working with staff as well as students, such as through collaboratively teaching, leading professional development, or running key committees (Green, 2011; Wong; 2012; Wolf et al., 2014; Baker, 2016; Crippen & Willows, 2019; Reinsel Soulen, 2020). High staff turnover makes developing relationships with my colleagues a challenge, but also presents a ‘chopportunity’ (Weisburg, 2020) to exhibit both transformational and servant leadership, hook in new staff, and build a culture of library collaboration and appreciation from the ground up.
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Wollondilly Library is a small but effective public library in Picton, NSW. It services the widespread Wollondilly LGA, covering approximately 2556 square kilometres and with a population density of 21.83 per square kilometre (ID Community, n.d.). New developments increased the population by 8.6% over five years (NSW Government Office of Local Government, 2023), with two-thirds living in urban settings while one-third rural (Wollondilly Library, n.d.). Wollondilly’s population is predominantly white and Australian-born, with the majority of residents identifying their ancestry as Australian, English, Irish, and Scottish (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], n.d.).
Wollondilly Library’s mission statement reveals its purpose is to provide a range of information and materials to all residents, to encourage curiosity, free inquiry and lifelong learning, and to support the community’s civic, intellectual, and cultural pursuits. The team leader’s perspective is that the library exists to overcome disadvantage.
To encourage ease of browsing in the limited library space, Wollondilly Library has separate collections for Junior and Adult fiction and non-fiction, a Young Adult collection, an Adult Large Print collection, and a variety of magazines and other multimedia resources such as DVDs, CDs and audiobooks. Eresources such as Hoopla, Borrowbox, Mango, and Studiosity also support the various needs of users and supplement the physical collection, though borrowing statistics indicate most patrons (many from older generations) still prefer physical resources. In Wollondilly, 89.6% of residents only speak English at home (ABS, n.d.). As such, most of the collection is in English, though there are resources from the Adult Fiction, Adult Non-fiction and Junior Fiction collections offered in other languages along with access to the inter-library loans service.
Couples with children make up 50.6% of Wollondilly residents, compared with 44.7% of residents in NSW (ABS, n.d.). The team run several programs to provide socialisation for children and their parents while developing early literacy and encouraging positive engagement with the library. Bookbubs (ages 0-2) and Storytime (ages 2-5) run twice a week, while Sensory Storytime catering for users with diverse needs occurs once a month and is looking to expand (Wollondilly Library, 2023a).These programs provide a free activity for families who might otherwise be isolated due to a lack of parent groups in the area, while school holiday programming such as Lego Robotics, Mocktails and Monet, and HSC seminars (Wollondilly Library, 2023a) engage students with continuous learning and support the work done in local schools.
One of the challenges faced by Wollondilly Library staff is its low population density resulting in small funding allocations alongside the expectation to service all members in such a far-flung community. The Wollondilly Mobile Library van visits various locations, while the Home Library Delivery Service ensures access for users who can’t leave their homes due to disability or illness (Wollondilly Library, 2023b). For many patrons using these services, they offer a rare opportunity to engage with other members of the community and if this service did not exist could result in almost complete isolation and cut their access to information dramatically. Community Outreach programs also visit preschools and local shopping centres, ensuring positive interactions between staff and the community they serve.
Wollondilly Library also achieves its mission statement and overcomes disadvantage through its physical space and provision of ICT resources. The study spaces and meeting rooms are utlised by local students, adults, and community groups, while the Local History Room takes advantage of Wollondilly’s unique heritage to further connect with the residents. A welcoming children’s area in the Junior collection space encourages positive interactions through the provision of toys, craft, and Lego. For many residents, these quiet spaces, local history resources, and toys are unavailable without cost elsewhere. Patrons also have access to technology such as printing, computers, wifi, and assistive technology which I witnessed being used for a variety of purposes ranging from study to centrelink applications.
Without Wollondilly Library, many patrons would not be able to access these programs, resources, and services. As a result, their disadvantage would, in countless ways, become further entrenched.
Section 2: Theory into practice
My placement consolidated my understandings of the theories explored in ETL402 Literature Across the Curriculum.
Wollondilly Library’s Book Bubs (0-2 years) and Storytime (2-5 years) programs are aimed at developing early literacy and positive reader identity, while the Sensory Storytime was created in consultation with qualified special education teachers and promotes inclusive literacy practices, noted as a key component of an effective teacher-librarian’s work (Australian School Library Association [ASLA], 2014, p.14). Several adult book clubs run by library staff or by members of the public using library book kits aim to promote pleasure reading for older audiences. The mobile library van allows Wollondilly Library to provide access to users who would be otherwise unable to attend the physical branch location, and I participated in several community outreach programs including preschool visits and mobile storytimes in public spaces. These programs created a positive reading culture in the community which leads to many wide-reaching benefits for individuals and our society. The use of literature to overcome disadvantage was explored in ETL402, and several researchers support the notion that a positive reading culture can negate socio-economic disadvantage (Allington et al., 2021, p.S234; Krashen, 2011, p.7; Whitten et. al., 2016, p.48). While ETL402 focused on literature in schools, many benefits discussed in this subject were evident in the programs offered by Wollondilly Library. For instance, the Storytime program was designed around a specific weekly theme which aimed to engage readers through personal connections to content while developing valuable interpersonal and age-appropriate academic skills (Kidd & Castano, 2013, p.377; Myambo, 2016, para.1, 4; Short, 2018, p.291).
ETL402 revealed enjoyment of reading plays a crucial role in developing a person’s literacy skills and understanding of the world around them, as well as their empathy for the experiences of others (Gaiman, 2013, para. 9-10; Haven, 2007, p.vi; Krashen, 2009, p.20; Ross Johnston, 2014, p.537). I worked closely with the children’s librarian and the library assistants responsible for the Book Bubs and Storytime programs. Together we selected a variety of age-appropriate books to read with the children, including sensory board books for the Book Bubs children and picture books aiming to develop early decoding skills for the Storytime sessions. While these texts developed early literacy skills through their use of rhyme, repetition, and images, the primary consideration for staff was to ensure that the children were having a pleasurable and social reading experience. This reflects the notion explored in ETL402 that if children enjoy reading, literacy will be developed more easily (National Library of New Zealand, n.d.). Barone argues that the recent focus on cognitive elements such as decoding, comprehending and reading fluently in schools has meant that a focus on the pleasure of reading has been pushed aside, and that books are seen purely to develop skilful readers rather than as an end in themselves (2011, p.2). My placement experience emphasised that enjoyment of reading should be the focus, and that I have a responsibility to ensure that my students are engaged on an emotional or intellectual level, since this is what creates an intrinsic motivation that drives us to continue reading (Barone, 2011, p.3). Recent research reveals a strong correlation between reading volume and reading achievement and that the more children read, the higher their achievement levels (Allington et al., 2021, p.S233-S234, p.S236) and it is therefore in our best interests to focus on reading enjoyment with my students in future.
During my placement I was struck by how engaged these young readers were with the act of reading, with all children enjoying being read to or eager to interact with the books themselves. This early enjoyment of reading vastly contrasts with the attitudes presented by my high school students, reflecting the research explored in ETL402 around the decline in reading in the teen years due to:
Lack of positive reading role models
Burnout from reading programs in primary school
Boredom from the use of fiction texts to teach literacy
Parents who don’t value reading
Lack of time due to jobs, extracurricular activities
Competing interests and hobbies
Underdeveloped imaginations
Misconceptions about who reads for pleasure
Lack of exposure to reading
Lack of confidence and reading ability
Overcrowded curriculum and assessment demands
Lack of access and choice of reading materials (Dickenson, 2014, Krashen, 2011, Manuel & Carter, 2015, Whitten et. al., 2016)
Several of these barriers to reading can be ameliorated by programs such as those offered by Wollondilly Library. In particular, the social aspects of Wollondilly Library’s children and adult reading programs reinforces the importance of connection and community in developing reader identity, especially amongst teens whose information behaviours are motivated by social concerns (Jacobson, 2010, p.44). Activities such as Book Bubs, Storytime and the adult book clubs allowed library patrons to engage in conversations around literature, acting as positive reading role models while increasing enjoyment and further solidifying their identities as readers.
Section 3: Critical reflection
Seeing the practical application of the concepts studied in this course has consolidated my understanding of teacher librarianship, particularly around the issues of meeting user needs, reading for pleasure and information, the emergence of libraries as a third space providing wellbeing and other supports, collection development and library management, and the importance of advocacy and promotions.
A key aspect of teacher-librarianship is the importance of understanding and meeting our users’ needs and ensuring that we provide timely access to relevant resources (NSW Department of Education, 2017, p.3, 5, 7, 8). This degree frequently emphasised the continued need for free access to information in the digital age (Bates, 2010, para.58; Kuhlthau et al., 2008, p.3). The Australian Library and Information Association [ALIA] believes that unrestricted access to information is crucial to our freedoms and democracy (2018). Wollondilly Library’s commitment to providing access to residents despite their geographic challenges is evident through their Mobile Library Van and Home Delivery Service. In my setting I am faced with the challenge of increasingly being removed from the library space as it is used for exams, faculty testing, and other workshops. Access to reading materials is a crucial factor in promoting reading for pleasure and developing positive reader identities (Fisher & Frey, 2018, p.89). When staff and student access is cut due to circumstances beyond my control, I can adjust the model provided by Wollondilly Library to ensure that my users’ needs are still being met by encouraging online reservations, classroom deliveries, and mobile book trolleys in the playground.
Reading for pleasure is something that I’ve tried to build at my school over the past year to overcome disadvantage while improving student attainment and empathy (Lysaught, 2022a; Lysaught, 2022b; Lysaught, 2023c; Lysaught, 2023d). Wollondilly Library’s adult Book Club model, which allows groups to borrow up to ten copies of the same novel under one barcode, has inspired me in two ways. First, I can adjust this model to suit my Wide Reading Program by offering disengaged students the choice to read the same high interest, low reading level texts, with a social discussion or literature circle activity to follow. Second, I can utilise the book club kits to create a reading group among staff, which would allow us to promote reading for pleasure and showcase our own reader identities to our students as positive reading role-models.
This degree also emphasised that modern libraries are not just about books. Throughout this course it has become clear that libraries play an important role in providing wellbeing and other supports to our community, often stepping in when other services are inaccessible or unavailable (Aykanian et al., 2020; McKeown, 2016; Merga, 2020). My experience at Wollondilly Library proves this, with users utilising library resources to support centrelink applications and mental health activities. Many patrons also used the meeting room and quiet spaces for work and study, while programs such as Mocktails and Monet or Knit and Yarn provided opportunities for users to form connections with others who have similar interests. This supports the work by Hider et al. (2023, p.3-5), who noted that public library physical spaces are increasingly used as ‘third place’ community hubs which enable democracy and civic engagement. Moving forward, in my school library I can incorporate more social activities such as craft activities and gaming clubs to support student interests, friendships, and overall wellbeing.
