Indispensable Librarian: Table of Contents

Note: This week I am on a "writing holiday" from my day job. I'm using the time to work on a revision of my 1997 book The Indispensable Librarian. (Personally, I think it is still just fine, but others have asked if we still use Gopher as a search tool in our district.) While I wrote the draft for my last book I took advantage of Blue Skunk readers, using you as a sounding board for my book materials. Consider yourselves so used again. Thank you. – Doug

One of the most challenging parts of writing for me is getting organized and writing an introduction. One way I do this is by designing an outline in the form of a Table of Contents for book on which I am working. My draft TOC for The Indispensable Librarian 2nd edition is below. I have also appended the chapters from the first edition. I would value any comments from readers, especially if there were parts of my first book you found useful in its day.

Thanks.

Table of Contents for The Indispensable Librarian, 2nd ed. (subject to change without warning)

Introduction to the second edition

Author biography

Chapter One: The Roles and Missions of the Librarian

• The Virtual Librarian
• What are the challenges facing our profession?
• Seven ways for librarians remain relevant in a ubiquitous information environment full of NetGen learners
• Do school librarians have "enduring values?"
• Sample mission statement and the elevator speech
• Why are you in the profession anyway?
• Sidebar: The Mankato Transition: A case study

Chapter Two: Program Assessment

• Is it a trick question?
• How will you show your program is impacting student achievement?
• What data should libraries collect?
• Formal or informal assessments –what are the advantages?
• Sidebar: Linking libraries and reading achievement

Chapter Three: Planning

• How can collaborative planning build library support?
• What are goals and what are objectives?
• Sidebar: 20 years of working with an advisory group - what I've learned.

Chapter Four: Communications and Advocacy

• What are the basic rules of effective advocacy?
• What are the components of an effective communications program?
• Sidebar:What is transparency and why is it critical to the librarian’s success?

Chapter Five: Managing Digital Resources

• How has the library’s role changed with information and books going digital?
• What is cloud computing and how can libraries take advantage of it?
• What is the role of the library in technology integration planning and implementation?
• Sidebar: There are books and there are books

Chapter Six: Management and Collaboration

• Why do libraries need support people?
• What is the secret to successful supervision?
• At what level should you be collaborating?
• What are the fundamentals of successful collaboration?
• Sidebar: What are the strengths and weaknesses of both fixed and flexed library program?

Chapter Seven: Curriculum and Reading

• What is the library program’s role in developing “21^st century skills?”
• What are the best student skill standards? What do they have in common?
• What are the components of a meaningful information literacy and technology curriculum?
• What new skills are needed to survive the information jungle?
• How can librarians support the development of “right brain” skills?
• Sidebar: What does a library for a post-literate society look like?

Chapter Eight: Budget

• Why is budgeting an ethical endeavor?
• Why is budget important and what are its critical components?

Chapter Nine: Facilities

• Why should I go to the library when the library will come to me?
• What are the fundamentals of good school library design and are they still important?
• How do we design brick and mortar libraries for digital resources?
• Sidebar: 10 design pitfalls and how to avoid them

Chapter Ten: Digital Intellectual Freedom

• Freedom and filters: can we have both?
• How does due process apply to online sources of information?
• Sidebar: How do you get the technology director to unblock a site?

Chapter Eleven: The Library’s Role in Ethics

• How has technology impacted ethical behavior?
• Copyright and common sense
• Creative Commons
• Rules for the social web
• Sidebar: Preventing plagiarism with better assignment design

Chapter Twelve: Staff Development

• Who will teach the teachers?
• Just in case, just in time, just in part - differentiated instruction in technology for teachers
• Sidebar: The secret to being perceived as a technology guru

Chapter Thirteen: Surviving Professional Transitions

• What can you do if your library program is a part of budget reductions?
• How can you lobby effectively?
• What’s a PLN and why you really, really need one?
• Sidebar: Top 10 ways to increase your technology skills and knowledge

Chapter Fourteen: Libraries and the Future

• Prognostications
• A vision for school libraries

OK, you can tell I am not as organized the further I go in the book. I am trying to avoid publishing anything that has appeared in my other books, including my book of Head for the Edge columns. Oh, my first edition manuscript was written using AppleWorks - files I can no longer open, easily anyway. The new book will be about 90% new it looks like.

Table of Contents  of first edition of The Indispensable Librarian

Chapter 1: Mission
Chapter 2: Planning
Chapter 3: Influence and Public Relations
Chapter 4: Technology
Chapter 5: Personnel
Chapter 6: Curriculum
Chapter 7: Budget
Chapter 8: Facilities
Chapter 9: Policies
Chapter 10: Staff Development
A bibliography of “must reads”

BFTP: Homage to Travis McGee

A weekend Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past. Original post February 26, 2007. On a holiday visit last month I found my entire collection of Travis McGee novels in my aunt's attic. Trips to the used book store just won't be as thrilling.

One of my more literate buddies and I were having supper a few weeks ago when the discussion veered from “lies about women” to “books we like.” Come to think about it, those may be the only things we ever talk about. Anyway, we tried to remember what specific book got us hooked on a particular genre. Kiddie books don’t count.

I can safely say that Robert Heinlein’s Have Space Suit, Will Travel started my infatuation with science fiction. Tolkien’s hobbits lead to a brief flirtation with fantasy novels. I remember Kenneth Roberts’ Northwest Passage and Mary Renault’s The King Must Die as my first dalliances with historical fiction – an affair that continues to this day. And of course, Fleming’s Bond stories created this fan of international espionage.

