Being and becoming a teacher librarian
An MTL journey
As is the case with many areas of library science of which I have worked clumsily around and within over the last few years, my knowledge and understanding of library collections was nebulous at best. Nebulous in that they were vaguely considered and nebulous in definition: a loosely formed mass of inherited material under my…
Both Wade and Takeda see a positive future for school library collections and collection development where the teacher librarian and the school community was able to create a clear vision of what collection development is about and to adapt and change with developments in information technology. Wade’s article from 2005 is, at times, surprisingly…
It is hard for me to begin any blog post without relating the topic back to my previous experiences acting as a teacher librarian for several years. On the matter of collection policy and procedure, it took me about 5 years before I understood why I really needed these and first attempted to write a…
The following two questions have been posed for reflection in relation to school library budgets and the TL: Should teacher librarians have the responsibility of submitting a budget proposal to fund the library collection to the school’s senior management and/or the school community? Or should such proposals come from a wider group such as a…
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…