Library management was another element where I was able to develop my practical skills. I worked alongside several members of the collections acquisitions team, helping me solidify my understanding of budget management and the importance of workflow procedures. Library hygiene is a key aspect of our role as information specialists (Fieldhouse & Marshall, 2011, p.36; Newsum, 2016, p.201), and I worked with the Children’s Librarian to weed their overcrowded junior fiction and non-fiction collections, ensuring that outdated, offensive, or incorrect resources were removed in order to make way for newer, more relevant additions. This experience showed me that I should trust in my own abilities to evaluate resources according to my selection and de-selection criteria.
Bonanno (2011) states we are at risk of becoming an invisible profession, and the terms ‘advocacy’ and ‘promotions’ are among the most popular keywords on my blog. Working alongside the Programs and Promotions Librarian, I was able to understand the importance of advocacy and promotions in a new light. Her tutelage expanded my understanding of the concept of user avatars to ensure my message reaches its appropriate audience, as well as a focus on three content pillars to ensure that my values are clearly expressed.
Overall, this workplace learning opportunity left me with renewed confidence in my understandings and helped remind me that even though I feel overwhelmed in my role much of the time, I am on the right track! It was especially heartening to note that Wollondilly Library has a team of people who each specialise in one role, whereas I am expected to take on all those tasks in my capacity as a teacher librarian.
Word count: 2299
References
Albitz, B., Avery, C., & Zabel, D. (Eds.). (2014). Rethinking collection development and management. ABC-CLIO, LLC.
Allington, R. L., & McGill-Franzen, A. M. (2021). Reading Volume and Reading Achievement: A Review of Recent Research. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(1), S231–S238. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.404
Australian School Library Association [ASLA] (2014). Evidence guide for teacher librarians in the highly accomplished career stage: Australian professional standards for teachers.
Aykanian, A., Morton, P., Trawver, K., Victorson, L., Preskitt, S., & Street, K. (2020). Library-Based Field Placements: Meeting the Diverse Needs of Patrons, Including Those Experiencing Homelessness. Journal of Social Work Education, 56(1), S72–S80. https://doi.org/10.1080/10437797.2020.1723757
Barone, D. M. (2011). Children’s literature in the classroom: Engaging lifelong readers. Guilford Press.
Bonanno, K. (2011). Keynote speaker: A profession at the tipping point. Vimeo.https://vimeo.com/31003940
Dickenson, D. (2014). Children and reading: literature review. University of Western Sydney, Australian Government, and Australia Council for the Arts.
Evans, G. E., & Saponaro, M. Z. (2012). Library and information science text: Collection management basics. ABC-CLIO, LLC.
Fieldhouse, M., Marshall, A. (2011). Collection development in the digital age.
Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2018). Raise reading volume through access, choice, discussion, and book talks. The Reading Teacher, 72(1), 89-97.
Gregory, V. L. (2011). Collection development and management for 21st century library collections: An introduction. American Library Association.
Haven, K. F. (2007). Story proof: the science behind the startling power of story. ABC-Clio, LLC.
Hider, P., Garner, J., Wakeling, S., & Jamali Mahmuei, H. R. (2023). “Part of My Daily Life”: The importance of public libraries as physical spaces. Public Library Quarterly, 42(2), 190-219. https://doi.org/10.1080/01616846.2022.2092347
ID community (n.d.). Wollondilly Shire Council: community profile.
Jacobson, Harris, Frances (2010). Found It on the Internet: Coming of Age Online. American Library Association.
Kidd, D. C., & Castano, E. (2013). Reading literary fiction improves theory of mind. Science 342(6156), 377-380.
Krashen, S. D. (2009). Anything but reading. Knowledge Quest 37(5), 8.
Krashen, S. D. (2011). Free voluntary reading. ABC-CLIO, LLC.
Kuhlthau, C. C., Heinstrom, J., & Todd, R. J. (2008). The ‘information search process’ revisited: is the model still useful? Information Research, 13(4). http://informationr.net/ir/13-4/paper355.html
Manuel, J., & Carter, D. (2015). Current and historical perspectives on Australian teenagers’ reading practices and preferences. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 38(2), 115-128.
Mckeown, A. (2016). Overcoming Information Poverty: Investigating the Role of Public Libraries in The Twenty-First Century. Chandos Publishing.
Merga, M. (2020). How Can School Libraries Support Student Wellbeing? Evidence and Implications for Further Research, Journal of Library Administration, 60(6), 660–673, DOI: 10.1080/01930826.2020.1773718
Newsum, J. M. (2016). School collection development and resource management in digitally rich environments: An Initial Literature Review. School Libraries Worldwide, 22(1), 97–109.
Ross Johnston, R. (2014). Literary literacies: digital, cultural, narrative, critical and deep literacies. In Winch, G., Ross Johnston, R., March, P., Ljungdahl, L., & Holliday, M. (eds.) Literacy: Reading, writing and children’s literature.
Short, K. G. (2018). What’s trending in children’s literature and why it matters. Language Arts 95(5), 287-298.
Whitten, C., Labby, S., & Sullivan, S. L. (2016). The impact of pleasure reading on academic success. The Journal of Multidisciplinary Graduate Research 2(4), 48-64.
Wollondilly Library (n.d.). Draft collection development policy.
This session has been incredibly difficult, with workload pressures leading to burnout. The challenges I’ve faced this session have highlighted the ways that effective leadership can support positive school culture, and this unit emphasised the importance of understanding leadership theory to advocate for our role to ensure effective practice.
One key idea is teacher-librarians should not be held back by their lack of formal leadership position, since good leaders have the vision and skills to inspire others to achieve a common goal and hold perceived influence regardless of title (Bush & Glover, 2014, p.554; Ezard, 2015; Gardner, 2013, p.18-19; Gleeson, 2016; Holmes et al., 2012, p.271, 276; Spencekao, 2013; Sutcliffe, 2013). Rather than relying on official authority, effective teacher-librarians should focus on developing a strong understanding of different leadership styles, integrating their traits to be responsive to their context’s specific needs (Bush & Glover, 2014, p.567; Smith, 2016, p.75-76). I greatly enjoyed learning about these leadership styles and recognised many aspects of Servant Leadership in my own practice (Lysaught, 2023a, 2023b, 2023c) due to its focus on service, community building, and empowering others (Arar & Oplatka, 2022, p.83-87; Blanchard & Broadwell, 2018; Crippen & Willows, 2019, p.171-172; Greenleaf, 2008, p.36). I particularly loved the ‘Continuum of Care’ concept (Reinsel Soulen, 2020), since showcasing my leadership by mentoring staff aligns well with my current position in the Teaching and Learning faculty.
Image 1: Reinsel Soulen, 2020, p.39
However, despite my natural inclination towards Servant Leadership, this subject taught me it’s important to step outside my comfort zone to ensure effective practice and to be truly responsive to my community’s needs. Moving forward, I plan to also draw on the traits of Instructional and Transformational Leadership, with their focus on improving student outcomes through instructional quality, innovation, and reflective practice (Arar & Oplatka, 2022, p.3-5; Holmes et al., 2012, p.276; Moir et al., 2014, p.36, 39). For instance, these leadership styles can be integrated within our role as technology experts to support time-poor staff and demonstrate our value to our school community (Johnson, 2019):
Image 2: adapted from Johnson, 2019
In schools where misconceptions about our roles abound, ETL504 emphasised the importance of promoting the varied nature of our work and different ways we can leverage these leadership traits to advocate for our positions (Boyd, 2021; Jones, 2021). Reminding staff that our work extends beyond books – especially to technology and wellbeing – and that we can alleviate their workload is a key aspect of leading from the middle which I plan to integrate into my future practice (Lysaught, 2023d, 2023b, 2023e, 2023f). Module 5.3’s self-reflection was useful, identifying that I should improve my practice by leading staff professional learning and continued blogging (Lysaught, 2023f).
ETL504 revealed that ongoing strategic planning projects professionalism (Markless et al., 2016; Wong, 2012); reminding me “don’t get angry, get strategic” (Boyd, 2021). I’ve improved my planning since my early amateur attempts (Lysaught, 2023h). Change fatigue and innovation overload are real threats in modern education (Clement, 2014; Dilkes et al., 2014; Holmes et al., 2012), and the various models summarised below were incredibly useful for understanding how to successfully manage change, allowing me to move forward in my own setting.
Image 3: Robbins et al., 2006
Image 4: adapted from Chow et al., 2019
Particularly, I found the focus on understanding stakeholder needs useful (Pratt, 2017). The two questions posed by Chow et al. (2019) and understanding resistance (Lancaster, 2019) will be at the forefront of my community consultation moving forward:
Image 5: adapted from Chow et al., 2019
Image 6: adapted from Lancaster, 2019
The importance of developing strong relationships with stakeholders, such as principals, was emphasised and helped me reframe my approach to ensure that my work was relevant to their vision. In future all library initiatives and budget submissions will align with the School Improvement Plan. Previously I’ve created an Annual Library Report, but didn’t know if my efforts were noticed (Lysaught, 2023i, 2023c). Inspired by ETL504, I created a Term 1 Library Snapshot which I published on social media, the newsletter, and library displays (Lysaught, 2023j) and received an email from the Principal thanking me.
Visibility is crucial!
Image 7: adapted from Softlink, 2017, p.3-11
Word count: 655
References:
Arar, K., & Oplatka, I. (2022). Advanced theories of educational leadership. Springer.
Blanchard, K., & Broadwell, R. (2018). Servant leadership in action. Berrett-Koehler.
Boyd, K. C. (2021). Advocacy: 2021 style & beyond. Knowledge Quest, 49(4), 26-31.
Chow, A., Robinson, J., Paulus, L., Griffin, B., Smith, N. Z. & Watterman, A. (2019). From me to we: Seeing is believing. Knowledge Quest, 48(2), pp. E1-E7.
Crippen, C. & Willows, J. (2019). Connecting teacher leadership and servant leadership: A synergistic partnership. Journal of Leadership Education, 18(2), pp. 171-180.
Dilkes, J., Cunningham, C. & Gray, J. (2014). The new Australian Curriculum, teachers and change fatigue. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 39(11). https://doi:10.14221/ajte.2014v39n11.4
Ezard, T. (2015). Building trust and collaboration – Tracey Ezard [Video]. Youtube. https://youtu.be/kUkseAdKyek
Gardner, J. W. (2013). The nature of leadership. In M. Grogan (Ed.). The Jossey-Bass reader on educational leadership (3rd ed., pp. 17-27). John Wiley & Sons.
Greenleaf, R. K. (2008). Greenleaf on Servant-Leadership: Who Is the Servant-Leader? The International Journal of Servant-Leadership, 4(1), 31–37. https://doi.org/10.33972/ijsl.234
Holmes, K., Clement, J. & Albright, J. (2012). The complex task of leading educational change in schools. School Leadership & Management, 33(3), 270-283. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2013.800477
Markless, S., Bentley, E., Pavey, S., Shaper, S., Todd, S., Webb, C., & Webb, C. (Carol). (2016). The innovative school librarian (S. Markless, Ed.; Second edition.). Facet.
