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School Library Advocacy

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Latest Activity: Dec 6

While we all would like to devote all our energy to our jobs of being better school librarians and improving our libraries, many of us are faced with serious threats to funding for our positions and our libraries that require our focus. There are a number of forums out there for posting good ideas for advocacy for school libraries, but I thought it would be good to set up a place for discussion and for storing good ideas that we can all draw on for advocacy. Please use this space to discuss advocacy and to post letters, speech texts, videos, and anything you can think of that might give others help others to be proactive in advocating for our positions and our libraries.

Discussion Forum

Promoting what we do using technology 2 Replies

Here's a VoiceThread that the teacher librarians in my district created to promote the 21st century skills we teach to our teachers, administrators, and board members. We are a district with 13 schoo…

Tagged: VoiceThread, advocacy

Started by Janethelibrarian. Last reply by Chloe Feb 25.

Resources available

CSLA (California School Library Association) has set up a wiki on which people can share tools, their stories, and ideas for fighting the budget cuts facing so many teacher librarians in California t…

Started by Janethelibrarian Feb 23.

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Comment by Janethelibrarian on March 22, 2009 at 10:42am: I'm responding to both Chloe and Hainalka. First, I apologize to Chloe for being so slow to reply. I guess I got distracted and failed to check this forum promptlly. I think our titles are a problem and cause confusion. California credential school librarians are now officially "teacher librarian," but few outside our own field seem to want to call us that and so many people don't understand the difference between us and our clerical library staff. I'm not sure what the solution is, though. I do think "teacher librarian" is the most descriptive word, so I try to use it as much as possible.

To Hainalka, I am so sorry that TLs are being threatened in Australia also. You are right, we need to do our jobs well, we need to constantly promote what we are doing, and work together to let people know about all the studies -- Doug Achterman's recent PhD. thesis is a great one -- showing the correlation between library services and student achievement. Doug has links to summaries and presentations about his theis at http://caschoollibraries.pbwiki.com/.

Comment by Hajnalka Molloy on March 22, 2009 at 7:50am: Our current Enterprise Agreement Bargaining dispute with the South Australian Government is threatening the existance of Teacher Librarians in South Australia. Advocacy is a major issue here. A college recently said that the bgest advocy is to do our job well. While I agree I feel we need to find creative ways to promote what we do do and the value of our work. I am very passionate about this issue.

Comment by Chloe on February 25, 2009 at 6:14pm: I believe that many of the issues surrounding the elimination of staff stems from a lack of understanding when it comes to the job title assigned to the person working in the library. What is a media specialist exactly? Take a look at the threads in this discussion on teachers.net: http://teachers.net/mentors/librarians/topic2523/10.22.08.07.49.26.html

This is a REAL issue!!!

Should we abandon the term "Media Specialist"? Do you see there being a revolution in title to "Teacher-Librarian" for those certified teachers with Masters degrees in library science who work in the library?

Comment by Kathi Knop on February 23, 2009 at 10:42am: I will be interested to follow this Ning. Two weeks ago our school district, Shawnee Mission in Kansas cut 1 of the high school library media specialist positions. We will now have 1 library media specialist to help 2000 students and teachers. The district also cut all the library budgets by half. We're afraid that once these positions are cut, they will never reinstate them!

Comment by Janethelibrarian on February 21, 2009 at 11:34pm: A year ago, the other five teacher librarians in my school district and I rallied to save our positions. This wiki page I set up has the summary sheet we prepared for our administration and board, along with links to studies and publications we shared. Sadly, we're going to have to do this all over again this year, but please feel free to use any of this material.

Comment by Janethelibrarian on February 21, 2009 at 8:20pm: Check the Fund our Future: Washington website created by the three wonderful and talented "Spokane Moms" who have done wonders raising funds and awareness for school libraries in the State of Washington. I keep thinking that in the huge State of California, we should be able to get our own "Spokane Moms" advocating for our school libraries! Let's all work on ideas for how to make that happen!

Comment by Janethelibrarian on February 21, 2009 at 8:15pm: AASL has a very helpful Advocacy Toolkit as well as a Crisis Toolkit for those facing imminent cuts.

Comment by Janethelibrarian on February 21, 2009 at 8:09pm: ALA has many resources for advocacy. One is talking points for school libraries as part of Add It Up: Libraries Make the Difference in Youth Development and Education.

Comment by Janethelibrarian on February 21, 2009 at 7:59pm: CSLA (California School Library Association) has set up a wiki on which people can share tools, their stories, and ideas for fighting the budget cuts facing so many teacher librarians in California this spring. The organization has also prepared a great toolkit document on Responding to a
March 15 Notice with excellent tips for anyone facing potential cuts to school library positions.