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How Essential Are School Librarians?
How Essential Are School Librarians?
By Liana Heitin on January 4, 2012
Teacher Leader Network
School librarians in California are being forced to defend the continued viability of their trade, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. According to the piece, the California Department of Education recently documented that there are now 900 school librarians in the state—down from 1,100 two years ago. And only one out of four schools in California has a credentialed librarian.
In light of budget cuts and impending educator layoffs, some officials question the continued need for librarians now that technology has put has put a wealth of resources and research options at students' fingertips. "You have to make choices sometimes, and the importance of librarians is a bit less than it used to be," Ze'ev Wurman, who served as a policy adviser for the U.S. Department of Education, told the Chronicle. "In the elementary grades especially, librarians are essentially teacher's aides, doing a variety of things that have little to do with books or literacy, per se."
Conversely, Barbara Jeffus, school librarian consultant for the Department, said there's a growing body of research showing that "if you have a teacher-librarian working with classroom teachers, student achievement is higher." And Diane Alexander, president of the California School Library Association, argues that librarians are uniquely positioned to inspire students to read. "We're the ones who know the current books," she said. "It can make a huge difference if you can hook a kid onto reading."
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Eric Sundberg on
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Last week I was speaking with high school student researchers at an academic competition. Although they had done most of their literature reviews using Proquest, SIRS, EBSCOhost and other online resources selected, maintained and provided by our librarians, they were not really aware of having used the library. These students later agreed that they were taught to use these resources by school librarians in collaboration with social studies, English and science teachers. Research is changing and so are libraries. Nonetheless, it would be shortsighted to think there is no longer a role for librarians in organizing and maintaining resources and in guiding students in how to use them and in evaluating the credibility and reliability of information. We need to acknowledge the following:
- Researchers increasingly work in a world of online resources, virtual tools, electronic devices and choices of where to work
- Researchers are no longer tied to the physical spaces of libraries (special collections and equipment notwithstanding)
- The commercial sector (book stores, Starbucks, online shopping) and the internet shape student and teacher expectations for accessing and processing information
- The goals of education increasingly inlcude collaboration, engagement and communication
Thus, library research needs to be experienced as
- Fast
- Collaborative
- Connectivist (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwM4ieFOotA)
- Online
- Wireless
- Full of choices
- Integrating real-time communication and collaboration tools from the web with personal devices and the pysical resources of the libary
Librarians need to be perceived as
- Teachers of research and information literacy
- Curators
- Expert cataloguers
- Technologists
Those entrusted with nurturing library research programs need to
- Publicize what librarians are already doing to promote 21st century skills.
- Broaden the conception of the role of school librarians.
- Use emails, faculty meetings, newsletters. etc., to enage librarians with other staff in transitioning to a "learning organization" mindset of how best to integrate school librarians in teaching toward Common Core and discipline-specific standards.
Eric Sundberg, Ed,D.
Curriculum Associate for Social Studies, Business Ed. and Libraries
Jericho UFSD
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