What do School Librarians Do? (Part 2 of 2)

We do three important things that contribute significantly to student learning:

• We teach 21^st century research and technology skills. (Information Literacy Teacher)

• We inspire kids to become enthusiastic readers. (Reading Cheerleader)

• We manage information so that great resources can be readily available to students and staff. (CIO)

In the words of Mike Eisenberg, “School librarians teach meaningful information and technology skills that can be fully integrated with the regular classroom curriculum. They advocate reading through guiding and promoting it. And they manage information services, technologies, resources, and facilities.” [SLJ Sept. 2002] Eisenberg is the co-author of the Big6 curriculum adopted by many school districts to help students develop the kinds of research skills that have become essential in the 21^st century. If we want our students to become not only capable readers, but also successful citizens and leaders in this information age, can we afford to be distracted from our core mission?

Of the 40+ “jobs” that we listed school librarians doing in part 1 of this topic, which ones clearly fit under one of our three core roles? Which tasks contribute to (and which ones distract from) our goals of helping all students become enthusiastic readers and effective users of ideas and information?

What do school librarians do? (part 1 of 2)

I’ve been thinking about all the things that school librarians do.  Some of these tasks are core to our mission (book-talking to classes, providing reference services).  Some tasks may be natural corollaries (administering AR, Reading Counts, or a similar book quiz program).  Other tasks are outright distractions from our main roles, but in most schools all school employees do a few of these things (bus duty or lunch supervision, for example).  So, can we list all of the tasks that librarians are sometimes asked to do?

Click on the “Comments” link below to view and add to our list.

Next week, in part two, we’ll discuss prioritizing these roles.