Tips requested!

I’m writing an article for LMC on managing digital resources in school libraries. My premise is that we need to follow the same steps we do with print materials:

• Needs assessment/Collection development
• Selection
• Acquisition
• Promotion and display
• Circulation and control
• Inventory
• Evaluation

but that digital resources present some unique challenges. While I have more than a few ideas about this, I would love to hear of any effective strategies you have used in any of these management areas that would be helpful to other SLMS! I will fully credit your contribution should I use it in the article.

Thanks!

How to destroy any school library program

For some reason, e-mails like the one below are inadvertently sent to me now and then.  I find them interesting and think other school library media specialists might as well. - Doug

From: "Screwdisk" <sdisk666@inferno.org>
To: "Wormwood" <wormie@terrafirma.edu>
Subject: How to destroy any school library program
Date: Thur Jan 18, 2007 :10:19 -0500
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 8.5
Importance: Scorching

  My dearest Wormwood:

Once again it is my unpleasant duty to report that your job performance in the area of retarding human potential was unsatisfactory during the past year (only two brimstones out of five).  At all the schools in your area, young humans are graduating at higher rate, are displaying a distressing tendency to do more of their own thinking, and are actually seeming to enjoy reading, problem-solving and even, Lucifer Help Us, learning. This cannot continue if we have an ice cube's chance in hell of keeping mankind ignorant, cruel, and brutal.

The single common denominator among all your schools is that they have an active school library program!  Once again it seems you've been reading your e-mail  instead being attentive at our staff meetings and have missed ways to cripple the school library program.  Find below ideas shared at a past meeting on how to effectively disable any library program, not matter what its current strength.

The fiendishly glorious thing about library programs is that they depend upon on a single fragile soul - the school librarian. You get to her, the entire program goes up in flames.

You must convince "madam librarian"  to:

1. Think of  the library as her  program where she sets all the rules, knows all the best practices, and owns all the materials.
   
2. Invite people into the library, but when they actually get there, set rules and expectations that make them feel uncomfortable, even unwelcome.
   
3. Place more emphasis on getting stuff  back and keeping it in order than getting it out and into children's hands.
4. Consider the only productive behaviors in the library to be academic in nature. Pursuits of self-interest mustn't count.
5. Assume people who like getting information in ways other than reading are stupid. Oh, and treat them that way.
   
6. Spend a lot of time making sure the cataloging meets standards. Stay in her back office while doing so. Don't let people say "anal retentive" like it's a bad thing.
   
7. Make sure she lets it be known that books are superior to technology in every way, under every circumstance.
8. Ban kids taking notes and certainly ban the copy/paste command. Make them work for their plagiarized term papers!
   
9. Only select and book talk items she likes to read. Make sure she ignores any nonfiction titles. Claim graphic novels are the devil's handiwork.
10. Make sure she has a set of goals that in no way relate to building or district goals.
11. Assume teachers who do not want to collaborate are bad teachers and treat them as such. Assume administrators who do not automatically value of the library are dolts and troglodytes and treat them as such.
    
12. Always advocate for what is in the best interest of the library - not the library user.
13. Never accept a task that she considers beneath her professional dignity - teaching a class, hosting a study hall, monitoring a test.
14. Develop an adversarial relationship with as many people as possible. Key are the principal, the custodian, the secretary and especially the technology director. 
15. Set as many rules on computer use as possible. Bans all forms of recreational use especially. For first time misuse, take away computer privileges for a minimum of a year.
    
16. Learn to play good cop/bad copy with her library aide. The librarian is  the bad cop.
17.  Make sure she is very, very fussy about her job title. Just make sure she cares deeply about many things no one else cares about.
    
18. Consider everything a collaborative effort, and to take no responsibility for that which could be directly attributed to or blamed on her.
    
19. Develop a good relationship with parents - after she finds out her job may be cut.
20. Whine. At every opportunity.
    

Remember to invoke the pernicious imps of Fear, Powerlessness and Defensiveness at every opportunity. A confident librarian is among the worst of Our enemies! If Earth is ever to truly become the devil’s playground, nasty concepts like critical thinking, tolerance for a diversity of opinions, the ability to empathize with others, and intellectual freedom must be stamped out faster than prison-made license plates. Allow me to remind you once again that with even the least diligence and effort on your part, libraries which support these heresies can be rendered ineffectual.

Fire up, Wormwood! Fire up! Get these librarians in your schools heading down the wrong path. And do make sure it is "down."

Insincerely,
Screwdisk

With apologies to C.S. Lewis

Collaboration - another view

Below is a response from Judi Moreillon to my comments. As promised, they are without editorial comment from me  since Judi is eloquent, passionate and possibly right. - Doug

 

This is the caption I would like to see under this photo, Doug.

“There is no limit to what we can achieve if we don't care who gets the credit.” (Attributed by some to Ronald Reagan.)

Like Doug, I served as a teacher-librarian for twelve years. Eight of those years, I served in two elementary Library Power schools. I know first hand the difference between an add-on library program and one that is fully integrated into the classroom curriculum. At its best, classroom-library collaborative teaching includes coplanning, coimplementing, and coassessing lessons and units of instruction. It is job-embedded professional development for teacher-librarians and classroom teachers.

Yes, “we” have been talking about collaborative teaching for 30 years, but we have not been practicing it. To say we have tried this for 30 years and it has failed to preserve school library positions is a fantasy. If we had been practicing it, there wouldn’t be reoccurring posts to LM_NET and the AASLForum that complain about classroom teachers and administrators not knowing what we do. If we did our jobs – all 4 roles as outlined in IP2 (instructional partner, information specialist, teacher, and program administrator)– then I contend “they” would know what we do. We would have been showing them all along!

Sociocultural researchers such as Lev Vygotsky and educational philosophers such as John Dewey have influenced my thinking. I do believe, and my experience bears this out, that ALL learners, regardless of age, can accelerate their learning by working in collaboration with peers and mentors.

Collaboration is not educational jargon. Look at the current literature in business, science, and technology. You will find that people understand that if we are to solve the world’s humongous problems, we must put our heads together. (How can we expect K-12 students to do this if we ourselves are unwilling? If we do not model it first?)

If the person serving in the role of teacher-librarian is tied to a fixed schedule that does not allow for collaborative planning and teaching, serves as planning time for other educators, stays on the periphery of the school’s instructional program, or teaches information literacy skills isolated from his/her classroom colleagues’ curriculum, and this is fine with that person, his/her principal, and faculty, then I say – Okay.

But don’t call that person a teacher-librarian, or school library media specialist, or library media teacher, or any term that denotes a professional school librarian.

Similar to Doug, I served as a teacher-librarian mentor and have taught preservice teacher-librarians. This is the analogy I try to draw:

If the AMA tells surgeons to sterilize their instruments, doctors do it because they believe their association might know something that will help them better serve their patients. Our national association, the American Association of School Librarians, charges us with four roles for professional practice, and some of us simply say, “You can’t make me.”

True, no one can make someone else be an instructional partner, which, by the way, on the last AASL survey was the #1 role (of the four we currently have) that respondents feel should guide our future work. But if someone is serving in the library and not assuming this role to the best of his/her ability and advocating for changes in scheduling, staffing, and funding that can support this advancement of the library program, then I say…

Okay, but I can’t, in good conscience, refer to that person as a teacher-librarian.