Gone are the days when a school librarian’s job was defined by shushing, rocking, and reading.  While reading out loud and building a love of literacy is still a foundational part of their job in a school, school librarians wear many, many hats and touch many lives in the course of a day’s work.

As an avid, life-long reader, I can come up with dozens of things I love about school librarians and libraries (I was actually named by a librarian!) But for a broader perspective, I wanted to hear from my peers, colleagues, and the educators out there doing the heavy lifting, so I turned to influential library experts, educators, and social media to share their thoughts.

I loved what I heard from the people I spoke to. Many shared my own impressions, and some introduced me to their own reasons why school librarians are amazing at what they do. I’m proud to share my thoughts and what others told me here.

1. Librarians are the keepers (and more importantly, the sharers) of the books

CEO of education publisher Capstone Randi Economou says, “They lead the way for learning by igniting a love for reading.”

Follett sales rep Pam Hinds reminds us, “They ‘house’ the best weapons in the world!”

Customer service rep here at Follett, Suzanne Florek, says, “Of course, I have my favorite librarians I talk to! I think the reason they might be on the top of my list is because of how genuinely caring people they are. They are kind, patient, knowledgeable, motivating, just as excited to see new books as their students are. They show students how they can be transformed into a fantasy world, futuristic world, find out how things work or just learn about new places or history and people that made their mark on this world for many reasons. They show kids they can be anything they want to be, and they can learn more about EVERYTHING. That is a big role to play in our children’s lives and therefore we need them to play that very important role. I thank all our librarians for all the encouragement they provide to our children. A child that loves to read will go many places in their life.

2. Librarians cross paths with every student in a school

What other position within a school interacts with teachers, administrators, and students in all grades? The school library and its staff are unique in how many lives they touch and the vast reach of their expertise, according to John Chrastka, Founder and Executive Director of Every Library, a political action committee for libraries that advocates for funding and support. “The most powerful aspect of school libraries is that it is the one academic unit that reaches every student in the school,” says Chrastka. “Sometimes it is through school librarians pushing into a class about research topics. Sometimes it’s supporting learning across the curriculum. But every student can have their school librarian be a partner in finding new, relevant, and interesting things to read. We can’t discount how important independent reading is in literacy development and educational attainment. A certified school librarian is a key resource for those students.”

Follett Destiny trainer Michele Kuempel agrees and shares her thoughts from a different perspective. “As a former school librarian, one of my favorite parts of the job was that I actively interacted with every student and teacher on campus – regardless of grade or subject area,” said Kuemple. “Very few members of a campus team can say that they get to do this!”

3. Librarians know books better than anyone

Librarians know what’s in their collections, and well beyond. They are voracious readers and chances are, if you throw out an author’s name, most librarians know that person’s work. They frame history by the books they’ve read, and they find comfort and connection through? their favorites. How often do we hear questions posed to librarians like, “it had a red cover and was a coming-of-age tale set in the 1960s” and lo and behold, a librarian can put a finger on the right book.

Follett’s publisher relations coordinator Amanda Deubel says, “Librarians always make the best book recommendations after hearing your interests and have a keen ability to know what book you are looking for even if you are only able to provide random bits of information about it.”

Related:
Modern students need modern librarians

When organizations are mindful and deliberate about generating and maintaining a sense of teamwork and shared goals, team members are put at ease and more productive. The same is true for building a school culture and community for staff and students alike.

When I was named the leader of Follett’s K12 business, one of my first priorities was to create a team dedicated to improving the culture of the organization. We didn’t necessarily have a negative culture; however, it was clear that part of building a positive culture included making deeper connections to the communities we serve, both internally and externally.

As an education company, we are deeply aware of the challenges faced during the pandemic for educators (and organizations like ours) and that those challenges were overwhelming. We know all too well that has caused strain on the educational system, staff retention, and more. However, it has also given us all the opportunity to reflect on those practices and reimagine them.

I interviewed five different educators and compiled the top five ways schools and organizations alike have succeed in improving culture in their communities—despite the challenges.

1. Meaningful Connections

At Baltimore County Public Schools in Maryland, educators foster connections that encourage partners in their programs. Fran Glick, National School Library Program of the Year award winner, (who served at BCPS for many years,) says “Our programs lend themselves to creating spaces for input and participation from a variety of stakeholders. We can find collaborators and create partnerships within the community: public and community college libraries, museums, parent groups, foundations, and external partners can all contribute to ensuring that our school libraries are dynamic centers of each school. We know that school libraries build communities.”

