A majority of the time, a school librarian is considered the steward (Lamb, A. & Johnson, H.L.) in regards to deciding a submitting a budget. I know of very few teacher librarians who hold a committee in regards to deciding what resources need to be purchased – generally, it is left up to the librarian to work with other KLA’s and whole school teams for a library collection to be resourced correctly.
this is not without saying that a school library is not a whole-school responsibility (Debowski, S. pg 305-310). it would be a good idea for a teacher-librarian to collaborate and act as a whole school entity in regards to academic resources for a school library. NSW Dept library policy states that part of the role of teacher librarians is to “collaborate with teachers to plan implement and evaluate learning activities ( school librarian handbook 2017).
In developing a budget in my own school library – our process is a follows
- Teacher librarian reviews and surveys curriculum, school plan, and current trends.
- adjust previous years budget according to the information gathered
- budget is handed to a “budget committee” to be reviewed
- budget is either approved/not approved and returned
the problem with this process is that the budget committee may have little or no knowledge of the library contest and may show some bias in regards to approvals. this is why a school librarian needs to collaborate effectively with the school community so they simply do not fade into the background ( H.Godfree, O.Nielson Access 2019).
on this note, is it preferable that funding be given to KLA heads? No! the library is the center of the school and ultimately is it the librarian who should be the deciding factor as the principal should acknowledge that a librarian is a specialist teacher with cross-curricular knowledge ( DEPT 2017). if the option was given to just KLA has issues that could arise in regards to overspending and purchasing, no cross-curricular texts as all resources would KLA specific, as well as a librarian having an innate knowledge of licensing, copyright, and other ethical issues involved in acquisitions.
Debowski, S. (2001). Collection program funding management. In K. Dillon, J. Henri & J.McGregor (Eds.). Providing more with less: collection management for school libraries (2nd ed.) (pp. 299-326). Wagga Wagga, NSW: Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University. (e-reserve)
Lamb, A. & Johnson, H.L. (2012). Program administration: Budget management. The School Library Media Specialist. http://eduscapes.com/sms/administration/budget.html.
