There have been many articles and blog posts lately debating the future of libraries. It is hard to imagine a school without one of these learning centers (where else would faculty meetings, testing, and baby showers take place?), but this post focuses on busting the myth that librarians will become obsolete.
This article brilliantly outlines the power of co-teaching. Each teacher focused on her area of expertise while supporting the others, modeling for the students what a group project should look like. With three experts in the room, students were charged with taking responsibility for their learning, seeking out the support they needed for their personal areas of weakness. By bringing in the technology coordinator to instruct students at the beginning, much of the chaos that comes with technology productions was avoided. And throughout the project, Adria was able to focus on teaching the elements of english, rather than simultaneously become a resource and technology expert, to ensure all students learned the targeted objectives.
This is the ideal of teacher-librarian collaboration. Who would not want this type of instruction and learning for their students?
- Less research takes place in the school. Teachers become frustrated by the growing burden of finding resources alone
- Staff development provided by the librarian is cut or may not occur, leaving teachers without the knowledge to share online resources
- Collaboration occurs by e-mail only
- Library hours are reduced
- Collection development suffers with less time for librarians to read reviews, seek suggestions, weed, browse, and perform collection analysis. This results in duplicates or holes in the collection.
- Para-professionals, who may lack the necessary content knowledge to do so effectively, are left to locate resources and fill requests
- Loss and theft of resources increases, costing precious dollars
- Priorities shift... MARC records may or may not be accurate, making it difficult to locate materials
- Websites and databases fall into disrepair, with dead links or unused subscriptions
- Advocacy diminishes. "How do you spread the word when you are spread thin?
- And worst of all, as one librarian said, "We have lost students and teachers seeing us as partners."
Ann and I have faced each of the consequences above as we moved from being responsible for one library then four libraries then six and now we each face the task of overseeing eight libraries for the upcoming school year. Yet, as the article concludes, librarians continue to make the best of their situations. In our district, we continue to work to build relationships and strive to fill all requests, but it is not the same.
Students rate themselves computer literate, but they are unaware of how much they do not know. Current teaching objectives need to include what students must learn to simply begin their research. Jenson explains that "Whereas students could previously get by with learning terms such as "periodical," "journal," "index," "bibliography," "citation," "card catalog," "Library of Congress Subject Headings," and "call number," they now must learn a whole new language in addition to that previously required: "Boolean operator," "meta search," "general database," "specialized database," "text image," "verbatim image," "full-text image," "access date," "marked list," "search wizard"the list certainly could go on."
I am happy to note that part of Ms. Jensen's suggested solution included collaboration with a librarian as well as taking students to the physical library building. As someone who sends high school graduates off to college, I feel it is my role to teach many of these terms and skills. Teaching freshmen or graduate students these skills so late in their education robs them of learning opportunities along the way. Information literacy includes skills a life-long learner needs to sate their appetite for knowledge.
What does the future hold for librarians? I wish I could predict. With so much more for students to learn, who is going to teach it, if not a librarian?