Moir, S., Hattie, J. & Jansen, C. (2014). Teacher perspectives of ‘effective’ leadership in schools. Australian Educational Leader, 36(4), 36-40.
Robbins, S.P., Bergman, R., Stagg, I. & Coulter, M. (2006). Foundations of management. Pearson Education. In ETL504 Module 4. Strategic and Operational Planning. Interact 2. https://interact2.csu.edu.au
Finally, write a 300-word reflection on the overall study visit experience and how it has contributed to your journey as an information professional
The ETL512 Study Visits to West Moreton Anglican College (WMAC), Lake Tuggeranong College (LTC), State Library Victoria’s Rare Book Collection (SLV), and Bundaberg Regional Libraries (BRL) have opened my eyes to the variety of work available to information professionals and revealed that the skills developed in one setting are transferable to a myriad of others.
My virtual visits to WMAC and LTC were incredibly relevant to my chosen pathway as a high school teacher-librarian. They inspired me with wonderful ideas to incorporate into my future practice by connecting our work developing reading for pleasure and information with our promotions and role advocacy. WMAC’s idea of getting students and staff involved in the CBCA Shadow Judging by linking nominated texts to different KLAs was something I hadn’t previously encountered, and is a wonderful way of linking the library’s work with faculty curricula to promote literary learning. LTC’s staff provided several excellent ideas to build a reading culture by forming strong relationships with students and staff. All staff in each virtual visit emphasised the importance of knowing our users and building strong relationships, and it was inspiring to see practical suggestions for successful implementation which could help me build my library’s profile and promote the value of my resources and services to students, staff, and parents.
The SLV visit was to a setting I hadn’t previously considered, but Wee’s work in collection and exhibition curation sounds quite interesting as a possible future pathway if I decide to leave the education sector. His point about the usefulness of pedagogical knowledge in his library was heartening, as was his point regarding the transfer of skills to different positions. I’m now inspired to experiment with object and digital exhibitions in my own library.
My visit to BRL paired beautifully with my upcoming workplace learning at a local council library and cemented this as a possible future pathway if I leave education. I was inspired by Harris’ emphasis on integrating new technologies into his programs and his passion for ensuring accessibility, diversity, and inclusivity for all users; as a result, I plan to create my own Gamers’ Club and investigate Virtual Reality for my library programs. This visit highlighted the value of creating strong partnerships between local and school libraries, and in future I aim to work closely with our local library network to ensure maximum benefits for my learning community.
Establishing a career in the information sector can often involve taking a variety of pathways. Discuss the examples, pitfalls, barriers and advice provided by agency hosts on their career journey to becoming information professionals. Provide one professional development action you are going to take as a result of the study visits to support your career. Include a short discussion about why and how you will take this action and include examples of possible opportunities for this PD. (500 words)
The hosts at State Library Victoria’s Rare Book Collection (SLV), Lake Tuggeranong College (LTC) and Bundaberg Regional Libraries (BRL) provided valuable points about the challenges and possible pathways into a career in the information sector.
One key challenge identified by SLV relates to staffing and budgets, threats to libraries worldwide (Morris, 2022; Softlink, 2022, p.6-7; Woodcock, 2023). Wee noted that increasing demand for their services was not matched by financial or staffing support, and positions were increasingly filled by people without information sciences backgrounds. BRL revealed they’d had programs cut by Council. LTC also recognised hopelessness, exhaustion and feeling unappreciated as significant challenges, echoing research outlining the negative impacts of poor leadership on staff wellbeing (Cross, 2015,p.10, 13; International Literacy Association, 2022, p.5). This devaluation of expertise is replicated in my experience, where only 1/7 local schools has a substantive, full-time, trained teacher-librarian, and our library budget hasn’t increased since 2001. Staff at SLV and LTC recognised that time management and prioritising competing demands was another challenge, with Godfree and Korodaj advising prospective teacher-librarians to view our work as a “marathon, not a sprint”.
Wee advised that good traits for staff include: love of learning; emotional intelligence; and strong interpersonal skills to deal with the public-facing aspect of the role. LTC advised that key characteristics of effective teacher-librarians include: persistence; gentleness; emotional intelligence; being pushy in an appealing way; cheerfulness and warmth; maintaining calm under pressure; lateral thinking; authenticity; and knowing when to say no to avoid overstretching yourself. Wee noted that all core skills were transferable to different information settings and clearly there is significant cross-over in desirable personality traits for both settings.
Volunteering was one piece of advice given by both SLV and BRL. Wee and Harris both stated that volunteering allows prospective information professionals to network and develop visibility, improve their skills, and show enthusiasm. All three hosts emphasised the importance of advocacy and promotions in their work. BRL emphasised that providing relevant programs to meet user needs is crucial to their advocacy efforts, while both SLV and LTC affirmed that constant promotions were necessary to ensure that their relevant resources connected with users in a timely, effective manner.
As a result of these hosts’ emphasis on the importance of advocacy and promotions, I will create a school library strategic plan. This will help me to advocate for my role in a professional manner (Markless et al., 2016, p.87) and implement positive change over 5 years, heeding the ‘marathon’ advice from LTC. Within this strategic plan I intend to focus on increasing the promotion of library resources and services to ensure that my users are aware of how I can support their needs. The NSW Department of Education has a free subscription to LinkedIn Learning, which has many courses on marketing and promotions (such asthis one Introducing Social Media Marketing) which I can use to improve my library’s visibility and community engagement. Changing technology will also be a focus of my strategic plan, and as a member of the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) I can access their professional learning (such as this one onDigital Trends). This strategic plan and continued professional development will help develop my key capacities in learning and teaching, management, leadership and collaboration, and community engagement (ALIA & Australian School Libraries Association, 2020, p.1-2).
Markless, S., Bentley, E., Pavey, S., Shaper, S., Todd, S., Webb, C., & Webb, C. (Carol). (2016). The innovative school librarian (S. Markless, Ed.; Second edition.). Facet.
Using examples from at least two information agencies you attended, discuss the range of services and resources they provide and how these services and resources are tailored to meet the needs of their users. (500 words)
My virtual visits to Lake Tuggeranong College (LTC), West Moreton Anglican College (WMAC) and Bundaberg Regional Libraries (BRL) provided me with an interesting opportunity to compare the ways school and public libraries are similar and different in the provision of services and resources to meet their users’ needs.
School libraries serve specific school learning communities which consist of students, staff, and parents (Kimmel, 2014, p.31), and aim to meet the educational, cultural, recreational, and professional needs of these users (NSW Department of Education, 2017, p.8). Conversely, public libraries provide free access to information for all community members to enable their participation in society and to contribute to the economic wellbeing of their families and the nation (Australian Library and Information Association [ALIA], 2018, p.1). While both aim to provide free access to a range of services and resources to their users, two key differences exist: firstly, attendance in schools is mandatory, whereas engagement with a public library is optional; and secondly, education is controlled by the state, whereas public libraries facilitate non-coercive, self-directed learning (Foundation for Economic Education & FEEGA, 2019, p.1-2).
Both school libraries visited placed a heavy emphasis on providing services and resources designed to improve their users’ reading, digital, and information literacies, a core expectation of teacher-librarians supporting young people (ALIA, Australian School Libraries Association, & Australian Education Union, 2020, p.1). LTC supported pleasure reading through genrefication and emphasised the need to build strong relationships with students to understand their needs and make them feel supported. LTC also discussed the creation of their library website to support student learning and staff teaching, and the provision of accessible, detailed PowerPoints which develop students’ research, evaluation, and referencing skills. Key to these resources’ success is staff collaboration and consultation, embedding them into classroom activities, and ongoing promotion.
The need for advocacy and promotion were also discussed during both school visits, highlighting the importance of claiming our space (Bonanno, 2011). LTC noted their practices supporting reading and information literacy were crucial advocacy opportunities, and they frequently promoted their services to parents as well as staff and students. WMAC noted that they raised their library profile by supporting non-traditional tasks (e.g. uniforms), showcasing the library’s value by harnessing the needs of key decision makers and meeting patrons not normally involved with the library.
BRL also emphasised the importance of customer service, proving that strong relationships are crucial to leadership in both public and educational libraries (Branch-Mueller & Rodger, 2022, p.46-47). Harris discussed the difference between traditional card holders and hidden patrons (e.g. homeless users). Climate-controlled safe spaces and harm reduction work in public libraries supports their role as ‘second responders’ who step in when other services are unavailable or inaccessible (Aykanian et al., 2020, p.S72), reflecting the wellbeing work I encounter in my school library. Harris also emphasised the importance of advocacy and promotions, especially regarding funding. BRL’s provision of technology and IT support (including senior digital literacy programs, digital collections, broadband access, robotics, and 3D printing) reflects the ways modern libraries must stay current with the changing infosphere (Floridi, 2007, p.59). All points discussed supported research regarding the wide variety of services valued by public library users (Hider et al., 2023, p.20-34) and highlighted the similarities with school libraries, despite our different clientele.
Aykanian, A., Morton, P., Trawver, K., Victorson, L., Preskitt, S., & Street, K. (2020). Library-Based Field Placements: Meeting the Diverse Needs of Patrons, Including Those Experiencing Homelessness. Journal of Social Work Education, 56(1), S72–S80.https://doi.org/10.1080/10437797.2020.1723757
Bonanno, K. (2011). ASLA Keynote Speaker: A profession at the tipping point: time to change the game plan. [Video]. Vimeo.https://vimeo.com/31003940
Branch-Mueller, J., & Rodger, J. (2022). Single Threads Woven Together in a Tapestry: Dispositions of Teacher-Librarian Leaders. School Libraries Worldwide, 39–49.https://doi.org/10.29173/slw8454
Foundation For Economic Education, & FEEGA. (2019). The Difference Between Public Libraries and Public Schools. ContentEngine LLC, a Florida limited liability company.
Hider, P., Garner, J., Wakeling, S., & Jamali Mahmuei, H. R. (2023). “Part of My Daily Life”: The importance of public libraries as physical spaces. Public Library Quarterly, 42(2), 190-219.https://doi.org/10.1080/01616846.2022.2092347
Kimmel, S. C. (2014). Developing collections to empower learners. ALA/AASL
NSW Department of Education (2017). Handbook for School Libraries.
Scenario: You are in your third year as a teacher librarian in a school where you had to work actively to promote the value and services of the library. Classes come to the library either for relief from face-to-face teaching (primary) or supervision for research (secondary) without planned opportunities for collaborative or shared teaching. As you engage with ETL504 you have evaluated your current library role as that of a servant, rather than a servant leader. You seem to be reacting to the immediate needs and requirements of teachers and students in regard to providing resources, responding to immediate information and digital literacy needs, supporting recreational reading requirements and providing technology support.
Task: Through the lens of servant leadership, identify and share one proactive approach to lead a shift in expectations and responsibilities that will build the capacity of either teachers or students in recreational reading.
