Teacher Librarianship is based on processes, traditions and foundations for future learning.  There have been decades upon decades of predecessors who have pathed the way for lifelong learning.  Debowski (2001) is no different. There was a certain familiarity when reading her strategies to collection management.  There is nothing new or revolutionary, just commonsense and accountability. In our common era, or Digital Age, we as a community are called to be accountable for what we do in the workplace, possibly more than ever before – nothing to be left unturned, so to speak.  

In the world I know best I will articulate my point. As teachers, we are under the microscope and are increasingly made accountable for a variety of aspects of our roles.  When Debowski refers to the Budgetary Cycle (pp 304 – 305) she is referring to the entire process of justifying and developing the collection, and being accountable for fund expenditure.  As Teacher Librarians (TL) it is commonplace for us to advocate, justify and protect our position, budget and collections. We need to assure staff that we are working with and for them, while supporting their teaching and learning needs.  Debowski’s strategy for budget planning if very relevant in the common age of advocacy, justification and accountability.

TLs need to establish a collaborative to ensure the needs of the whole school community are being met.  Ideally what this means is that the TL works with a committee to identify those needs, including perspectives of parents, students, classroom teachers, support staff and Executive. While this is a collaborative team and allows the TL to understand their community and the curriculum, at the end of the day the TL is the manager of the Library and the collections within.  So I like to think of the TL to be like a ‘Lorax’ for the Library, they speak for the literary trees. Therefore, it is the responsibility to understand their community, their needs, and that of the curriculum. It is also up to the TL to be the voice of the development of the collection and be the one to present a well informed budget proposal. The TL has the knowledge of the stakeholders needs, is aware of the resources available to support the needs and is on the frontline of how they are being utilised. As a part of Debowski’s (2001) she speaks about “Linking Budgeting to the Evaluative Process” (p309-310).  This assists in mapping the collection to complement curriculum needs while also bring the collaborative process full circle and presenting accountability for expenditure.

The committee can then have an informed understanding of the collection development and how it aligns with the community needs.  As the TL is the key to unlocking all of this collaborative knowledge it is their responsibility to guide and the lead the committee due to their bird’s eye view of the school’s resourcing needs.  It is their to present the proposal on the committee’s, and community’s, behalf to the Principal and Accounts Manager of the school.  As a key role within the committee the proposal might be best to be presented to the committee who then can support and endorse the budget request.

Finally, I work at a school where I am constantly advocating to be heard among grade teams.  At a such a large school we have a near 4 stream school P-6. The grade budgets are sizeable, however, the Library budget does not compliment the size.  To compensate we rely heavily on fund raising from Book Club and Book Fairs. As previously mentioned the ideally would be a committee from members within the community to provide invaluable commentary of their respective needs for resourcing.  By having each grade present some funds to the Library budget it would further support the resourcing needs each stakeholder has presented to the collaborative committee. Further, by having financial input from all grades would ensure curriculum needs are more likely to be met.  It should be noted that this further establish a collaborative team in resource development rather than giving any one stakeholder power to determine what is purchased for the library collections. Afterall, the library is the heart of the school and life should flow in and out through its collections – members are the life support of the library.

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)

#collaboration #budgetcycle  #speakforthetrees