Librarian Kate MacMillan from Napa Valley Unified School District in California adds, “Like all school libraries in California, adequate staffing and stable funding have always been an issue. To combat this, seven years ago, NVUSD implemented the One Card Program with the Napa County Library which provides all K-12 students with a digital full-service library card. This project guarantees access to all students and creates a “library community” that builds a strong bond with the county library, NVUSD school libraries, and the community.”

Connections are extremely important for all organizations. At Follett, I hold Ask Me Anything sessions twice a year where team members can literally ask me anything and I must answer each question “live” without the opportunity to review it ahead of time. While not every leader may be interested in putting themselves in the hot seat, the very act of putting myself out there and being vulnerable allowed me to connect with the team in a more meaningful way and answer the “pressing” questions.

2. Perception Matters

At Southwest Middle School in Florida, the public perception of school librarians, especially at the secondary level, is a challenge these days. The best way librarian Carrie Friday has been able to combat these challenges is to focus on what’s right – and regularly share the great things happening in the school library. “I post about the lesson we did for the day, I share photos of student creations, pictures of book club, or success stories of students who have seen success in this space,” Friday said. “It’s much harder for the community to believe what they hear or read when they’ve seen the magic that happens in here. It’s exhausting to constantly answer questions about book challenges and address what people hear or answer questions about new legislation but at the end of the day, this work matters so much and these kids remind me of that every day. Their love for our library helps me press on and do what’s right for kids.”

3. Meaningful Feedback

In Iowa, at Van Meter Consolidated School District, Future Ready Librarian spokesperson and librarian Shannon Miller explains their school library is the heart of their culture. “Our library is a very special part of our school community. We build the culture and community within the library with our students, teachers, and families at the center of everything we do. When our students come to the library, we want them to feel important and safe, and to be seen and heard within the books and resources we have in our collection. We also want to be a resource for our families and to support them in fostering a love of reading and learning within their homes. Through our library’s social media, newsletters, and weekly updates, we can celebrate the amazing activities happening within the library and the books and resources we have available for our students and teachers.”

Friday agrees with Miller. “Building culture and community in a school library can be challenging for a variety of reasons but the very best thing I’ve done is to continue to make the space a place where kids want to be,” Friday shared. “I present engaging lessons. I spotlight really amazing books. I open up in the mornings before school and let students just be and hang out. I work one-on-one with some of our students who are struggling with academics and behavior. I wave and say hi to the kids at class change. I wear ridiculous costumes to school. I tell jokes at lunch. I’m hosting James Ponti for an author visit at the end of February, so we are hyping up his book and doing book club meetings during lunches so kids can read City Spies. We even zoomed with him so he could say hi to the kids. Having an author tell your students just how special their school library is goes a long way with kids.”

Similarly at Follett, feedback allows us to make better business decisions and remain focused on the areas that are most important to our customers and ultimately, your students. During the pandemic we paused our customer advisory groups for all the reasons you can imagine. Pausing was necessary for us to navigate the challenges associated with running a business during the pandemic and providing feedback to Follett was not high on a priority list for our customers. Emerging from the pandemic it became clear it was more important than ever that we seek more meaningful feedback from librarians, teachers and district leaders. So, we took advantage of the ability to run focus groups and customer advisory meetings remotely.

4. All-In Relationships

So says 2021 Utah Teacher of the Year, John Arthur! “Spend quality time with each student, laugh with colleagues, listen to families, and love on your own! Strong cultures and communities spring naturally when you prioritize people, and, especially in these challenging times, we need our people and the bubbles we build to shelter us from the nonsense and noise.”

For Follett, supporting every team member includes supporting their families and the community. Recently, we opened an employee bookstore where employees can buy popular books for less than $5 a title. All proceeds are donated to organizations that give back to the McHenry County, Illinois community where the majority of our team members live. This creates a deep connection not only with our community, but with our team members alike.

5. Foster Teamwork

Back in Van Meter, Iowa, Miller kicked off the new year with a Library Advisory Board. “This will be made up of our library staff, teachers, administrators, parents, and even students,” Miller told me. “This will help us continue to grow as we advocate for a strong library program for every single student within our school community. I am excited for the support this will not only bring to our library, but also to me, as the district teacher librarian.”

