Where in the World Is Joyce Valenza?
RSSThe profession has a lot to learn from school librarians. But it’s not listening.
By Brian Kenney, Editor-in-Chief -- School Library Journal, 04/01/2007
For me, the March cover story in American Libraries (AL), “Mattering in the Blogosphere,” couldn’t have been timelier. SLJ had just launched a new Web site, featuring four bloggers—including me. Time to take some notes, I figured.
But as I finished reading what was an otherwise excellent article—it profiles 10 librarian bloggers—I realized something was wrong. Where was Joyce Valenza? Or Doug Johnson, Diane Chen, and Chris Harris? As a matter of fact, school librarians were conspicuously missing. Not one of those smart, funny media specialists, whose blogs I click on every day during lunchtime, appeared in the article.
As soon as the thought entered my mind, Johnson was posing the same question on LM_NET, the electronic discussion group that serves as the collective consciousness of school librarians. In an open letter to Leonard Kniffel, AL’s editor-in-chief, he wrote, “Once again ALA [American Library Association] has demonstrated that school libraries are truly the red-headed stepchild of the library world.”
Soon after, Peter Milbury, one of the founders of LM_NET, chimed in: “I have never, ever heard a legitimate reason for why we are so consistently overlooked, neglected, and omitted from American Libraries.”
I felt that both men were right. But to be certain, I went through the last two years of AL. I found only three features relating to schools: a cover story (“Why School Libraries Won’t Be Left Behind”), an article about school librarians working abroad, and another about book displays. None of AL’s many columnists are media specialists (nor are any members of its advisory committee). In most of its “big picture” stories, the school library perspective is missing.
I don’t envy Leonard Kniffel’s job at all. AL has a huge array of issues to cover and serves many different constituencies, all of whom, I bet, are screaming for more ink. And I cringe at the idea of someone performing a similar analysis of SLJ’s content (yes, we are way overdue on a feature about middle schools).
But the truth is, in AL, libraries mean public libraries, youth is code for children’s and young adult services, and students refer to college students. And that’s a problem.
In part, the argument is as simple as “no taxation without representation.” The American Association of School Librarians represents one-sixth of ALA’s membership—and many of its members support ALA by joining other divisions as well. They want their piece of the pie.
It’s also an issue because AL is our professional marketplace, where ideas are exchanged across the membership and where someone can stand on a soapbox and address the entire profession. It’s a place where those coming to the field can learn about different types of librarianship and make career choices accordingly. AL has the potential to bring us all together—except we all need to be in its pages.
School librarians are unique. They focus on the relationship between libraries and learning. They believe squarely in the educational role that libraries and librarians can play in young people’s lives—at a time when many other types of libraries are obsessed with meeting consumer needs. They represent a part of what our larger profession is all about, but which we often forget.
The reality is that by keeping school librarians out of AL, it’s really not the school folks that are losing out. It’s the rest of the library world.
Brian Kenney, Editor-in-Chiefbkenney@reedbusiness.com
