Over the long weekend, my family went camping with some lifelong friends from Melbourne. My friend and I stood on a little ridge of earth, warming our hands on steamy mugs of coffee while watching our kids frolic in the bush.

‘You’re studying what?! Why? Won’t you get bored just re-shelving books?’

I have to admit she is not the first person I’ve met to question my chosen path. A lot of my friends seem to have had negative experiences with librarians or see their career as boring.

I have had a very mixed experience with librarians. Reaching into the deepest recesses of my own memory this week to tease out the experiences I had as a student with Teacher Librarians, I remember my Primary School librarian reading us the Amelia Bedelia series and promising to make the muffins Amelia makes in the books. I have no idea if she did make the muffins, but I do remember the excitement that she was going to. After that my memories are blank! I can’t even picture the school libraries in Middle or Senior School much less the teacher librarians.

Simply put, a librarian is, “a person who holds recognised teaching qualifications and qualifications in librarianship” (Australian School Library Association, 2019, para. 1). This description is perhaps a bit of a yawn for the adrenaline junkies amongst us. As part of our first online meeting for ETL401, we had to come up with three words to describe the role of the teacher librarian. I’ve been thinking about the word cloud we generated:

“Information specialist” took primary place as the favourite descriptor of the teacher librarian’s role.

These definitions have been bouncing around in my head as I’ve pondered my understanding of the role of the teacher librarian. Sipping my latte in the morning sun with my friend it all came together for me:  I think what I’ll love about my role as a teacher librarian is being a problem solver. It’s never going to be boring because I’ll never know who is going to walk through the door or what they are going to need. I’ll get to spend the whole day helping solve people’s problems. It may be a teacher needing a resource for their curriculum, a child needing a find a book at their reading level that interests them or managing the books in a way that makes them easily accessible. It may just be fixing a photocopier jam, but I get to use my creativity, my love of taking chaos and making it organised and my love of connecting with people every day. I get to ease anxiety, inspire ideas, and create an environment where learning is nurtured.

“In the nonstop tsunami of global information, librarians provide us with floaties and teach us to swim” (Weeks, 2001, para. 15). I get to be that steadying hand in a sea of data. I don’t want to be one of the forgettable librarians from my childhood. I want my role as a teacher librarian to be part of building and supporting my school community for the development of lifelong learners. “Bad libraries only build collections. Good libraries build services… Great libraries build communities” (Lankes, 2012, p. 33).

 

Reference List

Australian School Library Association. (2019). What is a teacher librarian? Retrieved from https://asla.org.au/what-is-a-teacher-librarian

Lankes, R. D. (2012). Expect more: Demanding better libraries for today’s complex world. Retrieved from https://davidlankes.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/ExpectMoreOpen.pdf

The role of the TL word cloud. (2020). In one word describe the role of the teacher librarian [Word Cloud] In ETL401, Introduction to teacher librarianship. Retrieved from: https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/blackboard/content/listContent.jsp?course_id=_44233_1&content_id=_3479687_1&mode=reset

Weeks, L. (2001). The old-fangled search engine. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2001/01/13/the-old-fangled-search-engine/c9314a91-2076-4ad5-ad45-c99e5691bfbb/