While secondary school classroom teachers specialise according to their subjects, Teacher Librarians must resource the curriculum to be relevant and useful across the entire education frame. TLs must also be across the YA literary landscape. Teachers often do not have the time to develop expertise in this area and I have seen many teachers have knowledge of the books they themselves loved as teenagers, which may or may not be so relevant to the contemporary teenager!
There are dangers that TLs will select recreational reading resources that fall within their own genre interests, so students must have the opportunity to suggest and select books. Aside from having a suggestion box or giving opportunity in Wide Reading programs for students to suggest books, I love the idea of having selection excursions to book shops where students can hear from book sellers, pick up books and read blurbs to have a meaningful say in their school library’s collection.
While it’s vital that students and staff have input into the collection, the TL must have final say of acquisitions. This is because the TL is aware of the collection management policies that have been developed with the school ethos in mind. We had many students requesting a book that I understand is popular on #BookTok and is in many government school libraries, but as a faith-based school we could not include this book. The students were very welcome to borrow the book from a public library or purchase from a book shop!