It’s scary how accurate the give scenario for this task is – it almost exactly matches my situation! I started in the library in 2021 and when I stepped into the position the big perception of the library’s role in our school was that it’s all about books and reading. Rather than dedicate my non-existent time to pick that fight and battle this misconception while in the depths of Covid disruptions and completing the Masters on top of my library responsibilities and English teaching role, I leaned into this perception to show my value to my school community.
Inspired in large part by the work I completed for ETL402 Literature Across the Curriculum, I decided to start an Action Research Project based around my implementation of a Wide Reading Program for Year 7, 2022. That year our school restructured the timetable and removed DEAR from roll call despite our declining NAPLAN and HSC results, so I aligned this project with our School Plan to give it legitimacy and worked with several English teachers since I was still teaching English classes and part of that faculty despite my relocation to the library. I started with 4 classes but due to staffing issues and constant interruptions only maintained consistent contact with 2 classes.
I sold this as a service to these teachers which would support their teaching units and develop student literacy while saving them time. The reformed English curriculum explicitly references reading for pleasure, so this is another angle I’ve used this year to promote the program and ensure unity between my work in the library and teachers’ work in their classrooms.
Word got around about this program and its benefits, and so this year it has expanded to include 5 Year 7 classes and 2 Year 8 classes, ensuring access to reading materials and positive modelling for 190 teenagers who often otherwise wouldn’t take the time to read for fun.
Knowing what I do now as a result of ETL504, if I could go back in time I would be far more proactive about advertising this program and raising its visibility in the early stages with my Senior Executive to showcase my proactive response to community needs and my leadership potential. I did include comments and data from my research in my Annual Reportwhich I shared with my Head Teachers and the Senior Executive, though it’s hard to say if they even read this document so perhaps other tactics are needed, such as personal invitations to attend lessons, social media marketing, and professional publication of the results. I plan to leverage the success of this program and the trust built with staff and students to build collaborative planning opportunities in future, especially around information fluency and inquiry learning, and thus to slowly but surely change the perception of what a library is all about.
Inspired by the ETL504 readings about the importance of advocating for what we do and the different stats snapshot infographics posted on the NSW School Library Matters Facebook group, I thought I’d have a crack at designing my own. Hopefully this will help increase my visibility and show the value of my work to the school. As a relatively new TL fumbling my way through each day I‘ll take whatever wins I can!
As I’m learning about effective ways to identify needs and create strategic plans, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on how far my understanding of strategic and operational planning has developed since I started in the library role at the end of 2020. In the last two weeks of 2020 I did my best to wade through the vast depths of the library space, resources and services and created a table to help me identify everything that the library did and everything that needed to be either fixed, implemented, or reassessed. This was such an overwhelming job and I felt completely unprepared, especially since the library didn’t have any policies or procedures that I could refer back to in my planning. At the time I managed to narrow it down to 5 key priority areas (I’ve deleted the other specifics since the original document went over a whopping 6 pages!):
Priority Area
Purpose
Strategies
Timeframe
Resource Management
Support Student Learning
Library Promotion
Literacy Improvement
Social Inclusion
In 2021 I had a bit more time and understanding of the library role, and refined this planning by setting 5 key goals which I reflected on in my 2021 Annual Library Report. It’s interesting to see how my chosen priority areas have been refined, and how my reporting of these achievement was simplified to show the value of the library to my school’s Senior Executive:
In 2022 this planning was further expanded via the brainstorm below. It’s interesting that at this stage of my understanding I’ve started to hone in on specific aspects of each goal. The achievements associated with each goal were reflected on in my 2022 Annual Library Report which was once again given to the Senior Executive.
Looking back on these now, they seem quite amateurish in comparison to the strategic plans explored as part of my studies for ETL504. However, at the time I was almost completely lacking any realistic knowledge of the library roles and responsibilities or of leadership theory, and so these initial attempts at strategic planning were the best I could accomplish with my limited knowledge. Now that I know better, I intend to do better and hopefully the library will flourish as a result!
What is your predominant approach to managing conflict?
Does this match to how you think of yourself?
What areas do you think you need to develop?
My results indicate that my conflict resolution style is a mix of Styles 1, 4, and 5. I have put the traits which I feel apply in bold:
Style I: You tend to avoid conflict at all costs. While in some situations this may be a wise thing to do, there are things that are worth fighting for. Your fear of confrontation and unwillingness to deal with problems may cause you to abdicate from your personal goals and, as weird as it sounds, undermine your relationships with others. If you never confront your interpersonal problems with honesty and openness, your chances to resolve them are slim. This may lead to passive aggressive behavior from both sides; and while you may be able to avoid the confrontation itself, you will be subjecting yourself to continuous dull pain.
Style IV: You equally value your interpersonal relationships and your goals. Because you aren’t ready to give up on any of the two, you use compromise as your preferred strategy. Even if your demand isn’t satisfied 100 percent, it’s still better than nothing, and you get to keep the relationship.
Style V: Your strategy is honesty and openness. You value both relationships and goals and look for a way to work with your opponent for a solution that is honest and satisfactory for both sides. The difference between Style V and Style IV is that Style V is not willing to compromise the truth but, at the same time, they are patient enough to keep digging until they find a better solution that can satisfy everyone involved.
I definitely agree that I try to avoid conflict and that this has led to a number of issues both in my work and personal life. I absolutely place a high value on the relationships I have with the people I work with, and to ensure that these relationships continue to be effective and productive in the workplace I need to develop my confidence and ability to speak up when there is an issue and to advocate effectively for my work instead of letting my frustrations fester.
How can we take the perception of the TL’s role from the keeper and stamper of books in the quiet place to something different?
I think it’s fair to say that as a profession teacher-librarians have an image problem. Way back at the start of this degree I wrote about Bonanno’s keynote speech in which she described teacher-librarians as an ‘invisible profession’ (Lysaught, August 29 2021a) and the misconception that the library is purely about books (Lysaught, August 29 2021b). A 2021 study revealed that in the US, teacher-librarian numbers declined 20% in the past decade (Ingram, July 19, 2021), and this trend of shrinking school libraries is being replicated in Australia (Tidball, February 10, 2023) alongside stagnating or declining budgets, staffing levels, and staff engagement or support (Softlink, 2022, p.6-7).
Maybe, like a good dancer, we make our work look effortless. Maybe too much of what we do is in the background of busy teachers’ days. One thing that’s for sure is that we need to work on improving our visibility and perceived value to our school community if we are to ensure the future of our profession (Weisburg, 2020).
Moir, Hattie and Jansen (2014, p.37) identified a number of key attributes that teachers perceived as important for leaders:
They also state that “Trust is often best developed in team environments, as then there is opportunity for collaboration and shared decision-making, especially when there is a common focus on improving teaching and learning” (p.39). Bush and Glover (2014, p.554) also discuss the idea of leadership as influence rather than stemming from formal authority, which suits teacher-librarians since we often lack official leadership positions in school hierarchies. Both discussions relate beautifully to the work of the teacher-librarian as literacy expert and information specialist, and they highlight a key way that teacher-librarians can both improve their visibility and their perceived value to their school community through collaborative programming, teaching, and assessment which supports the work of time-poor classroom teachers.
The work of Crippen and Willows (2019, p.174) highlights the 10 characteristics of servant-leaders, and teacher-librarians are uniquely placed to assist healing for colleagues overburdened by heavy workloads, administrivia, and poor student behaviour: “Through their actions as servant leaders they are facilitating a healing process and followers often look to them for support when times are difficult or something traumatic has occurred (Barbuto and Wheeler, 2007).” Teacher-librarians can also exhibit the persuasion trait of servant-leaders: “Supovitz (2018) also describes how teacher leaders use strategies such as leading by example, earning their colleagues trust and encouraging and collaborating with their peers.”
Another area where teacher-librarians can shift the perception of the school community is in the space surrounding emerging or rapidly changing technologies. A 2016 article notes that “By virtue of their training, relationships, systems knowledge, and instructional roles … teacher librarians are ideally suited to lead, teach, and support students and teachers in 21st century schools” (Digital Promise, 2016). Digital literature has the potential to move students from passive consumers to active creators of content while engaging them with the process and ethics of digital content creation (Lysaught, October 4 2022), and Artificial Intelligence is another emerging space where teacher-librarians can position themselves as experts to increase their visibility and perceived value (Lysaught, March 5 2023). It is imperative that we stay current with new and developing technologies to best position ourselves as experts in this field. Our expertise in copyright and the ethics of digital tools alongside our ability to connect the General Capabilities to specific learning programs is invaluable – however, we need to ensure that we’re promoting our abilities in this area and marketing collaborative teaching and planning as a benefit to time-poor teachers rather than just another thing to add to their plates.
Weisburg (2020) argues that while there are numerous barriers to showcasing our value, as a profession we have no other option. We must make it a priority to develop our visibility and promote our value to our school community or we run the risk of becoming obsolete. Weisburg suggests that teacher-librarians should start by looking for ways to showcase what we’re already doing; social media posts, visible displays, and staff emails can promote this work among the school community, while annual library reports can increase the perception of our professionalism and showcase for senior leaders much of the behind the scenes work that goes into running a library (Lysaught, March 5 2023). Weisburg’s suggestion about speaking at P&C meetings is another interesting one which links well to our aforementioned technology expertise. The most crucial aspect of Weisburg’s article for me was the concept of “chopportunities” – “challenges that can be turned into an opportunity.” So much of what affects the library is decided without our input and while it can be tempting to fall into the “why bother?” disheartened state of mind, for our own protection (and sanity!) reframing these issues as “chopportunities” can be a way to reclaim some sense of agency and showcase the benefits we provide to our school communities.
References:
Bush, T. & Glover, D. (2014). School leadership models: What do we know? School Leadership and Management, 34(5), 553-571. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2014.928680
Crippen, C. & Willows, J. (2019). Connecting teacher leadership and servant leadership: A synergistic partnership. Journal of Leadership Education, 18(2), pp. 171-180. https://journalofleadershiped.org/jole_articles/connecting-teacher-leadership-and-servant-leadership-a-synergistic-partnership/
Digital Promise (2016). The new librarian: Leaders in the digital age. In SCIS Connections, (96). https://www.scisdata.com/connections/issue-96/the-new-librarian-leaders-in-the-digital-age/
Moir, S., Hattie, J. & Jansen, C. (2014). Teacher perspectives of ‘effective’ leadership in schools. Australian Educational Leader, 36(4), 36-40.
Softlink (2022). 2022 Australian and New Zealand school library survey report. https://www.softlinkint.com/resources/reports-and-whitepapers/
Weisburg, H. K. (2020). Leadership: There is no other option. Synergy, 18(1). https://slav.vic.edu.au/index.php/Synergy/article/view/369/364
Informed by Robinson’s presentation, think about the influences upon a school – structural, cultural and societal and identify a key driver for change in each area that the teacher librarian could respond to through school library programs.
A lot has changed in the 13 years since Robinson’s video was first published to Youtube. When this video was published, Youtube was still a fairly new and groundbreaking platform, Facebook was still a relative baby, Instagram had only just been launched, and TikTok wasn’t even a twinkle in its creators’ eyes. Early in my studies I was introduced to the concept of the changing infosphere (Lysaught, 2021, August 30) and my understanding of these issues and their relationship to the role of the teacher librarian has continued to develop as I’ve moved through this degree.