Connections are vital, according to Glick from Baltimore Public Schools. “We build connections within the incredible network of school librarians and educators in our country. There are professionals who are engaged in this work and the collective power to grow and learn WITH and FROM each other is happening in schools and school libraries and is in all of us,” she said. “Our professional learning networks are in our regional groups, in other states, on social media, in professional literature sources, and presenting at conferences. School librarians are a networked profession and more than ever we can stand together to advocate for our profession and school libraries. We know that strong school libraries contribute to student achievement, and we uphold and affirm the many ways in which we do so.”

Culture Takes Shape

Bottom line, no matter the shape or size of your organization, transforming culture cannot happen overnight, it takes more than a leader to make change… it takes all of us. Clearly, it’s best to focus on one or two culture improvements to start (even consider micro-improvements to portion of the world you have direct influence) so you’re not overwhelmed and can do them to the best of you and your team’s ability!  

Related:
Modern students need modern librarians
4 ways library media specialists lead digital transformations in districts

When you think of a school librarian, what comes to mind? Is it shelving, stamping, and shushing? That’s the stereotype you’re probably most familiar with.

Librarians are so much more than this, though. We’re the keepers of the information, the resource kids use to explore new lands through the turning of pages – but our role as librarians is one that has historically been misunderstood. Because as times have changed, technology has advanced, and student needs have evolved—so, too, has the role of the librarian.

Who is the modern librarian?

As librarians, our job is to not only give students and teachers access to resources they need to succeed, but to be their guide when choosing these resources. We work with teachers and administrators to create life-long learning patterns in students, whether that’s by curating resources for classroom research projects or by coming into the classroom to teach a lesson on how to do research themselves.

However, no matter how often we curate materials for these students, the larger lesson we impart to them is how to be conscious consumers of this information. Students today tend to think they know everything there is to know about the internet, and although it’s true that they’ve grown up with the technology that some of us are still getting used to, our job is to teach them to evaluate and analyze the at-times overwhelming amount of information that comes to them via their screens.

To be able to teach students these types of lessons, we first have to be able to connect with them. This is arguably the most important part of what it means to be a librarian in 2022. Kids have been virtual for so long that they need a mentor who will pay individual attention to them and listen to them on a one-to-one level. But for them to want to come to us, we have to create an inviting, safe space that fits their needs.

What does a modern library look like?

Building a space that students actually want to inhabit is imperative to facilitating their learning and curiosity when it comes to reading. In some cases, that means out with the stuffy, shush-filled library, and in with the coffee shop vibes. Because as long as a student simply enters the space – even if it’s just to hang out – that gives us the opportunity to make a connection with them.

When it comes to reading for pleasure, students have so many other competing interests available to them – movies, games, social media, and TV shows – that we need to aim to make it an attractive, conscious choice. As librarians, we can do this by offering a range of genres and formats for students to choose from: novels, comics, magazines, audiobooks, print, or digital.

Related:
6 time-saving tech tricks for school librarians
How school librarians are getting creative in a pandemic

During the pandemic era of “emergency teaching,” school systems across my state and around the country made deep investments in edtech resources.  However, as we move into what some call the post-pandemic era, education stakeholders are searching for strategies to ensure that edtech investments continue to pay dividends.

In New Hampshire, library media specialists are playing a key role in driving edtech ROI. The state Department of Education has made excellent investments in edtech resources, and together with iLearn New Hampshire, has rolled out the Canvas LMS by Instructure, the Kaltura platform for media hosting, Zoom video conferencing, and Discovery Education’s digital K-12 platform to schools statewide.

Led by the NH Library Media Specialist Association, the state’s K-12 library professionals have engaged in dialogue around how they can ensure their school system can maximize the state’s edtech investment in their school system. Each participant approached this conversation assuming everyone else in the group had it all figured out or worked in a district that did. However, what we quickly discovered was that we were all grappling with the same issues. So, we worked to identify some common approaches to maximizing edtech ROI in our own district or school setting.

Here are the four most popular recommendations that came out of those discussions.

1. Create building-based digital tool coordinators

Databases, lists, websites, newsletters, and the like are all excellent ways to share information about digital tools and drive usage. Consider also having someone serve as the central point person for edtech resources your school. Establishing and using this role can be a great help in getting educators to the right person for targeted support, getting the word out, coordinating training, and so much more.

Library media specialists are excellent candidates for this in their leadership role, because they support all the educators and students in a school. Added benefit can result when library media specialists meet as a district team periodically. Digital learning specialists/technology integrators and coordinators are also excellent candidates. Whoever takes this coordinator role will serve their school better if they are members of school leadership teams and have the flexibility needed to support educators while they are teaching.

