Don’t advocate for libraries (From Machines Are the Easy Part)

From Machines Are the Easy Part; People Are the Hard Part. 
Illustrations by Brady Johnson

 65. Accentuate the things you can do that the Internet can’t.  

The Internet has also threatened other services. Nobody is picking on libraries. What do these entities still offer that their online counter parts cannot? 

• Bookstores -> Inviting atmospheres 
• Schools -> Child containment 
• Travel agents -> Expertise/time savings 
• Banks -> Traditional services enhanced with online services 

Physical spaces are still relevant, even in an increasingly virtual world. But they have to be inviting, personal and worth visiting. 

66. Be a teacher first, librarian second. 

Schools need only two things: students and teachers. Everything else is optional. 

We need to be teachers. That means: 

• Having a curriculum that only we teach that is considered valuable by the community we serve. 
• Having a concrete set of benchmarks that can be objectively assessed. 
• Directly teaching students. 
• Assessing student performance. 
• Reporting student performance back to students and their parents. 
• Having a required teaching license 

These are all things teachers do. And we should too. 

67. Don’t advocate for libraries. 

It’s self-serving.  

Advocate for library users. 

68. Poor librarians reflect on all of us. 

Alice couldn’t cut it in the classroom.  

Alice couldn’t be fired.  

Alice was made the school librarian. 

Because such a path into the profession has not been uncommon in the past, principals and teachers only experiences may have been with untrained, incompetent librarians. Unfortunately, they still exist. 

We need to actively encourage those folks to find another line of work. We need to tighten up entrance requirements to library schools. We need to police our own ranks. 

If only we could get these people into Congress – both professions would be vastly improved. 

69. Weed. 

I once took over a job for a woman who had been a school librarian for 20 years. During her tenure, she never threw a thing away. Most of the books were of an age that they could legally drink and many could have gotten Social Security. 

I know this because the bottom left drawer of her desk contained about a dozen years of the Sports Illustrated swim suit editions. Happy, happy Doug. 

I envisioned Evelyn’s dilemma. “I can’t put this out where children will see it, but I can’t throw it away.” It must have cost her sleepless nights. 

Poorly weeded collections are not the sign of poor budgets but of poor librarianship. Small but high quality collections are the sign of inadequate budgets.