Since 2010, a multitude of new apps, sites, and other assorted technologies have emerged. The big one causing much consternation in the education community at the moment is the rise of AI tools such as ChatGPT. While there’s a lot of fear and uncertainty about the role artificial intelligence will play in the future of education, I strongly feel that this emerging technology is one area where effective teacher librarians can position themselves as leaders and drivers of innovation in their school communities. While some concerns are not without merit (especially around potential student plagiarism and the ethics of AI), at the moment my experiences have led me to view AI tools such as ChatGPT as a sort of “Google on steroids” and a valuable time-saver for overworked, time-poor teachers. As such, for this reflection I used it to get my head around the idea of what could be meant by structural, cultural and societal influences upon schools. I was rather pleased with the results:
Let’s address some of these influences more directly.
Structural influences upon a school:
School funding: obviously a teacher librarian in a school setting (especially one without formal leadership credentials) will have limited impact on the way schools are funded. However, through advocating for our role, our value to our school community and our professionalism I believe that teacher librarians can in some cases successfully apply for a greater slice of the funding pie. I used our 2021 Annual Library Report as evidence to request more funding and was granted additional support for my 2022 Wide Reading Program trial.
Curriculum: again, teacher librarians have an extremely limited ability to determine the curriculum set by National and State educational bodies (beyond participation in focus groups and curriculum groups when these documents are reviewed). However, our role within schools has the potential to act as the “glue” which draws together different curriculum areas (Lysaught, 2021, October 5) and the general capabilities (Lysaught, 2021, November 22), and can unite otherwise isolated subject ‘silos’ to ensure cross-curricular learning.
School policies: through participation in school-wide teams and committees, teacher librarians can help guide and implement these policies and procedures. For instance in the past I have been a member of our school’s Gifted and Talented Education committee, and when that was dissolved I moved into the Technology in Education committee.
Physical facilities: often the physical layout of the school is beyond the teacher librarian’s control; however, we can absolutely make a difference in the design and layout of the library space, and can develop and manage efficient collections which meet the learning and recreational needs of our school community. As noted in my 2022 Annual Library Report (Lysaught, 2023, March 5), 49% of library purchases were patron-led acquisitions to build student and staff ownership over the collection.
Cultural influences upon a school:
School culture: building respectful relationships and trust is crucial with both staff and students. Bonanno (2011, via Lysaught, 2021, August 29) emphasises the importance of building relationships with the 10-30% of staff who are likely to work with us to ensure that we are maximising our potential and adding value to our school community efficiently and meaningfully. My own experience has revealed that this takes time, but once I made progress with one teacher and the word spread about how I could help time-poor staff with their work, soon I was inundated with requests.
Diversity: representation matters. Decolonising collections and ensuring inclusivity and diversity in resources and their promotion is one area where teacher librarians can positively affect school culture.
Parental involvement: communication to parents and caregivers via channels such as social media and parent bulletins is important for promoting the library as a useful resource centre for their children.
Societal influences upon a school:
Community resources: effective promotion of library educational and recreational resources can build a positive school culture where students and staff feel supported, valued and can take ownership of the space. Student-created social media posts is one of my favourite ways of helping promote library resources while encouraging students to take ownership of the space.
Economic factors: teacher librarians can’t change the socio-economic demographics of their school community, but they can provide access to tools and resources which can ameliorate the effects of potential disadvantage (Krashen, 2011). The ISCEA value of my school has gone down in the last few years; my implementation of the Wide Reading Program aims in part to mitigate some of the disadvantages our students face by drawing on research into pleasure reading and by providing time and access to reading materials.
Political climate: well, ain’t this one a tough nut to crack. It seems that everywhere we look teachers are easy pickings for politicians wanting to stoke the fires of the culture wars for their own gain. However, advocacy and professionalism can go some way towards easing public and political misconceptions about the role of teachers in society. Would it be cheeky of me to add media and digital literacy teaching programs here?
One key tool I use to advocate for my school’s library is our Annual Library Report. I give this to all members of the Senior Executive at my school to remind them of the value our library provides to our school learning community. While time-consuming to create, I strongly believe that this is an important promotional tool which projects my image as a professional, a team player and a leader. The full report can be accessed here: https://bit.ly/3Jg1e7k
Some of the key points I took from this article are:
There’s three key components which lead to burnout – exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy (these three factors are sadly very common at the moment!)
Hope is crucial to safeguarding identity, which can be built by discovering and developing goals, having autonomy over one’s purpose, and finding opportunities to exercise this potential and purpose
If people feel needed, respected, and valued, they have a higher perception of their own agency (this is true of students and staff alike!)
Recognising and acknowledging competence, granting autonomy, and fostering relatedness among staff are three ways school leaders can build hope and protect against burnout
“One of the ways leadership can aid teachers is to give staff an abundance of resources to assist with mounting workloads.” I’ve noted a few times in my blog ways in which an effective TL can assist time-poor, overworked classroom teachers (January 10, 2022; February 27, 2022; August 7, 2022; October 4, 2022) and thus potentially act as leaders in schools.
A school library without an effective collection is like a body without a working heart. Just as our hearts pump vital blood to our organs, the school library collection – developed and maintained by a qualified, perceptive, and vigilant teacher-librarian – ensures our learning communities get what they need to function and thrive.
The collection is so crucial to the library that the concept of a library is almost synonymous with its resources (Fieldhouse & Marshall, 2011, p.3). As information specialists, it is essential for teacher-librarians to provide balanced collections which serve the educational, socio-emotional, and recreational needs of our communities through the provision of relevant, accessible physical and digital resources. By providing equitable access to our collections, school libraries safeguard the right of users to seek, receive, and impart information (United Nations 1948, Article 19; South Australia Department of Education, 2020, p.2). Like many of my peers, I was shocked at the different types of censorship affecting libraries (Hilzinger, 2022, January 10; Abed Ali, 2022, January 12). We must be acutely aware of our own biases when managing our resources and resist attempts by others to censor our collections (Morrisey, 2008, p.165; Evans & Saponaro, 2012, p.306).
ETL503 exposed the complex paradigms underpinning the various approaches to collection management. The teacher-librarian in the Collection-Centred Model amasses resources “just in case” (Hughes-Hassell & Mancall, 2005, p.6). Conversely, the Learner-Centred Model and Collaborative Access Model create “just in time collections and position teacher-librarians as guides ensuring equitable, user-friendly access to materials serving user needs (Hughes-Hassell & Mancall, 2005, p.9, Crawford et. al, 2020, p.2). Yet patron-driven models, while increasing user connection to library resources, potentially lead to unbalanced collections where popular titles are prioritised over quality or curriculum resources (Fleishhacker, 2017, p.26, 31).
Therefore, in a rapidly changing information landscape and with increasing budget pressures, it is important for teacher-librarians to future-proof our collections through continual evaluation, ensuring a balance between “just in case” and “just in time” as well as popular and quality resources, and to extend our collections through the provision of curated digital resources and interlibrary loans (Evans & Saponaro, 2012, p.83; Albitz et. al., 2014, p.267; Gregory, 2019, p.9, 37). We must think carefully about the ongoing selection, acquisition, and promotion of our collections (Keeling, 2019, p.4) to ensure we combat overt and covert censorship and meet the ever-changing educational, cultural, recreational, and professional needs of our students (NSW Department of Education, 2017, p.8). Clearly, being an effective teacher-librarian is about so much more than just buying the books we love!
If a library without an effective collection is like a body without a heart, then a collection without a development or management policy is like a body without a brain. Just as the brain co-ordinates the body’s actions, so too does a collection development policy guide the library’s effective operation. A well-written manual with clear policies and procedures is essential for ensuring best practice and effective delivery of relevant, accessible resources and services for the library community (Australian Library an Information Association [ALIA], 2017, p.4).
Early in this course I learned that while collection management and collection development are often used synonymously, they can also refer to separate concepts (Lysaught, 2021a, para.3-4):
(Johnson, 2018, p.1; Gregory, 2019, p.xiv).
Gregory argues that effective collection development policies have three main purposes: to inform, direct, and protect (2011, p.31). Fieldhouse & Marshall extend on this, stating that effective collection development policies function as a ‘contract’ between the library and its community, and are powerful advocacy tools which inform users, guide administration, and justify funding decisions (2011, p.165-166). While Newsum argues that collection development is the teacher-librarians’ exclusive responsibility (2016, p.101), others argue that collection policies are most effective when planned and implemented democratically (Oberg & Schultz-Jones, 2015, p.34; Johnson, 2018, p.83). I believe that while the final responsibility lies with the teacher-librarian as qualified expert, libraries should be as democratic as possible (Lysaught, 2021b, para.14). A collaboratively designed collection policy is an important public relations tool which encourages ownership, understanding, and support from the school community regarding the library’s role, resources, and processes (Kimmel, 2014, p.70). It is crucial that school libraries have strong policies supported by their local community and colleagues (Lysaught, 2022a, January 17). Without them, a library and its resources are vulnerable to misuse and misunderstanding, exposed to challenges, and overall likely to be less effective at meeting users’ needs and interests.
When I inherited the library, the collection was damaged, outdated, and irrelevant (Lysaught, 2022b, para.4). Like many of my peers, there was no Collection Development Policy (Gemell, 2021, December 27; Losanno, 2022, January 1) and as a result the collection was not effectively meeting user needs (Lysaught, 2022b, para.3). The understandings developed during this unit assisted me in conducting my first ever Stocktake (Lysaught, 2022c, para.4), and helped me weed many resources that no longer met the needs and interests of our users (Lysaught, 2021b, para.10).
This is what happens when library hygiene is neglected – we have a collection in desperate need of a weed!
Moving forward, I intend to engage in the Continuous Review, Evaluation and Weeding cycle outlined by Larson (2012, p.13). Library hygiene is a key element of our role as information specialists (Fieldhouse & Marshall, 2011, p.36; Newsum, 2016, p.201). Just as we need to keep our hearts in shape, so too must we ensure that our collections are in shape via continuous needs assessment, evaluation, selection, acquisition, and promotion (Kimmel, 2014, p.17; Johnson, 2018, p.122). I’ve already created a draft selection criteria to help with ETL503 Assessment 1 (Lysaught, 2022b). One of my first priorities in 2022 will be to create a Library Committee where students and staff come together to collaboratively plan, implement, and promote our policy and resources (Lysaught, 2021b, para.12). Once our collection development and management policies are ratified, I intend to present the information to the whole staff body – though making it accessible and entertaining will likely prove to be a challenge (Lysaught, 2022d, January 14; Oddone, 2022, January 23)! By creating a collection development and management policy in partnership with my community, I hope to protect our collection against changes to user interests and needs, to the information landscape, and to the curriculum by planning for continual evaluation and improvement. To quote the well-known adage, if we fail to plan, then we plan to fail!