2. Incentivize use

Educators frequently seek administrator guidance for what they expect to see in the classroom or in use by students. Library media specialists can work with principals and curriculum leaders to foster digital tool adoption by making sure they know what different tools can do, highlighting best practices, sharing fun examples, and advocating for time for educators to play with and learn new tools. Creating fun challenges that leverage engaging digital content and interactive learning activities that can be shared, copied, and edited is an excellent way to foster use that is rewarding, rather than establishing mandates that simply seek compliance.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.

In 2014, I got my first teaching job at a brand new high school in Detroit. The building had once been an elementary school with a fully functioning library. There was even a built-in card catalog. Now, though, it was empty, and the position of librarian didn’t exist. When we held a community book drive to fill the shelves, we ended up with a ramshackle collection of old, random, age-inappropriate books, some print encyclopedias, and an eclectic mix of cookbooks.

Two years later, that room had become a dumping ground for unused supplies, and the school football team frequently used it as a meeting space. The bookshelves were disorganized, their alphabetization long ago destroyed. In fact, not a single area school I have worked at in the past nine years has had a functioning library. 

When I was growing up, I spent much of my free time in my metro Detroit school library. It’s where, in the 1990s and aughts, I discovered my love for historical fiction. I remember fondly the book recommendations that my elementary and middle school librarians would give me. I sought to bring that same joy of reading to my high school history and English students. But how could I inspire them if the room was dusty and the books old, tattered, and mostly irrelevant?

Study after study has shown that effective library programs can increase student literacy and test scores and create more equitable student outcomes. Having access to the skills needed to decode text and other media impacts our students now and forever. Literacy can make or break their school performance and enhance their career and civic participation. All our students should have access to a school library and a certified librarian to help improve reading levels and foster critical thinking and source analysis.

Is there an educator on the planet who would turn down a bit more time in their day?

With time-saving technology strategies, school librarians can find ways to connect with their school’s teachers and students on a deeper level, forming relationships and helping with research and skill development.

During an ISTELive session, Kristina A. Holzweiss, a high school educational technology enrichment specialist librarian, shared her tips to help school librarians engage with students, support teachers, and make their school libraries dynamic and welcoming learning spaces.

1. Choice Boards
“Student voice, student choice,” Holzweiss said.

Why: Help foster independence, encourage student choice and decision-making, and offer differentiated instruction.
How: Google Slides, PPT, Buncee, Thinglink, Genially, Canva

School librarians can create choice boards aligned with different ability levels, and students can choose according to how they feel comfortable.

2. Newsletters

Why: Advocacy, community connections, sharing resources, showcasing student work
How: Wakelet, Padlet, Smore, Google Slides, PPT

“A newsletter is a wonderful way of advocating [for your library], Holzweiss said. “Work smarter, not harder.”

Using Wakelet, school librarians can work with librarians in their district–or even across the state or country–to draw attention to important resources in the library, offer research tips, and motivate students. Translation technologies can be included for students and parents whose native language is not English.

Access to diverse books positively impacts children as readers and as people. Having access to diverse texts helps children expand their vocabularies, deepens their understanding of language, provides opportunities for problem-solving, provides critical affirming experiences to students’ lives, and presents opportunities for students to learn about people with different lived experiences.

Students of all races, genders, religions, languages, abilities, interests, and beliefs should have opportunities to have affirmative literary experiences, where they see themselves reflected in the books they’re reading. These opportunities still do not exist today for many children.

The Cooperative Children’s Book Center publishes research on books depicting characters from diverse backgrounds. The research showed that books included very low representation of primary characters for many backgrounds and experiences. According to this data, many students are more likely to encounter a book with a primary character who is an animal or other nonhuman character (29.2 percent of total books) than a book including a primary character who is Black/African (11.9 percent of total books), Asian/Asian American (8.7 percent of total books), Latinx (5.3 percent of total books), a person with a disability (3.4 percent of total books), or LGBTQIAP (3.1 percent of total books).

Students need access to texts that reflect experiences diverse in race, ethnicity, gender, and language. Such access increases motivation, which is likely to have a positive impact on reading comprehension.

Scholar Rudine Bishop Sims astutely notes, “When children cannot find themselves reflected in the books they read, or when the images they see are distorted, negative, or laughable, they learn a powerful lesson about how they are devalued in the society of which they are a part.” 

When children are able to access books that pique their curiosity through diverse texts, it also leads to volume of reading, builds students to read more complex texts on the same or similar topics, and introduces new vocabulary—all markers of improving reading comprehension.

