Being and becoming a teacher librarian
An MTL journey
According to advice from Lamb and Johnson’s (2012) article on budget management, a TL (they refer primarily to a library media specialist, but I’m sticking with TL here) should wear three hats in planning and managing a budget: collaborator, steward, and thinker. These roles overlap as a TL works to establish a budget and use…
In, “Selection and Censorship: It’s simple arithmetic,” by Dave Jenkinson (2002) selection is viewed as an act of addition- including resources in a collection, and censorship as an act of simple subtraction- removing or refusing resources into a collection. More clearly, Jenkinson points out that a selector seeks the positives in resources as they develop…
In Resourcing the Curriculum we have been asked to read policy documents outlining selection criteria from various bodies, including ASLA and ALIA, and ALA in order to spot similiarities and differences in their criteria. There are a great many similarities in these policies and they all make reference to supporting teaching and learning needs in…
The following was published first in a discussion forum, but given the time put into this and the learning I took out of it, I decided to publish it here with a few minor edits. Selection aids: I’ve been using them for years but not really thinking too deeply about them or evaluating them beyond…
Regardless of my role as an acting teacher librarian over the last few years, creating, selecting,sharing and using resources to engage students in their learning is an essential skill set as an educator and one which I have particular experience with as a former English as a Foreign Language instructor in a non-English speaking country…
Agencies which rely on superlatives as guiding models in the selection process show little understanding of collection development and offer no real guidance to selectors. The South Australian Department of Education and Children’s services defines selection in the broadest of terms as a process of choosing what is ‘considered to be the best, most appropriate…
This reflection prompt from ETL 503 asks TLs in training to explore online platforms accessible to our libraries, such as catalogues or websites in order to identify different types of resources available and then consider any of the potential issues of these resources. This is a particularly helpful activity for me right now as I…
The latest Softlink Australian School Library Survey Report (2021) shares its results from responses to its survey from across Catholic, Government and Independent schools. This is something to which all library staff, teacher librarians included, ought to contribute each year. From my own point of view, I always have a look at annual budgets and…
It is time to dust off the keys and get back to bloggin’! While I did start a post or two during my last course on resource description, they never saw the light of day. Resource description did not, at first, seem to lend itself to exciting blog posts, but the learning turned out to…
From the outset, this course challenged me to consider core concepts of the teacher librarian (TL) role on which I had not dedicated much thought. In beginning qualification for a role I have long held, I see not only what I have neglected, but how vital these core concepts are in practice. From our first…