Word count: 1043
Bibliography:
Abed Ali, K. (2022, January 12). RE: Key takeaway from your readings on censorship [Online discussion comment]. Interact 2. https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&course_id=_58478_1&conf_id=_115077_1&forum_id=_260201_1&message_id=_3899339_1&nav=discussion_board_entry
Albitz, B., Avery, C., & Zabel, D. (Eds.). (2014). Rethinking collection development and management. ABC-CLIO, LLC.
Australian Library and Information Association [ALIA]. (2017). A manual for developing policies and procedures in Australian school library resource centres (2nd edition). Australian Library and Information Association.
Crawford, L. S., Condrey, C., Avery, E. F., & Enoch, T. (2020). Implementing a just-in-time collection development model in an academic library. The Journal of Academic Librarianship 46(2), p.102101.
Evans, G. E., & Saponaro, M. Z. (2012). Library and information science text : Collection management basics. ABC-CLIO, LLC.
Fieldhouse, M., Marshall, A. (2011). Collection development in the digital age.
Fleishhacker, J. (2017). Collection development. Knowledge Quest, 45(4), 24–31.
Gemell, L. (2021, December 27). RE: Editing a collection development policy [Online discussion comment]. Interact 2. https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&course_id=_58478_1&nav=discussion_board_entry&conf_id=_115077_1&forum_id=_260200_1&message_id=_3853862_1
Gregory, V. L. (2011). Collection development and management for 21st century library collections : An introduction. American Library Association.
Hilzinger, C. (2022 January 10). RE: Key takeaway from your readings on censorship [Online discussion comment]. Interact 2. https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&course_id=_58478_1&conf_id=_115077_1&forum_id=_260201_1&message_id=_3899339_1&nav=discussion_board_entry
Hughes-Hassell, & S., Mancall, J. C. (2005). Collection management for youth: responding to the needs of learners. American Library Association.
Johnson, Peggy (2018). Fundamentals of collection development and management. ALA Editions.
Keeling, M. (2019). What’s new in collection development? Knowledge Quest 48(2), 4-5.
Kimmel, S. C. (2014). Developing collections to empower learners. American Library Association.
Larson, J. (2012). CREWing children’s materials. In CREW: a weeding manual for modern libraries, (pp. 33-36), Austin, TX: Texas State Library and Archives Commission.
Losanno, J. (2022, January 1). RE: Editing a collection development policy [Online discussion comment]. Interact 2. https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&course_id=_58478_1&nav=discussion_board_entry&conf_id=_115077_1&forum_id=_260200_1&message_id=_3853862_1
Lysaught, D. (2021a, November 15). ETL503 1.1 definition of collection management and collection development. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2021/11/15/etl503-1-1-definition-of-collection-management-and-collection-development/
Lysaught, D. (2021b, November 22). ETL503 2.1 developing collections. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2021/11/22/etl503-2-1-developing-collections/
Lysaught, D. (2022a, January 17). RE: Editing a collection development policy [Online discussion comment]. Interact 2. https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&course_id=_58478_1&conf_id=_115077_1&forum_id=_260200_1&message_id=_3900966_1&nav=discussion_board_entry
Lysaught, D. (2022b, January 14). ETL503 6.1 editing a collection development policy. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2022/01/14/etl503-6-1-editing-a-collection-development-policy/
Lysaught, D. (2022c, January 6). ETL503 5.1 methods of collection analysis. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2022/01/06/etl503-5-1-methods-of-collection-analysis/
Lysaught, D. (2022a, January 14). RE: Editing a collection development policy [Online discussion comment]. Interact 2. https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&course_id=_58478_1&conf_id=_115077_1&forum_id=_260200_1&message_id=_3900966_1&nav=discussion_board_entry
Morrisey, L. J. (2008). Ethical issues in collection development.Journal of Library Administration, 47(3-4), 163-171.
Newsum, J. M. (2016). School collection development and resource management in digitally rich environments: An Initial Literature Review. School Libraries Worldwide, 22(1), 97–109.
Oberg, D., & Schultz-Jones, B. (eds.). (2015). 4.3.1 Collection management policies and procedures. In IFLA School Library Guidelines, (2nd ed.), (pp. 33-34). Den Haag, Netherlands: IFLA.
NSW Department of Education [NSW DoE] (2017). “Handbook for School Libraries. https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/curriculum/learning-across-the-curriculum/school-libraries/your-library
Oddone, K. (2022, January 23). RE: Editing a collection development policy [Online discussion comment]. Interact 2. https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&course_id=_58478_1&conf_id=_115077_1&forum_id=_260200_1&message_id=_3899262_1&nav=discussion_board_entry
South Australia Department of Education. (2020). Selecting and using resources for educational purposes guideline. https://www.education.sa.gov.au/doc/selecting-and-using-resources-educational-purposes-guideline
United Nations (1948). Universal Declaration of Human Rights. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
Discuss new areas needing coverage in your collection development policy, in view of the digital content of your collection.
Like so many newbie teacher librarians, I have been unable to locate a formal written collection development or collection management policy. As such, I’ve felt more than a little lost this year as I’ve floundered my way through budgeting, selection, and acquisition of resources to support my school community and feel like I probably haven’t made the best choices.
When I started this unit last October I saw the School Library Collection Rubric (ALIA, 2017) and quickly reflected on where I thought our school library collection sat. The results were eye-opening: out of the 31 elements I felt confident to assess, I deemed 8 to be developing, 20 to be at foundation level, and only 3 to be effective. Clearly there is a lot of work to be done to bring our collection up to scratch!
I plan on using this rubric to set goals (some of which will even make it onto my PDP! What great evidence for accreditation maintenance!) and work towards improving our collection over the next year – though honestly, it will probably take much longer! As noted on my blog, I’ve already undertaken a stocktake and weeded many of our outdated, damaged, and irrelevant resources. It will be interesting to review my initial assessment at the end of the year with more qualitative and quantitative data.
One of the tasks I set myself this year was to at least create a selection criteria which would guide the acquisition of future resources. This draft has drawn on a number of samples and will hopefully guide the development of a more effective collection in future and allow staff to see the complex nature of what teacher librarians actually do.
1.
Criteria
Relevance to Curriculum and Recreational Needs, Interests and Abilities of Users
1.1 Does the resource meet an existing or anticipated need?
1.2 Will the resource be well-used by students, staff, parents, or other community members?
1.3 Is the cost justified in terms of the potential use and value to the collection?
1.4 Is the print comprehensible and formatted to suit the age level and reading abilities of the target audience?
1.5 Are the content and vocabulary appropriate for the target audience?
1.6 Is the resource suitable to the interest level of the intended users?
1.7 Is this resource high quality?
2.
Criteria
Currency of Content
2.1 Is the information current and up-to-date (especially regarding resources on topics such as science, technology, social issues, and geo-political content)?
2.2 Is the information and presentation in keeping with current educational practice?
2.3 Are the tables, charts and other relevant data in the resource recent?
2.4 Are links to websites active and current?
3.
Criteria
Accuracy and Quality of Content
3.1 Is the content clearly factual or fictional?
3.2 Are facts and opinions identified and presented impartially?
3.3 Is the content correct?
3.4 Is the content of literary merit?
4.
Criteria
Authority and Reliability of the Composer
4.1 Is the author or creator qualified in the field?
4.2 Is the publisher well-established/reputable in the field?
4.3 Has the author or creator produced other works in the same area?
5.
Criteria
Presentation of the Resource
5.1 Is the style appropriate for the subject and use?
5.2 Do the illustrations extend the factual information?
5.3 Are the print, illustrations, multimedia, and sound of a high quality?
5.4 Is the resource physically attractive?
5.5 Is the resource durable and well-constructed?
6.
Criteria
Accessibility
6.1 Is the format accessible for users?
6.2 Is the content easy to navigate?
6.3 Are ideas developed, organised, and presented clearly?
6.4 Does the resource have peritextual elements such as an index, author’s notes, table of contents, chapter summaries, glossaries, bibliography or menus to assist users to locate relevant information?
7.
Criteria
Respectful to All Peoples
7.1 Is the resource free of bias or prejudice?
7.2 Does the resource present positive images of gender, disability, and cultural and ethnic groups?
7.3 Are the representations of people honest and accurate?
7.4 Is the resource free of stereotypical images and role definitions?
For resources dealing with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues, consider the following additional criteria:
7.5 Is the resource accurate in its presentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues?
7.5.1 Authenticity – is the resource an authentic representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues?
7.5.1.1 Is the material up-to-date?
7.5.1.2 Is the material accurate?
7.5.1.3 Does the material repudiate the concept of terra nullius?
7.5.1.4 Does the material accurately represent Aboriginal resistance to European occupation of the land?
7.5.1.5 Does the material avoid overgeneralisations?
7.5.1.6 Is the number and diversity of both Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal languages and cultures represented?
7.5.1.7 Are illustrations and photographs positive and accurate portrayals of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and relevant to the text?
7.5.1.8 Are photographs accompanied by captions which name the Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person or group in a culturally sensitive manner, and indicate where they come from?
7.5.2 Balanced nature of the presentation – is the representation of content balanced and representative of the diversity and complexity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures?
7.5.2.1 Is there a balanced representation of men and women in the material?
7.5.2.2 Does the material accurately represent women’s roles in First Nations societies?
7.5.2.3 Are stereotyping and racist connotations absent?
7.5.2.4 Does the resource include all readers by not assuming a European background?
7.5.2.5 Does the resource include Torres Strait Islander people?
7.5.2.6 Does the resource avoid over-representing the ‘exotic’ to the exclusion of other cultural aspects?
7.5.2.7 Does the resource acknowledge that First Nations practices continue to the present day?
7.5.3 Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander participation – has the resource been created by, or in consultation with, members of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities?
7.5.3.1 Does the resource acknowledge Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander participation in the research, writing, and presentation processes?
7.5.3.2 Is the author Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander?
7.5.4 Accuracy and support – does the resource accurately represent and support local First Nations groups?
7.5.4.1 Is the material about your local area or state?
7.5.4.2 Has the material been endorsed by local, regional, state, or territory Aboriginal education consultative groups?
7.5.4.3 Has the material been endorsed by other Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander groups?
7.5.4.4 Is the material acceptable to the local Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander communities?
7.5.5 Exclusion of content of a secret or sacred nature – does the resource depict culturally sensitive materials?
7.5.5.1 Does the material avoid culturally insensitive references to information about secret and/or sacred items, practices, sites, and/or representations?
8.
Criteria
Criteria Specific to the School’s Context: Support for school and local community issues
8.1 Does the resource support the school as it works to implement the School Improvement Plan (SIP)?
8.1.1 Strategic Direction 1: Student Growth and Attainment
8.1.2 Strategic Direction 2: Enhancing Learning Culture
8.1.3 Strategic Direction 3: Enhancing Wellbeing for Successful Learning
8.2 Does the resource support the socio-emotional needs of our current and emerging student populations?
8.3 Does the resource support the teaching needs of our current staff, such as a specific syllabus option or course?
8.4 Does the resource support specific school-based programs?
8.5 Does the resource support specific local community programs?
Bibliography and other useful resources for future reference:
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Library, Information and Resource Network (2012). Welcome to the ATSILIRN protocols for libraries, archives and information services. https://atsilirn.aiatsis.gov.au/protocols.php
Debowski, S. (2001). Collection management policies. In K. Dillon, J. Henri & J. McGregor (eds.), Providing more with less: collection management for school libraries (2nd ed.). (pp.126-136). Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University.