As an English and reading teacher, I sometimes struggled to provide texts that affirmed my students’ lives and communities. My last district was conservative-leaning, and I was often weighing political tension against my own highly knowledgeable, expert, teacher judgment. However, since I built relationships with parents and earned their trust, I was able to teach a variety of books in my middle school including “Monster” by Walter Dean Myers and “The Afterlife” by Gary Soto.

As the old expression goes – you never know if you don’t try. This principle also applies when it comes to federal grants, through which billions of dollars in relief funding are available to help U.S. K-12 schools with recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. However, many school districts have yet to take advantage of these resources.

Educators who spend time in classrooms interacting with students will be the first to admit that their needs are as wide-ranging as they are numerous. From making classrooms safer to providing high-quality instructional materials to ensuring schools leverage the most current digital tools, grant money can make all the difference.

And for school librarians in particular, these grants represent a unique opportunity to establish future-ready libraries with strong digital book collections. But when it comes to applying for the grants, finding out what kind of funding is available is only the first step.

Keys for one district’s successful grant application

After a school year full of turmoil – and during a time when educators may be feeling the effects of burnout – adding a task like applying for grants to an already long list of to-dos is a tough ask. That’s why it’s critical for educators to lean on the external resources available to them for help when seeking these funds.

When I finished Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code, I began researching the validity of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene sharing a bloodline protected by a secret society. When J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter was accused of promoting the devil and witchcraft, I dove into the series. When Oprah pulled Jeanine Cummins’ American Dirt off her Book Club, I put it on hold at the library. 

When the world makes a fuss about a book, consider my attention piqued.

Skimming the American Library Association’s list of most banned and challenged books over time, I’ve read more than my share, from To Kill A Mockingbird, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Diary of Anne Frank to Captain Underpants and 13 Reasons Why. I have to say I’m quite surprised Flowers in the Attic didn’t make the list as it made the 10-year-old me… well… blush.

This fall, the conversation around controversial titles is heating up in Texas and across the country. In the Lone Star State, there was an inquiry into the books available to students in Texas school districts. School districts are being asked to report if they own any of the 850 books in question and if they do, how many copies of each and how much they paid for those books.

Amid television news headlines like, “‘Pornography in Texas schools: Texas Gov. Abbott calls for removal of library books,” Texas librarians have turned to social media asking for help:

“Librarians, I need your help. This is what we are facing in Texas. My principal wants to discuss this. I have just glanced at “The List” so I know I’m going to have a bunch of these. If you’ve been through something like this, how did you handle this and what did you do? My principal is an awesome guy I’m not sure where his thoughts are on this. We’re going to talk tomorrow.”

The Texas Library Association has responded with a statement and letter writing campaign of its own, “Banding Together to Protect the Freedom to Read.”  In addition, the American Library Association has a challenge toolkit.

Yet, the available resources for school librarians do not seem to be enough. In my last column, I featured a panel discussion between three librarians for publishers who create content for schools and public libraries.  During the discussion, librarian Tamara Cox from Anderson School District in South Carolina asked publishers for support and resources to defend her growing collection of books that are generating parent challenges. 

As students across the country began heading back to classrooms, a couple hundred library leaders participated in one of this summer’s Future Ready Library Summits. The guiding principle driving the agenda of this professional development opportunity for librarians was simple: students–or rather, student-centered learning. 

During the Summit, we reflected on the fact that in some cases, the students who will be returning to the classroom haven’t been in a formal school setting in a year and a half.  They are returning to the classroom, changed in many ways.  First graders may be walking into school having spent kindergarten on Zoom.  Freshmen may be entering high school after spending eighth grade being home schooled by a parent. 

As every librarian in the virtual audience was challenged to be empathetic to the challenges the return to school may bring for some students, each was also encouraged to acknowledge the progress the pandemic forced upon us. Today, students readily access digital resources. They understand the norms associated with virtual group discussion. Teachers are more comfortable delivering differentiated instruction through multiple channels.  After a year and a half of turmoil, we’ve made progress that should be celebrated.

After the Summit, I spoke with two education thought leaders and library advocates, Mark Ray, previously of Vancouver Public Schools, and Shannon McClintock Miller of Van Meter Community School in Iowa. Ray and Miller hosted and participated in the Summit, so I asked them to share their thoughts and takeaways, knowing that educators everywhere could benefit from the adult and student speakers as well as the group discussions.

