The Invisible School Librarian: Why Other Educators Are Blind to Your Value (Part 2)
By Gary N. Hartzell -- School Library Journal, 11/1/1997
Put it in Writing
Here are some examples of journals that could help you reach a powerful audience:
Editors' names and addresses at these journals appear in every issue. Just the act of borrowing one from a teacher or administrator will help increase your visibility. To improve the odds that your work will be accepted by journal editors or conference planners, you should consider co-authoring your first few articles with a teacher or administrator. For suggestions on how to get published in education journals, read "Writing for Publication: Some Perennial Mistakes" in the June 1997 issue of Phi Delta Kappan, pp. 781?84. This article can help you find publications that coincide with your interests and needs. |
1. Consciously strive to build your influence where you work. This may be just a holding action in the larger struggle, but it is important nonetheless. A positive and influential relationship with your administration and with powerful teachers in your school and district provides three benefits. First, it offers you opportunities to reshape the perceptions of libraries and librarians in your immediate environment.
Second, it increases the odds that some people will step forward to protect your interests when you are not around -- and you can't possibly be at every meeting where the topic of the library may come up -- or when you are facing the threat of a cut alone, such as at a board meeting.
Third, an influential relationship with the administration increases the odds that you will have the support you need to become more active in your professional organization. As Roseabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard has observed, power flows to the person whose work is visible.6
There is no shortage of ideas on how to improve your visibility and increase your influence. You have a wonderful advantage here: libraries are information centers by definition and you can easily find a wealth of books, journal articles, and electronic sources from inside and outside your field. Publications that cover the field, such as School Library Journal and The Book Report, offer articles on interacting with other educators and parents. Follow this by reading about influence-building and interpersonal workplace relations in non-library publications. If you're not already a subscriber, sign on to the LM_NET listserv and some of the other e-mail services for librarians. If you post a question, librarians from all over the country will respond.
2. Write articles and make presentations for educators other than librarians. Teachers and administrators are always looking for ways to improve their personal and professional effectiveness and value. Writing and making presentations for a teacher/administrator audience puts your ideas in front of them.
There is a wonderful line from a 1940 Errol Flynn film in which a character says that we serve others best when we serve ourselves. That is what these articles and presentations will do. They will serve teachers and administrators -- and, through them, serve students -- but they will also serve your need to become more visible, and to reshape the way other educators see libraries and librarians.
It's helpful to keep a few basic guidelines in mind when you write and make presentations for teachers and administrators. Research and experience show that the best way to gain the attention of teachers and administrators is not to say, "I need..." or We need...," and certainly not to give the impression that you are lecturing them or know better than they about how to do their jobs.
In most schools, the ideal colleague is the person willing to offer help, but not give direction. Unlike practitioners in medicine, law, architecture or other professions where it is routine to seek second opinions, employ specialists, or work from a team concept, too many educators regard admitting a need for help as an admission of personal weakness or lack of expertise. In response to this, educators, especially teachers, are reluctant to criticize each other and to tell each other how to do things better.
As one researcher pointed out, the only really acceptable way one teacher has to tell another to do something differently is to pass along the nonthreatening information that alternative methods do exist and are being used successfully in other schools.7
The more effective way to gather recognition and support from other educators is usually to invoke what one wag calls the WIIFM Principle: What's In It For Me? Your odds of getting published in teacher or administrator journals, or of getting your presentation ideas accepted at conferences and conventions, increase if you approach the topic in a fashion that either asks a question or says, "Here's something they're doing over there." For more on writing for and speaking to other educators, see "Put It in Writing," p. 28.
| This is a particularly good time to become involved at the national level. |
This is a particularly good time to become involved at the national level. Julie Walker, the new Executive Director of the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), is now settling in to her position, and Ken Haycock, a leading figure in library studies and AASL President, is pushing an agenda of library advocacy.
Being active doesn't mean that you have to run for office in the organization. It means communicating your feelings and needs to elected officers. It means phoning them, writing to them, writing to policy boards, attending delegate meetings at their conferences, and keeping their attention focused on the needs of the threatened school librarian.
Organizations can help you in a number of ways, and they will respond if the demand is high enough. Acting together, school librarians can make their associations responsive to their ideas. Call on your association to:
- carry articles in its publications and schedule presentations at its conferences on how to prevent and respond to threats of cuts or closings, build influence and alliances for your protection, and develop networks with other librarians for mutual assistance;
- step up its lobbying activities for the advancement and protection of libraries and librarians;
- put pressure on library schools to include instruction in organizational politics, perception shaping, and influence building in their curricula; and
- develop cooperative programs, grant proposals, policy statements, joint resolutions, model programs, and other collaborative endeavors with other professional education groups, especially with those that have larger numbers and powerful connections. For examples, see "The Influence Makers," p. 26.
If large-scale education associations endorse and support high standards for library media centers and significant librarian involvement in the life of the school, it will go a long way toward protecting libraries and librarians from program dismantling.
Just as important in the long run, these organizations can influence university teacher and administrator preparation programs. Their support in building positive perceptions of libraries and librarians into credential programs could be invaluable over the long haul.
The Vocal Librarian
The work has already begun. It's being done by media specialists acting as independent professionals and by others tapping into the support of library advancement programs, such as the National Library Power Project. There is no doubt that the individual and collective resources needed to make libraries and librarians key players are there. But a concentrated push for a higher profile in the education field is imperative. And it has to be done now. As authors Betty Cleaver and William Taylor have noted, the notion of what it means to be an effective librarian is conceptually mature.8 Now the job is to make the education community aware of it.
References
- P. J. Wilson and M. Blake. "The Missing Piece: A School Library Media Center Component in Principal-Preparation Programs." Record in Educational Administration and Supervision 12, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 1993): 65?8.
- ALA and the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. Information Power: Guidelines for School Library Media Programs. Chicago and London: ALA and AECT, 1988.
- F. C. Pfister. "Library Media Specialists: What Role Should They Play?" In D. Loertscher (Ed.), School Library Media Centers: Research Studies & the State-of-the-Art. Syracuse, NY: ERIC Clearinghouse on Information Resources, 1980.
- J. P. Kotter. Influence and Power. New York: Free Press, 1985.
- N. E. Gast. "The Role of the H.S. Library Media Specialist as Perceived by H.S. Library Media Specialists, Principals, and Teachers in the State of Oregon." (Doctoral Dissertation, Portland State University.) Dissertation Abstracts International, 45 no. 6 (Dec. 1984): 1588-A.
W. A. Scott. "A Comparison of Role Perceptions of the School Library Media Educators, Media Specialists, Principals, and Classroom Teachers." (Doctoral Dissertation, Vanderbilt University.) Dissertation Abstracts International, 47, no. 7 (January 1987): 2351-A.
- R. Kanter. Men and Women of the Corporation. New York: Basic Books, 1977.
- Sharon Feiman-Nemser and Robert E. Floden. "The Cultures of Teaching." In Merlin C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Teaching, 3rd Edition, pp. 505?26. New York: Macmillan, 1986.
- B. P. Cleaver and W. D. Taylor. The Instructional Consultant Role of the School Library Media Specialist. Chicago: ALA, 1989.
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Gary N. Hartzell is author of Building Influence for the School Librarian (Linworth, 1994) and Associate Professor of Educational Administration, University of Nebraska, Omaha. He is also a former high school principal. |