Debowski, S. (2001). Collection program funding management. In K. Dillon, J. Henri & J. McGregor (eds.), Providing more with less: collection management for school libraries (2nd ed.). (pp.299-326). Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University.
Dillon, K. (2001). Maintaining collection viability. In K. Dillon, J. Henri & J. McGregor (eds.), Providing more with less: collection management for school libraries (2nd ed.). (pp.241-254). Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University.
Fieldhouse, M., & Marshall, A. (2012). Collection development in the digital age. Facet.
Fleishhacker, J. (2017). Collection development. Knowledge Quest, 45(4), 24–31.
Gregory, V. L. (2019). Collection development and management for 21st century library collections: an introduction. American Library Association.
Herring, J. (2007). Chapter 2: Teacher librarians and the school library. In S. Ferguson (Ed.) Libraries in the twenty-first century: charting new directions in information (pp.27-42). Wagga Wagga, NSW: Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University.
Hughes-Hassell, & S., Mancall, J. C. (2005). Collection management for youth: responding to the needs of learners. American Library Association.
Johnson, Peggy (2018). Fundamentals of collection development and management. ALA Editions.
Keeling, M. (2019). What’s new in collection development? Knowledge Quest 48(2), 4-5.
Kimmel, S. C. (2014). Developing collections to empower learners. American Library Association.
Reflect on your personal theoretical stance on the teaching of literature and how this is evidenced in your practice.
Reflect on your own and your professional colleagues’ knowledge of literature. Identify an occasion when you successfully connected a book with a child or group of students and how your knowledge of the book facilitated this process. Identify possible opportunities for a teacher librarian to respond to this research within the library and beyond to support teacher colleagues.
There are three theories regarding the teaching of literature. Transmission theories posit that the teacher transmits learning to the students, who are empty vessels willingly waiting to receive this information. While this approach can be useful for the direct, explicit instruction of certain aspects of literature (e.g. the definition of a literary device) the focus on the teacher at the expense of student involvement can limit engagement and higher order thinking.Student-centred theories put the focus back on students, allowing them greater control over their learning and thus more motivated to learn. However, student-centred theories are not without their flaws, since they fail to account for the social aspects of learning. Socio-cultural theories of learning fill this gap, arguing that learning takes place within specific social contexts and to serve specific needs.
In my own teaching practice there is a definite focus on socio-cultural theories. Student ownership and engagement, adjustments to their zone of proximal development, and building strong relationships within the learning community of our classroom have been key elements that I have tried to implement in my own practice over the past decade. As such, I have been a strong proponent of literature circles in my time as an English teacher and have found that they can elevate the quality of literary understanding. This module has explored some other interesting strategies, some of which I’ve heard about before, some of which are new. I’m inspired to try a number or adjust of them in the context of the new understandings I’ve developed as a result of this unit:
Publishing staff and student works in a school magazine (Reading Today [RT], 2010)
Book clubs involving respected staff to model positive reading habits (Beach et. al., 2011; Jewett et. al., 2011; Fisher & Frey, 2018)
Book bento boxes (Bales, 2018)
I think that it is crucial for teachers to have a strong knowledge of children’s and young adult literature. However, the increasingly complex nature of teaching and escalating workloads often mean that staff have little time to read widely in these formats. This is where a well-read teacher librarian who prioritises this activity can show their value and provide displays and book lists to enable staff and students to make effective reading choices. Indeed, it is impossible to read all potentially engaging texts on one’s own, and this is where recommendations by trusted content creators such as Facebook book clubs, librarians on Instagram, GoodReads, practitioner blogs, and other publishers come in handy. Following hashtags such as #LoveOzYA, #booktok, and #WeNeedDiverseBooks can also benefit time-poor teachers looking to connect their students with meaningful, relevant literature.
Last year I can think of three separate occasions where I was in a position to have a positive impact on the reading choices of my students. The first was a Year 9 student who is already a voracious reader and had just devoured the Scythe series; I recommended the Obernewtyn Chronicles and the Throne of Glass novels, both of which spurred entrance into an additional fandom for this student. The second was a student in Year 7 who was looking for something to read for the Premier’s Reading Challenge. After a quick conversation I ascertained that her interests might be excited by Westerfeld’s Leviathan series, which presents an alternative steampunk version of WWI from the perspectives of a girl disguised as an British airman and the exiled son of the assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The third, and most rewarding, example was when I connected a disengaged Year 10 student (who had been forced to repeat) with The Story of Tom Brennan, and his English teacher told me later than he’d been talking about it in class. I was so proud of him and it was such a fantastic moment to see the impact that my recommendations could have on our students.
It really comes back to the first two Australian Professional Standards for Teachers about professional knowledge: 1. know students and how they learn, and; 2. know the content and how to teach it. While we might not be teaching traditional content in a conventional classroom, our content is literature and we have to know our stuff and our students to effectively support our school’s learning needs.
Beach, R., Appleman, D., Hynds, S., & Wilhelm, J. (2011). Teaching literature to adolescents. Taylor and Francis.
Fisher, D. & Frey, N. (2018). Raise reading volume through access, choice, discussion, and book talks. Reading Teacher, 72(1), 89-97. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1691
Jewett, P. C., Wilson, J. L. & Vanderburg, M. A. (2011). The unifying power of a whole school read. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 54(6), 415-424. https://doi.org/10.1598/JAAL.54.6.3
Krashen, S. D. (2011). Free voluntary reading. ABC-CLIO, LLC.
A culture of reading (2010). Reading Today [RT], 27(6), 38.
From your readings of module 5.1, discuss which collection methods are suitable and practical in school libraries, and which ones you will use.
As teacher-librarians, one of our core responsibilities is to identify the needs of our learning community and then figure out what we have and what we require to ensure those needs are served effectively and efficiently. The readings for this module reveal that a balance of qualitative and quantitative methods can help teacher-librarians discover and meet these needs with our existing collections and future purchases. Some of the methods outlined in Johnson’s (2018) chapter fit the ‘just in case’ collection development paradigm, while others exemplify the ‘just in time’ approach.
In my secondary library, I already use circulation statistics from our library management system, Oliver, as well as from Wheelers ePlatform which hosts our online library collection. For these eresources I will also conduct cost-per-use analysis to determine whether to renew all of our subscriptions later this year (we currently subscribe to 3 packages through Wheelers: ebooks, audiobooks, and the Wellness collection).
I have just completed a stocktake of our non-fiction, biography, and senior fiction collections since circulation data indicated that they were our least used resources. During this process I was able to conduct a direct collection analysis/shelf scanning, though I didn’t realise that this was what it was called at the time! During this process I was able to not only become familiar with our collection, but also to determine whether these resources were still relevant and in good condition. Our shelves have gone from an overpacked, outdated, uninviting mess to a more streamlined collection which will hopefully allow students to identify relevant materials more effectively. One thing I realised was that sometimes poorly performing resources might still be valuable, but need to be displayed or promoted in a more effective manner. However, this was definitely a time-consuming process and not one which could be conducted easily every year!
I’d also love to begin more qualitative methods of collection analysis this year. One of my 2022 goals is to establish a student-led library committee, and we could incorporate other methods such as focus groups and more regular user opinion surveys (for my last one, only 11 staff out of 95 responded). I have also tried to get staff to share their assessments with me so that I can conduct curriculum mapping, but this task often gets put aside and forgotten amidst the rush of term so I’ll try to find new ways to get my hands on their tasks. List checking, for example against lists such as the Suggested Texts for the English K-10 Syllabus (2012) or the NSW Premier’s Reading Challenge, is another useful qualitative way to analyse the relevance and quality of our library collection.
I think it would be interesting to see whether the gaps in our collection could be filled by resources available at other local libraries; however, while this might be a cost effective way to ensure the needs of our learning community are met, it is hard to quantify using data and when we pass these ‘sales’ (so to speak!) to other libraries they don’t appear on our statistics which makes it difficult to prove the value of the school library’s work to the powers that be. The importance of advocating our value is a recurring theme in this course, and I’d love to be able to include some of these qualitative and quantitative collection analysis methods in our annual School Report to show students, staff, and parents the complicated nature of our work and how we are supporting their learning and recreational needs.
As an English teacher, I am already quite familiar with children’s literature and the benefits of reading for pleasure. Nonetheless, it has been interesting starting this subject to consider recent research and trends in this area.
One thing mentioned in the research that I can definitely back up with anecdotal observation is the trend for interest in reading for pleasure to drop off between the ages of 9-12. The research mentioned that this could be because of competing demands on children’s time as they get older and a growing sense that reading for pleasure isn’t valued as a leisure activity, especially in contrast with competing entertainment platforms such as the internet and gaming. I also think that for many students their identity as ‘non-readers’ and the perception that reading is something ‘nerdy’ only done by a specific type of person has been established by the time they hit high school. This issue seems to be compounded by the limited amount of books relevant to struggling teen readers (especially boys!). If a student has a lower reading ability in high school they are often limited to texts where the content (characters, events, themes) is more relevant for a younger audience; it would be nice if publishers recognised the need for age-appropriate content and cover designs on easy-to-read books. This is perhaps one area where the flexibility of ebooks and audiobooks could be highlighted by school librarians as a potential solution for students who perceive themselves as ‘struggling readers’.
Also supported by my own observations are the statements in the research about the continued popularity of series fiction. The students who regularly borrow from our school library are often borrowing texts from the same authors or series, which shows that once you hook a reader with a specific set of characters or world they are more likely to continue to engage due to the comfort of familiarity. Many of our manga series such as My Hero Academia, Death Note, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Fairy Tale are incredibly popular and many of the students read them as a friendship group, which increases their cultural capital within that group. Teacher librarians could capitalise on this by promoting Book Clubs where students and staff read from a curated book list and discuss their experiences of reading these texts. These book clubs can also serve the purpose of reframing student perceptions about who counts as a ‘reader’. Series fiction is also incredibly popular, with titles such as the Wings of Fire and Arc of the Scythe series providing students a chance to engage with an imagined world over the course of several books. Teacher librarians can capitalise on the popularity of these texts by promoting fan-fic activities and through displays recommending their next reads based on their previous favourites.
It can be hard to keep up with trends in children’s literature. One strategy that teacher librarians can utilise is to follow websites and blogs such as Goodreads and Booktopia. Another is to use technology and social media platforms as a way of tracking popular resources, such as the #booktok or #bookstagram tags. A third is to regularly visit bookstores and local libraries (either the physical location or their online space) to see which books are popular right now and engage with the people selling and promoting these resources in a different setting. Most important is the need for teacher librarians to carve out time for their own reading of these texts. Not only will this allow us to engage in meaningful conversations with our students about these texts (increasing our own cultural capital i.e. ‘cool’ factor with certain groups of students!) but it will also allow us to show that reading for pleasure is a valuable activity that should be likewise valued by our school community. It’s hard for us to advocate for the importance of reading for pleasure if we aren’t taking the time to walk the walk (or read the read, as the case may be).