But I read two detective novels for every one book of another genre. And it was John D. McDonald’s Travis McGee who set me down this path. No pantywaist Hardy Boy or tea-sipping Marple or cerebral Holmes, this McGee. He describes himself as:

I was an artifact, genus boat bum, a pale-eyed, shambling, gangling, knuckly man, without enough unscarred hide left to make a decent lampshade. Watchful appraiser of the sandy-rumped beach ladies. Creaking knight errant, yawning at the thought of the next dragon.  They don't make grails the way they used to. The Green Ripper, p 46.

McGee set the mold for my favorite detectives. Smart, absolutely, but also unafraid of violence when needed and unafraid to buck the establishment when necessary. And always adhering to a personal moral code that detests bullies and protects the innocent. Knight errant, indeed.

I re-read a couple McGee mysteries just recently and McDonald’s writing has held up. McGee’s relationship with women won’t pass any political correctness tests today, but I love how the women he encounters can speak in complete, compound, even complex sentences that add up to whole paragraphs:

She wrenched around to face me, her mouth stretched into ugliness. "And what the hell do you know about relationships? Symbiotic! Limited contact with reality! How could you even pretend to recognize the intellectual position? Oh, you have your lousy little vanity, Mr. McGee. You have a shrewd, quick mind, and little tag ends of wry attitudes, and a short of deliberate irony, served up as if you were holding it on a tray. And you have the nerve to patronize me! You have all your snappy little answers to everything, but when they ask the wrong questions, you always have fists or kicking or fake superior laughter. You are a physical man, but in the best sense of being a man, you are not one-tenth the man my brother was. " Her eyes went wild and dazed. "Was," she repeated softly/ She had sunk the barb herself, and chunked it deep, and she writhed on it. A Purple Place for Dying, p. 71

McGee’s life was one I’ve always envied. Life onboard the houseboat The Busted Flush. Working only enough to take his retirement a small piece at a time. Beautiful women going in and out of his life. A true friend and Watson in next door neighbor Meyers. The life, I suppose, we all dream about but would probably detest were we actually in it. No children or grandchildren in McGee’s world as I remember.

I am always searching for other detectives of the McGee school – smart, violent and principled. As Bill Ott suggests in his February "Rousing Reads" column in American Libraries, Lee Child’s hero Jack Reacher comes close. Earl Swagger (Stephen Hunter), Dave Robicheaux (James Lee Burke), Harry Bosch (Michael Connelly), and even Gabriel Allon (Daniel Silva) honor the type.

It’s my hope that authors keep cranking out these tough guys that can use brains, bullets and fists. Any suggestions to expand my list? What book hooked you on a genre?

Do school librarians have "enduring values?"

Note: I will be taking the next week to go on a "writing holiday" from my day job. I'll be using the time to work on a revision of my 1997 book The Indispensable Librarian. (Personally, I think it is still just fine, but others have asked if we still use Gopher as a search tool in our district.) While I wrote the draft for my last book I took advantage of Blue Skunk readers, using them as a sounding board for my book materials. Consider yourselves so used again. Thank you. – Doug

Do school librarians have "enduring values?"

Before you continue reading this book on managing an effective school library program, it's only fair to ask if libraries, library programs, and librarians will around long enough to make such a reading worth your time. Quite frankly, it's a difficult but extremely important question. And my answer is definitely yes…

If.

We already know we need to adapt to changes in technology. We already know we need to be more accountable about the impact of our programs. We already know that we will need to spend time on effective advocacy and developing broad ownership of the library program. We know that our physical facilities will evolve, our areas of expertise will change, the format of our collections will become more diverse, and our libraries’ services will be different each year.

So a second question then comes up: Will our libraries be so changed from what we now consider libraries will they still continue to be called libraries. And my answer is definitely yes…

If, we maintain the core values that will transcend the specifics of library programming.

Just as technology was starting to have a major impact on libraries, long-time academic librarian and past ALA president Michael Gorman identified these as enduring central or "core" values of librarianship (Gorman, 2000):

1. Stewardship
2. Service
3. Intellectual Freedom
4. Rationalism
5. Literacy and learning
6. Equity of access to recorded knowledge and information
7. Privacy
8. Democracy

Are these core values still held by practicing school librarians? Are there other common central beliefs that define us as librarians? When I describe my own professional core values as a librarian, I include:

1. Every child should have access to as diverse number of opinions as possible and be allowed to drawn his or her own personal conclusions about the world. The library program’s primary educational role is teaching children to think, not simply to memorize or believe.
2. Every child's interests, learning style and abilities should be respected. Skills are best taught in a personal context.
3. Every child’s preference in information format should be respect, both as an information consumer and producer. Information in all formats should be treated equally.
4. Every child’s privacy must be honored and protected. It is our role to help children protect their own privacy.
5. The ability to find, evaluate, organize, synthesize and communicate information is a basic skill for every child.
6. Reading skills are best developed through voluntary free reading on topics of personal interest to students. Students must be intrinsically motivated to read and to learn.
7. Every child should have access to a place in a school where he or she is comfortable, valued, safe and can learn with other students.
8. Every child is must be taught the skills and sensibilities of digital citizenship.
9. The library’s primary function is to be of service to children – directly and through other educational programs. Our success is a reflection of how successful we make others.
10. The skills taught and resources provided by the library program are critical to a free society. 

As some schools replace librarians with clerks or "technology integration specialists" - or no one at all, my greatest concern is that these values will be lost. Who will fight for information access for all students? Who will fight for intellectual freedom? Who will be concerned about the privacy rights of students and faculty? Who will insist that information literacy is right of every child? Yes, there are teachers who value these things, but for how many teachers, unlike librarians, are they their primary mission?

Now and in the future, the physical room, the title of the person running it, or the kinds of resources provided will not matter. I will know I am in a library when it is run by a librarian.

Gorman, Michael Our Enduring Values: Librarianship in the 21st Century, Chicago: American Library Association, 2000. Gorman

So readers, what values have I missed?