Another spring, another round of library cuts?

Forget robins and crocuses. Here's how you tell it is spring.

Yesterday was National School Library Day. And the day before that, School Library Journal published an article "Fighting Cuts: How to Keep Librarians in Schools." 

In the article, Elissa Malespina, president of International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Librarians Network, outlines some strategies she learned when undertaking a successful effort to restore three librarian positions and library budgets in her New Jersey district. Her advice is excellent. Read it even if you think your library position is safe this year.

Sadly, library cuts seem to have been a part of spring for my entire 40 year career in the field. In 2004, I wrote an article similar to the SLJ piece for our state school library association's journal, Minnesota Media, called "When Your Job is on the Line." It contained frighteningly similar advice to that given by Malespina 14 years later. Not sure what this says about the learning capacity of our profession!

What the article did include is a conclusion about the prevention of job and program cuts. It read:

Prevention

Of course, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. Ongoing efforts can make your library media program less likely to be the target of budget reductions. Make sure you are already doing the things below.

1. Building and maintaining a library media program that teaches critical information and technology literacy skills, builds student literacy rates, and supports all classrooms and curricular areas.
2. Serving the needs of your teaching and administrative staff through instructional collaboration, technology training and support, and their own professional materials request fulfillment.
3. Establishing or continuing a school library media program advisory committee comprised of a wide range of stakeholders (especially parents) that meets on a regular basis to discuss goals, policies, and budgets.
4. Creating long-term goals and annual objectives that are supported by the principal and teachers and are directly tied to your building’s goals. Enacting long-range plans and multi-year strategies or projects makes it difficult to change horses in midstream.
5. Building a relationship with your principal that is mutually supportive.
6. Tracking and reporting to your administrator the use of your library media program, especially in terms of units of teaching, collaboration, and specific skills you yourself teach.
7. Communicating regularly and formally with administrators, teachers, students, parents and the community about what is happening in your library program, through newsletters and e-mail; and communicating informally through e-mails and notes to individuals on “I thought you’d like to know about this…” topics.
8. Having an ongoing involvement with your parent-teacher organizations.
9. Serving on leadership, curriculum, technology and staff development teams in your building and district.
10. Being active in your teacher professional organization and reminding officers that as a dues-paying member, you deserve as much support as the classroom teacher.
11. Being involved in the extra-curricular life of the school, attending school plays, sporting events, award ceremonies etc. Be visible! (I think it helps to be an active member of the community belonging to a church or other religious organization, community service group, and/or volunteer groups. It’s harder to fire a friend and neighbor than a stranger.)
12. Being active in MEMO by attending conferences and regional events, reading the MEMOrandom and Minnesota Media publications, volunteering for positions in the organization, and attending MEMO/MLA legislative functions.

You as a school library media specialist are too important to too many children to let budget reductions that impact your program just “happen.” Get active, ask for support, and heed the words of Dylan Thomas – “Do not go gentle into that good night.”

I hope people listen more carefully to Malespina than they did to me. I want my great-grandchildren to have school libraries and especially school librarians.

Student reading rights

One of the LM_Net participants I most respect is Barbara Braxton, a teacher-librarian in Comma, New South Wales, Australia. In response to an article in SLJ about labeling books by reading level in the library, she shared her Students' Bill of Rights* on her 500 Hats blog. Please take a few minutes and look it over. It's fine reminder of just how we can treat our students with the dignity they deserve.

We as librarians also need to be familiar with more specific "rights" of our patrons. ALA's Library Bill of Rights specifically calls out:

V. A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.

ALA's Access to Resources and Services in the School Library: And Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights, reads in part:

Major barriers between students and resources include but are not limited: to imposing age, grade-level, or reading-level restrictions on the use of resources; limiting the use of interlibrary loan and access to electronic information; charging fees for information in specific formats; requiring permission from parents or teachers; establishing restricted shelves or closed collections; and labeling. Policies, procedures, and rules related to the use of resources and services support free and open access to information.

I would interpret these statements to mean that 3rd graders should not be restricted to books at a 3rd grade reading level. So while most library rights address intellectual freedom and access to opinions, information, and ideas, the rights extend to reading for pleasure and practice. (I had one professor suggest we call all recreational reading books "practice reading books" to get the support of administration. Hmmm.)

One of my biggest concerns is that students in schools without assertive librarians who advocate for these rights will have few or no opportunities to read for pure enjoyment. In our efforts to raise reading scores based on arbitrary goals, students will only read what is chosen for them without regard to personal interest and tastes, becoming citizens who can read but chose not to read. At particular risk are children who go to schools in low income areas without libraries and librarians. To me, this is grievous discrimination. (I know, I know, this is a drum I beat too often. See Little Bunny Books)

Read and re-read Ms Braxton's document and the works of ALA. They describe well what is at the heart of what librarians and other child advocates are about.

* I was once called out for creating a PLN Bill of Rights by Stephen Downes who reminded me that "Bill of Rights" is a uniquely American creation, not transnational.

High tech, high touch in schools, libraries, and lives

It's another snow day here in Minnesota. A few days into April and instead of flowers blooming, we are seeing 7-10 inches of the white stuff. The roads are messy, but I came into the office as I do on all snow days. Besides having a relatively quiet day of cancelled meetings and fewer emails and phone calls, I also like seeing others who work in my office and in my building. Sitting home can get boring and a little lonely. And the others who come in ... could it be the same for them?

Back in the dark ages before many of you were even a twinkle in your daddy's eye, a very smart fellow named John Naisbitt wrote a book that fascinated me: 1982's Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives. It was the first time I remember seeing the term "Information Economy."

While a few of Naisbitt's predictions were optimistic and lots of the details were wrong, several trends were dead on. The one I best remember was number 2:

from Summary: Review & Analysis of Naisbitt's Book Megatrends, BusinessNews Publishing, nd.

This megatrend has especially played out in the design of many schools and libraries. As we have added digital resources and tools in our schools, so have we added spaces for group work and collaboration. As our libraries increasing rely on e-books and online materials, so too have we re-worked the spaces to make them more welcoming and comfortable. As we collect, store, analyze, and use more data on students, we also view them more as individuals and recognize the critical impact of caring adults in their lives.

While Naisbitt may have gotten some of the specifics wrong in his predictions, the essence is right. Many of us who use technology for long periods of time, do look for ways to connect with others,  do look for a balance through nature, exercise, and group activities. Increased interest in social movements and spirituality may be a reaction to smartphones, the Gig Economy, and teleconferencing.

For many of us, the jury is still out whether technology has had a net positive of negative impact on our own lives and on the lives of those about whom we care - including our students. I would like to think that the outcome is not a given, but a challenge and goal for which we can strive...