We Need Librarians or Not!

I'd like to share these articles I found on SweetSearch.com......

Young Learners Need Librarians, Not Just Google
Mark Moran, 03.22.10, 03:00 PM EDT
The ubiquity and ease of Google searches could make kids' minds go soft without the ability to critique or contextualize the answers.

A year ago The New York Times presented a multimedia, packaged gift to school librarians everywhere. With its profile of Brooklyn, N.Y., school librarian Stephanie Rosalia, at long last, a major newspaper had chronicled the 21st century school librarian’s role as Web curator and information literacy specialist.

The article made the Times’ "most e-mailed" list for days and was featured on more than 100 blogs, as educators and parents everywhere recognized the need for media specialists to guide students. In a School Library Journal article that deemed Rosalia "The New Poster Girl for School Libraries," Rosalia said she was "awestruck at how this article has struck a nerve all over the country with people who are not librarians." Yet she was also surprised by a school board director who was "absolutely clueless" about how important school librarians are to student success.

BuzzCut to the present, and librarian blogs tell a different story. Many absolutely clueless administrators still believe that a search engine is an adequate substitute for a trained research teacher. With the nation's schools budget-strapped, librarians--and even libraries--are being cut from coast to coast. Even President Obama, whose creation of a National Information Literacy Awareness Month suggests he should know better, left additional funding for school libraries out of his FY 2011 budget proposal.

AND THIS ONE:

Thursday, November 5, 2009
A Digital Defense of School Librarians

Books are giving way to e-books; newspapers to news aggregators; encyclopedias to Wikipedia. And that is why we need librarians, especially school librarians, now more than ever.

If you think that librarians are archaic, you’re most likely thinking of a 1950s bespectacled stereotype. Librarians are no longer – if they ever were – those hushing and shushing guardians of books. They are media specialists, guiding children and adults through every form of media, from books to databases, newspapers to blog posts, and even from YouTube to Twitter.

In the libraries of old – the ancient days of 1990, say – mastering the Dewey Decimal system was enough to get you started on your research. But there is no card catalogue 2.0. In order to use the Internet as a library, you need 21st-century research skills: the ability to pick out reliable sources from an overwhelming heap of misinformation, to find relevant material amid an infinite array of options, and to navigate the shifting ethics of creative commons and intellectual property rights. As good as your kid may be on Facebook, she is not born with a digital M.L.S. These skills are learned, not instinctive, and the only way for students to learn them is for someone else to guide and teach them.

This seems as elementary as the ABCs – but apparently nobody’s told the school districts. Librarians and teacher librarians, who are double-credentialed, are being driven out of their increasingly stripped-down libraries. Painful as it is, it’s no surprise to come across a tweet like Shankhead’s: “being an engaged school librarian, at least in my neck of the woods, now means being an ‘Austerity Specialist.’ Whatever it takes.”

I’m not sure what it takes to convince the school districts of common sense, but it definitely takes librarians to teach students how to evaluate credibility, create content of their own, and conduct research in their increasingly interconnected world. And it might take the SKILLs Act, a bill in the House of Representatives, to ensure we still have school librarians to train the next generation.

Students will create and consume online content, and even social media will find a way into their research. Should a student trust a blog as a source in a paper? If not, then how about a blog on The New York Times website? A blog run by an online magazine? Can they use collaborative technology, like wikis? Even teachers need help answering these questions. There are no official guidelines to using the Web, and even if there were, they would change by the minute.

As the information landscape becomes more and more complex, why would we abandon our professional guides to it?

My reply......

Why indeed? Of course, being a teacher librarian sort of makes me biased. I know that in Iowa, schools are required to have a certified teacher librarian on staff. However, the law does not say how much time the TL actively be in the district. Full time? Part time? So many days a school year?

From my personal experience I can tell you this is frustrating! I work with 3 different school districts with 7 library centers total. And I'm not the only person in this kind of situation. Schools, in a effort to cut costs, have cut the staff in the library media center. Some TL's are part time teachers/part time librarians and some only work as part time librarians.

This fall my time spent in the schools has been reduced. In one school I am in the district 45 days, in school #2 I am in the district 72 days, and at school #3 I am in their district 18 days per year. It is frustrating when you feel that you have not presented an adequate curriculum or LMC experience for all students. I also feel I don't connect with the students or staff on a personal bases as much as I would like.

You might ask, "Why do you stay?" The answer? Because I believe in the importance of literacy, critical thinking, books and imagination. I love books and reading and where reading can take me. And I truly believe books will never die.

OK, what about e-books? Aren't they just mechanical books? Once upon a time, books were written on clay tablets and papyrus and now we've moved to a kindle or a computer. They are a part of our everyday life. I have always supported the idea of reading what ever interests you - books, newspapers, comics, magazines, graphic novels, pamphlets. Whatever! YOU ARE READING! And practice makes perfect!

As for 'anyone' running a LMC, yes, a clerk can do a clerk's job. In my case, I have wonderful library aides! Thank you ladies! But, clerks are not trained teachers or trained librarians. I saw a t-shirt that read, 'Librarians - The original search engine.'

It does take a guide in that wonderful world of printed pages and computer screens of knowledge. Will the classroom teacher do it? Maybe. Why not use the person who was trained for the job?

Don't get me wrong. I support technology. I see the importance for people to be able to use tech tools or Web 2.0 tools. But for me 'technology' is that tool that is used to solve a problem or find an answer. Now that tool could be a wiki, an Excel sheet, a Google doc, a globe, or a book! You need to try out different tools and find out what's best for you. Ask a librarian for help!

May I suggest these Web Resources:
www.SweetSearch.com/sweetsites.html (to help educators introduce students to the best Web resources)
www.Cybraryman.com/research.html
www.SweetSearch.com (a search engine for students)

Theresa L. E. Reiter
K-12 Teacher Librarian