Sometimes you just have to take a stand…
Posted by lynnelibglamtwin on May 13, 2009
Yesterday I left the School Librarians Network (SLN) yahoo group after quite a few years of finding it an invaluable form of professional and personal support. It’s intention is to stop school librarians feel so alone when they are usually lone workers, and offer an arena of mutual respect, support and advice. By School Librarians we mean anyone employed to run a School Library. And this is where the problems have started.
I speak only for myself… but no-one on the list has ever had a problem with people on the list who are unqualified. It is widely known that as School Libraries are not a statutory provision what is offered in a school is at the mercy of the Senior Management Team’s priorities. There are about 25% of current new Academies being built with NO library at all, for example. This means that the staff of the school libraries that do exist may have the same job titles, or a newfangled one like Learning Centre Manager, Information Resources Manager, Commons Hub Facilitator or whatever, but that the actual tasks of the role differ vastly.
What has become clear however that there are many schools that do not believe a School Librarian (By this I mean the person charged with managing and progressing the library in accordance with whole school policy) needs any qualifications or even directly relevant experience prior to their being employed to do the job. Whilst this is not always obvious on the SLN it has lately become apparent by the low level type of query coming through that there are people employed who have no basic Librarian knowledge whatsoever. For example I am genuinely shocked by people who cannot make their own decision regarding which Dewey number to use to classify a non-fiction book!
Whilst the odd basic level query can be overlooked it became apparent those of us with the experience and ongoing training (Continuing Professional Development aka CPD) , and yes, sometimes with professional qualifications, were shoring up the lack within colleagues with none of these. Whilst I feel very sad for those employed in jobs they clearly had no experience for, and am full of admiration for those clearly wanting to improve, learn and do a good job, to continue propping them up will mean those in power will feel justified in employing and supporting the ways they always have and we will NEVER have the statutory, professionally run school library system we should have.
So I have left the group as a silent and barely noticed protest to this. If in post people should gain the required qualifications and continue their CPD, if they do not they should not mask their libraries inadequacies by expecting those who do to assist to the point of practically telling them how to do their job. Harsh? But necessary?
Tina said
I hope you actually made it public somewhere as to why you were leaving. I think, yes, you are fully justified. It is there as a support network, not to provide training and do people’s jobs for them.
You are absolutely right in that the dumbing down of the librarian role (or whatever jargon they come up with) the users of the library will become dumbed down. It drives me mad that the education system and government in general cannot understand the necessity of fully-trained and qualified librarians in the education system, at the very least.
Still, the government doesn’t believe access to books is necessary for students either. No government seems to support the education system. Which is why stupid people (by which I mean those unable to think, not those unable to pass exams) are churned out by the million, bleating sheep to elect the next bunch of self-serving fraudulent bigots to ruin the country.
Ooh, crikey, channelling a cynic there for a minute!