Both Ray and Miller agreed the pandemic has created a unique opportunity to further empower students as creators. Ray, a staunch advocate of giving students a voice, said, “Since the idea of students as creators is already part of the Future Ready Librarians Framework, it validated both the framework itself and confirmed that student creation and creativity are key to a student-centered learning environment.”

School libraries have evolved from strict, quiet, hush-hush rooms to more interactive spaces with flexible seating, readily-available edtech tools, and educators on hand to help with research, critical resource evaluation, makerspaces.

It’s in school libraries where students often discover and hone their love of coding and programming, create amazing projects via makerspaces, and where they develop important 21st-century skills.

As schools plan to return to full in-person learning in the fall, students will no doubt be eager to return to their school libraries and pick up where they left off.

These five resources may help start a new school year on a fun and productive note:

1. Weava, a Chrome extension, simplifies research and lets users highlight websites and PDFs with multiple colors, make annotations, and revisit them with a single click; organize highlights into folders and sub-folders; create citations automatically for highlights; and access highlights anywhere. Highlights and notes are saved in the cloud.

In Part I of this series, I reflected on the journey that led Follett Learning to Future Ready Librarians® and why the time has never been better for librarians to transform their programs using Future Ready tools. 

Now, let’s explore the most important question: Where do you start?

I used to advise librarians to pick a wedge of the Future Ready Librarians framework that aligned with their school’s or district’s strategic objectives. Today, aspiring Future Ready Librarians have a new Self-Assessment Tool designed to assess their strengths and areas of growth related to the Future Ready Librarians framework. Where are you on your Future Ready journey?   

In a perfect world, your strengths will align to your district’s needs, which means it’s time to have a conversation with your district leadership. Sound scary? Follett and the Alliance for Excellent Education partnered with librarian leaders Mark Ray and Shannon McClintock Miller to develop a guide to help you start that conversation. Let’s Talk: A Conversation Starter for Future Ready Librarians is designed to remove any anxiety about sharing the ways in which you and your library can support schools in this new world. 

The guide poses big reflection questions like:

• As you look at the main areas of focus for your school and district as they existed before the pandemic, what are some of the challenges you see as educators seek to implement these goals?
• What changes have occurred that create new opportunities for more collaboration?
• What are some of the outstanding challenges faced by classroom educators that didn’t exist before the pandemic?
• What will educators need to be successful in the future?

Ray explains that suggestions and answers to those questions will help district leaders better understand that they already have a leader in their buildings whose expertise has never been timelier. “As someone who has written, spoken, and testified to this for years, librarians are leadership solutions hiding in plain sight,” Ray said.  “Their systems knowledge, technology expertise, responsibility for all students and educators, and service ethos are unique in schools. Both within and beyond the pandemic era, these are skills that few other educators can offer.”

Confession: I’m a bit of a hoarder. I’ve kept every email, text message, and document I’ve ever written.  It’s probably the journalist in me. Or it’s being the daughter of two antique collectors and the granddaughter of a collector of everything. 

Yet quite often, calling on history can help us make more informed decisions about the present. 

As I reflected on the structure of this article, my archived files got some exercise as I reflected on the origins of Future Ready Librarians® and why the journey we took to create the program has never been more important than today. 

Let’s go back to October of 2012

In a panel discussion about the future of libraries in McHenry, Illinois, librarian, Future Ready Librarians spokesperson, and Washington State Teacher of the Year Mark Ray said, “There are forces coming that will change education independent of our control. How do librarians support where we need to be? The role must transcend the library and be thought of as an integrated piece. Not everyone will be able to make this transition.”

That was 2012.

A virtual reality field trip. A lesson on how to create a podcast. A tutorial on how to create a paper circuit board that uses LED lights. For a new generation of educators, these pursuits have something in common: They’re all appropriate learning exercises that can take place in the school library. Makerspaces, or library media centers that encourage collaboration and support student invention, are on the rise across the United States.

This has always been the case, but in a prevailing learning culture that promotes outside-the-box problem solving, these activities are growing more common in the 21st-century school library. At the intersection of analog and digital learning opportunities, the value of school libraries has increased at all levels of education. And at the helm of these spaces, school librarians must negotiate how best to support students with library resources, adapt to new technological advancements in education and pass on the fundamental tenets of digital and information literacy to students.

As the U.S. public education system has evolved throughout its history, school libraries have also developed with a consistent central goal: to give students the best opportunity to succeed academically.