Choose one of the AITSL standards and look at the ASLA Evidence Guide For Teacher Librarians in the Proficient Career Stage. Consider the evidence that ASLA provides for the achievement of that standard and how you can show that you are meeting this standard.
Since I’m generally a methodical person, I’m going to make like Julie Andrews and start at the very beginning since it’s a very good place to start.
Standard 1: Know Students and How They Learn
1.1 Physical, social, and intellectual development and characteristics of students: proficient teachers use teaching strategies based o knowledge of students’ physical, social, and intellectual development and characteristics to improve student learning.
This standard really is the foundation for everything we do as teachers, and it is no different in our role as teacher librarians. In fact, TLs are possibly better placed than many classroom teachers to know the vast majority of students in our schools since we are a “constant in the learning environment over time.” (Bush and Jones as cited in Lamb, 2011, p.33). I think that the physical space of a library can provide excellent evidence that we are meeting this standard. Each area of the library links to Thornburg’s (2013) reimagining of traditional learning spaces as campfire, cave, and watering hole. Annotated pictures of these spaces would be useful forms of evidence.
The physical arrangement of our lower library space was dictated to the previous TL by higher powers in order to create an adaptable, open-plan learning environment which can function as a ‘campfire’ or a Makerspace. Flexible seating can be arranged in a multitude of ways to facilitate a variety of learning styles and teaching methods. Before the lockdown and online learning began I was in the process of putting together suggested seating charts so that staff could easily get students to rearrange these desks as required. These charts would be an easily submitted form of evidence.
So many students use our school library as a ‘safe space’ away from the bulk of the chaos in the playground. Many of these students are neurodivergent and so I’ve created a “quiet space” on our mezzanine level near the quieter non-fiction section where students can study or relax in peace and quiet with minimal disruptions. This roughly correlates to Thornburg’s concept of the ‘cave’ learning space and has been so popular that I am looking at options to expand (though not sure how given the limitations of space!). This also correlates to the Upper Library which is currently used as a Senior Study area.
Our manga section is currently the most popular, and so I have moved furniture to make a flexible seating area near these shelves that can function as a ‘watering hole’ space where students can chat in their breaks or move away from the bulk of the group during class time. I have adjusted the seating near our fiction section on the opposite site of the lower library to mimic this ‘watering hole’ and provide further opportunities for students to learn through social interactions.
To facilitate our students’ needs for printing services (one of our most popular services), I have established a dedicated printing zone with stand up desks for students to work on laptops while they wait in line for the printer. This is close to the circulation desk to ensure that troubleshooting can be accessed easily and quickly (this is a frequent need for our student population), and multiple copies of printed How To guides are displayed to assist student independence in this process. These guides could easily be submitted as evidence for accreditation if needed.
If I was submitting this as evidence for my accreditation, I could also provide evidence of my attempts to create a “virtual” library space using websites and social media. Recently, McCrindle Research (2019) identified that our incoming students – Generation Alpha – are going to be more visual, student-centred learners than the previous Generation Z and rely more on virtual learning spaces. Research from Australia and the UK also suggests that they are increasingly engaged with social media platforms as a way of getting their entertainment and information (Common Sense Media, 2019; Notley et al., 2020; Australian eSafety Commissioner, 2021). My ongoing efforts in these online spaces is currently focused on starting conversations about all sorts of different reading habits, with the hope that this will allow our students to recognise the validity in their own reading behaviours and thus begin to identify as readers.
Share your ideas about the ways in which Principals can enable the role of the TL, and how TLs might enable the role of the Principal.
I have seen what is possible when Principals and Senior Executive support a TL, and I have seen the detrimental impacts when this key relationship is damaged or toxic.
In so many ways Principals and Senior Executive staff determine the culture of the school. Fairness, trust, and respect are crucial in developing a positive school culture and ensuring teacher buy-in. However, this relationship is a two-way street.
I have witnessed the consequences of a lack of fairness, trust, and respect on the library. The previous TL had many initiatives rejected and perceived that this was because of personality clashes rather than sound policy decisions (as an outside observer I am not confident to make a judgment either way!). However, the damage caused by years of increasingly negative interactions affected not only the library staff but ultimately the entire school community, since the previous TL was often absent, her contributions were generally dismissed or went unnoticed.
I personally have been very fortunate to have the support of my Principal. She encouraged me to apply for the temporary position and again when it became permanent. She has always made me feel that she is approachable and open to new initiatives, and has been a key supporter in helping me increase the visibility of the TL position in the school community by starting/continuing conversations on Facebook promotion posts and going out of her way to send content for these initiatives. She has also helped me establish a Student Media Team. I have yet to have any initiatives rejected and genuinely appreciate her support. Having said that though, I’m careful to “play the game” and align all of my proposals to our school’s Strategic Directions, backed up with evidence and data.
It is a shame that the previous TL did not (for whatever reason) have the same experience, but our contrasting encounters emphasise how important it is to develop strong relationships with all staff, but particularly with the decision makers. To quote Hamilton: “When you got skin in the game, you stay in the game/But you don’t get a win unless you play in the game […] I’ve gotta be in the room where it happens!”
Why it is important to have an understanding of the broader information landscape?
How you think the information landscape will affect your role as a TL in a school?
This week I fell down the rabbit hole. What started as a seemingly simple search for “most active social media platforms 2021” quickly spiralled into a flurry of pages on algorithms, business models, data use and abuse. Many of these things I’d heard about in passing but had never really had the time to delve into on a more meaningful level.
Technology has obviously had an immense impact on the information landscape. Some of this has been positive – for instance in bringing together marginalised individuals, or making information more accessible to people with disabilities. Yet there are a number of downsides to the digital information landscape that we cannot ignore. Therefore it is crucial that teacher librarians have not just an understanding of the broader information landscape, but that we have a deep knowledge and maintain currency about these evolving issues. If we do not, we cannot effectively fulfil our roles as information specialists. It also struck me with the reading from the modules and my own research this week that people will not be able to enjoy their rights of access to information if they lack the skills to navigate and evaluate these information platforms.
I found it interesting to consider our rights and responsibilities regarding information access. I think that a lot of people focus on their rights (for example, their right to an opinion) but often forget that there are associated responsibilities around our interaction with the information landscape. We have the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to seek, receive and impart information. We have the right to privacy, as well as the right to access the infrastructure which will allow us access to information (though as I discussed in my previous post, this is not always guaranteed!). In this context libraries of all kinds play a crucial role in ensuring that peoples’ rights to access information are being upheld. However, it was interesting for me to consider that these rights could be restricted by law when necessary, if they were deemed to contravene the rights of others, or if they negatively impacted national security or order, or public health or morals. We live in a world which blurs the lines between facts and opinions, and the idea of who gets to determine if something is ‘necessary’ or harming ‘public morals’ was also interesting for me to consider. It is important to remember these responsibilities, especially in times of global pandemic such as ours. Yet the subjective element here leaves it open to potential abuse and censorship, and the fact that our national commitment to these rights and responsibilities is more of an implicit understanding than something enshrined in law is problematic. For instance, what if a family complains that Harry Potter is on the shelves, or content that they see as promoting Black Lives Matter or LGBTQI+ agendas? Or conversely, that there isn’t enough diverse content? The paradox of tolerance is something to consider here, and the response a teacher librarian would get in one school context might differ in another.
Our right of access to information is further complicated by issues of technological redundancy and convergence. In particular I couldn’t help but think about my own school context and the fact that all too often outdated or damaged technology was not updated, repaired or replaced due to budget constraints. Are funding arrangements, budget allocations and BYOD policies creating what Floridi called “digital favelas” in some schools? I also couldn’t help but consider my own failings with certain technological tools. I normally consider myself pretty tech-savvy, but for the life of me I cannot figure out the 3D printer I inherited when I became the teacher librarian. We’ve recently had a new deputy push for Macs to be integrated into our programs. Heaven help me!
Finally, my research and the module readings this week prompted me to consider the ways that our students are accessing information as digital natives. Modern students are primarily engaging with information (whether for their own entertainment or not) in virtual spaces. In Purcell is correct in her assertion that promotion of our services and resources is vital to our role as teacher librarians, then should we adapt to the online world and utilise social media marketing strategies that will reach and engage them with our content more effectively? Our school community engages heavily with Facebook and we’ve recently created an Instagram page to encourage greater student engagement. However, what are our ethical responsibilities when it comes to using and encouraging the use of these platforms? Are we leaving people in our school community vulnerable to data miners who could potentially sell their information and content to advertisers, politicians or government agencies? Are we pushing them to use platforms which could expose them to algorithms and content which could potentially cause harm? Are we encouraging them to become “unpaid machine trainers” whose data could be used to teach the very machines that might replace them in the workforce? On the surface it appears that having a library Instagram account is a fun way to get students interested, but in reality it is a potential ethical minefield. As teacher librarians we must be mindful of our interactions with these platforms and their function in the information landscape, and as information specialists encourage our school community likewise to maintain awareness of their behaviours.
In her speech, Bonanno raised several cogent points about the roles of Teacher Librarians and the risk we face of becoming an “invisible profession” if we fail to promote our skills, resources, and services effectively to our school community. By adapting the Five Finger Plan to Success to the TL’s context, Bonanno emphasised that we need to understand our strength of character, FOCUS (know the outcome and follow it until achieved), understand and develop our brand (with special consideration of the values we stand for), build relationships with the 10-30% of staff who are likely to work with us(particularly with key figures such as Principals), and consider the little things we can do each day to add value to our school community.
I found Bonanno’s perspective refreshing in many ways. The key message that we should reframe the difficulties we experience as opportunities to promote our continuing relevance was something that I personally found quite relevant given the overall (and largely understandable!) negativity among the wider teaching profession in our current climate. I loved the idea of “claim your space” and have been working over the last few weeks to build a social media presence for our school library in an attempt to promote our online library resources and recent reading initiatives, such as the staff and student Book Club. Bonanno’s message, along with Vanessa Trower’s Edutech presentation “The Learning Brand: What Marketing Has Taught Us Learning Professionals to Drive Engagement and a Learning Culture”, revealed a variety of strategies that I can utilise moving forward as I “claim” this virtual space on social media. This is especially important considering that while we are learning from home we cannot access our physical library spaces!
One final thought: it is interesting that in many discussions about the TLs role in academic and practitioner content that there is limited reference to the importance of marketing and promotions. So many people have identified that the key roles of TLs include our capacity as information specialists, instructional partners, ICT experts, and resource managers. Yet it seems that if we do not effectively promote these skills and services, we do in fact risk becoming an “invisible profession.” It up to us to ensure that this does not happen.
Image 1: Reinsel Soulen, 2020, p.39
