A Higher Authority
For school librarians, collaboration is a beginning, not an end
By Brian Kenney, Editor-in-Chief -- School Library Journal, 11/1/2005
Where does your authority come from? Allison Zmuda asked that question to a hundred or so school librarians and researchers at the Treasure Mountain Research Retreat last month in Pittsburgh. It got the room buzzing.
Zmuda, a consultant with the educational firm Understanding by Design, knows the critical role that teachers play in boosting student learning. Everyone agrees that classroom teachers have the strongest influence on student development. Standards and testing only strengthen that authority.
Our colleagues in public libraries also have a clear source for their authority. It comes from a culture that values free and open access to information and views the public library as essential to the development of an informed citizenry. Public funding reinforces that authority.
What about school librarians? Where does their authority come from? Everyone in the room agreed that media specialists gain value through collaboration. It was a weak response. The authority, the power, of school librarians comes from factors that, taken together, are far greater than collaboration.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not challenging the importance of collaboration. It’s how great work gets done. By collaborating with classroom teachers, technology directors, and others, library media specialists develop students’ skills, provide rich content that furthers learning, and give kids the technology they’ll need to survive as lifelong learners.
When effective school librarians leave their school, there are more than just those collaborative relationships that get broken. There’s a big, gaping hole in the life of the school that administrators, parents, and students know must be filled.
“It’s not just about collaboration,” agrees librarian Doug Achterman of San Benito High School in Hollister, CA. “It’s about integration. When your school library program is integrated into the school, the school can’t do without it. It’s bigger than you.”
Ann Jason Kenney (full disclosure: my sister-in-law), a librarian at Rice Memorial High School in Burlington, VT, has integrated a course on information literacy into the curriculum. Kenney hopes the class will help kids sail through the Educational Testing Service’s “ICT Literacy Assessment,” which is designed to help colleges determine which entering students have the skills to succeed. “This course has a real-world component that parents appreciate and students love,” says Kenney. “That will be part of my legacy.”
A librarian’s authority also comes from assimilating oneself into the life of the school. Media specialist Diane Chen likes to describe how she gives teachers, parents, and students at Nashville’s Hickman Elementary School what they often need most. For teachers, this can mean help when the technology breaks down; for parents, assuring them how well their children are progressing in their library classes; for students, it’s reminding them during “bus duty” to spend some time that night reading a book they just checked out. “It’s not that instruction isn’t the most important thing, it’s just not always the most important thing,” says Chen.
“Our authority lies in our knowledge,” says librarian Joyce Valenza of Springfield Township High School in Erdenheim, PA. “We have knowledge that no one else has, and knowledge grants power.” According to Valenza, collaboration is never going to happen unless librarians have some type of power.
“Good school librarians,” Valenza adds, “are like shamans.” Shamans are collaborators, leaders, capable of multiple roles, full of surprising knowledge no one else has, centers of their community, counselors. Now that’s authority.
Brian Kenney
Editor-in-Chief