The Evolution of the School Library

Before school libraries would begin to morph into multimedia digital information centers, they supported student literacy-building practices by providing access to their on-site book collections. From the first plans for a school library in the United States drafted in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin, school district libraries would continue to sprout across the nation during the next two centuries. By the mid-1950s, schools would adopt localized, attached libraries in which librarians are considered qualified teachers, educating both students and instructors.

The face of public education has fundamentally changed since then, through the nationwide integration of schools, the rapid progress of education technology and the academic opportunities offered to students, to name a few. Because of these dramatic changes to the world of education, the expectations and  responsibilities of school library faculty have understandably seen a dramatic shift as well.

Today, school librarians are not only responsible for administering and collating their collections. Instead, librarians promote creativity and discovery in student learning by offering multimedia resources. With school libraries beginning to function as digital media centers, these tools enable students to explore new modes of thought and include:

• Planning, drafting and executing podcasts or audio essays
• Access to audiobooks and online tutorials
• Online or in-person tutorials on how to use video-, audio- or photo-editing software
• Workshops on internet and information literacy

Modern Librarian Roles and Responsibilities

With these new responsibilities, librarians now occupy a multitude of additional roles, too. The Association of College and Research Libraries, which is an organization of college educators and librarians and a division of the American Library Association, lays out the seven roles of librarians in school systems today. The goal with highlighting these different titles librarians must take on is “to conceptualize and describe the broad nature and variety of the work that teaching librarians undertake as well as the related characteristics which enable librarians to thrive within those roles.”

While these roles were drafted to appeal specifically to university and college librarians, they are universal enough to be relevant to school librarians working in primary and secondary school media centers, too.

• Advocate – As advocates, library teachers are responsible for encouraging and outwardly supporting the advancement of student learning and information and digital literacy in education. Moreover, school library faculty must partner with administrators and teachers to ensure students adopt effective critical thinking and research skills.
• Coordinator – In order for a library to run smoothly and enable students to engage with different literacies, school librarians must facilitate an inclusive and supportive learning environment. This means that coordinators need to make a point to stay on the same page as teachers, administrators and parents to serve students best.
• Instructional Designer – Library materials often carry the unfair stigma of being boring. And it makes sense – the image of the uptight librarian has persisted through the past century. In the current technological landscape, though, librarians are positioned to provide students engaging, dynamic library resources as instructional designers. As instructional designers, librarians collaborate with teachers to develop learning materials to reach students best.
• Lifelong Learner – Librarians as lifelong learners lead by example. Lifelong learning librarians can motivate students through an unrelenting pursuit of knowledge, which can inspire students to engage in independent research curiosities.
• Leader – School librarians must lead not only in their library spaces but, additionally, across an array of contexts. As leaders, librarians are prepared to guide students through reading and research processes at the same time that they offer necessary support to teachers.
• Teacher-Librarian – As teachers, librarians evaluate the best kind of learning practices for students, faculty and administrators. In other words, school librarians should be trained educators charged with providing information literacy opportunities to learners across an array of contexts. For example, while librarians help students understand how to navigate databases to collect research, they also provide support to teachers to educate their students on the best informational and digital literacy practices.
• Teaching Partner – To highlight the importance of collaboration, librarians should work as teaching partners with other educators in the school to build engaging learning materials for students. This collaboration can take place in the form of guiding a class discussion, creating assignments and responding to student work.

New questions from school librarians…

Will ultra violet disinfectant devices damage books?
How long should I quarantine a book before circulating it again?
How can I use technology to coordinate curbside pick-up for students who want to check out print books?

Meet the same old challenges…

How can I ensure teachers know about the content available in my library?
My principal wants to convert my library into a classroom. What should I do?
My budget is on hold until further notice.

Back-to-school season is often chaotic, but the anticipation of a new school year can also be exciting. 2020 brought chaos, anticipation, trepidation, and change. As districts pivot to new ways of teaching and learning, school librarians must also grapple with how to do their jobs in the COVID-19 virtual environment.

Related content: How school librarians can save democracy

The very nature of a library implies physical books stored on rows of shelves. But with school closures the norm—not the exception—students no longer have access to the place many of them found comfort and knowledge: the school library.

Of the 25,000 customers who responded to a recent Follett survey, only 15 percent of schools are delivering fully in-school instruction. What’s more, the American Association of School Librarians recently surveyed more than 1,000 professionals and found that more than 40 percent of school libraries will not reopen this school year.

In many districts across the country, the librarian’s job description had not been updated to reflect a “future ready” world that includes the delivery of digital resources, curriculum partnerships, and community connections. When you layer on a pandemic that includes hybrid and remote learning, there is no job description available. But resourceful school librarians from coast to coast are finding innovative ways to work in a system that has no precedent.

“Librarians save lives by handing the right book at the right time to a kid in need.” (Judy Blume)

Librarians, by nature, want to help young readers—and each other. This has never been more evident than in recent discussions in the Future Ready Librarian Facebook group. Michigan school librarian Lisa Smith Brakel asked, “We are face-to-face this year. My school is using a ‘fogger’ to disinfect classrooms. I am worried about the library books. Should the fogger be used in the library?”

Regardless of one’s political views, there seems to be consensus on one political reality: America is dangerously polarized. According to Michelle Luhtala, Library Department Chair at New Canaan High School in Connecticut, in a recent edWebinar, “The future of democracy presents a case for the critical need for school librarians in every school.”

School librarians are essential to help students gain equitable access to high-quality inquiry instructional experiences for all learners–not just for the future of education but also for the future of democracy.

The problem

Luhtala suggests that political belief polarization may emerge because of people’s conflicting confirmation and desirability biases, which leads them to interpret new evidence as a confirmation of one’s own existing beliefs and theories.

Related content: School librarians facilitate learning despite massive school closures

Two-thirds of U.S. adults get their news from social media, and 42 percent think that the news they’re getting is 100 percent accurate. Fifty-eight percent of college students get their news from social media; however, they read news differently if they’re consuming it for their recreational life than if they’re re-consuming it for their academic life.

Schools in urban districts like Denver Public Schools often struggle to fund library programs, which only exacerbates already existing equity gaps for students of color. And while it is painfully true that tight school budgets often result in unstaffed or understaffed school libraries, I am hopeful. I sense a revolution in how we serve our students — a revolution in how we walk the talk of equity.

Prioritizing equitable library access for students

As school libraries evolve and best practices shift accordingly, there is one constant to solve for: equity. All students deserve access to a school library. Libraries support students’ literacy and lifelong learning, help develop their empathy, build their critical thinking skills, and empower them with skills to navigate their world.

Related content: School librarians facilitate meaningful learning despite massive closures

In other words, school libraries provide the tools students will need to solve the complex world problems of their futures.

Whether a principal, superintendent, head of technology, or head of curriculum, there is likely a gem of a resource among your staff who could push your Future Ready agenda forward–school librarians.

Even now, as students are learning at home and with fall openings uncertain, school librarians play an important role in helping students develop important critical thinking and digital citizenship skills–skills they’ll need more than ever in an increasingly online world with unvetted sources of information shared far and wide.

Related content: School librarians facilitate meaningful learning despite massive closures

Long gone are the days when librarians were simply the “keeper of books,” and the administrators who have grown to realize this have found it much easier to accomplish their strategic vision by mobilizing this dedicated and knowledgeable part of their staff. Here’s how many are doing it.

1. Librarians facilitate curriculum development and instruction.
With textbooks waning, districts across the country are exploring other options, including the curation of open educational resources and other content. Curation comes second nature to librarians, who have specialized degrees to help them determine what is relevant, credible, and effective. Use them to partner with teachers and curriculum staff to curate the right resources for your lessons.

Without question, some of the most important members of the school community are the school librarians. And even now, with most schools still learning remotely, school librarians and media specialists are critically important.

Also known as library media specialists, school librarians play a unique role in our schools. Often asked to take on a wide range of duties, these passionate and savvy educators deserve more than only a week of praise.

Related content: School librarians facilitate meaningful discussions despite massive school closures

And in case you need a reminder of all that school librarians do for our students and our schools, we’ve put together a list–but it’s only a start.

10 reasons school librarians are super valuable

1. School librarians know tech.
In many schools, the library media specialist is the go-to expert on all things tech. Don’t know how to use that new projector? Looking for a great app for annotating texts? Can’t figure out your new phone? Ask the librarian!

eSchool News Library & Media Technology Guide

Everything You Need to Know. Everyone You Need to Reach.

• Why school librarians are tech integration pioneers
• Librarians are more important than ever—here’s why
• Leveraging a Future Ready Library opportunity
• Helping students build information literacy skills
• Librarians are facilitating learning despite school closures
• Renovating libraries to meet students’ next-generation needs
• 10 reasons admins should collaborate with their librarians
• How librarians can build critical relationships with fellow educators