by Dorcas Hand, Editor TASL Talks
It may
be summer, which generally means school librarians are not at school – but few
of us stop thinking about how to make our library program stronger for the next
year, how to better include teachers and campus leadership in the excitement.
So, I’ll continue to post a bit through the summer.
My
friend and school library leader Sara Kelly Johns posted a link to the Librarian in Black
blog by Sarah Houghton who is the Director for the San
Rafael Public Library (California). Sarah wrote this post to
reflect on her experiences at the ALA Annual conference in Orlando June 23-28,
where I was also in attendance. She has indeed put her finger on the pulse of
librarians of all types: passionate about their work even in the face of
difficult circumstances. Of course, we are talking about those librarians who
took themselves to Orlando last week, those who are involved in their
librarianship beyond just a job. However, I’m pretty sure that passion bleeds
over to more of the librarian community that we all realize and I’d like to
further celebrate that passion here, in midsummer, to remind everyone who reads
TASLTalks how important that passion is to improving school (and all)
libraries.
Sarah admits that she attended in part “to see if [she] could
recapture the excitement and belief in libraries that got [her] into this
profession in the first place. [She’s] had a hard few years professionally. [She]
was looking for this conference to make [her] believe again–in what [she
does] every day and in what [she’s] dedicated [her] life to. Spoiler alert: It worked.”
My first suggestion
for those readers who are feeling tired: find ways to attend conferences,
locally or further afield. Put yourself with others who feel strongly that
school libraries matter and let the group speak work its magic on your fatigue.
Take that group energy home; feed it with continued reading or chats with
fellow librarians; use it to try new ideas to enthuse your students and
faculty. It’s like smiling even when you feel grumpy – it begins to turn your
mood.
You can all read the
post for yourselves – the link is there. I want to jump to the last two points:
Lesson 9: Our stories are more
powerful than our statistics.
You can count your books, your program attendance, and your web
visits. Or you can tell stories, you can impact lives, and share those stories
with the people making budgetary and political decisions about your library.
Everything I heard at this conference supports the latter.
Yes,
stories are powerful – and memorable. I will add to her point: stories
supported by statistics are the most powerful Tell the story about the kids who
finally began to read – then mention the circ statistics that you can tie to their
improvement in some academic area or literacy score.
Lesson 10:
Helping people still brings me more joy than anything else.
This last point may seem self-evident, but going into this
conference it wasn’t–at least not to me. The moments at this conference that
made me smile, that energized and excited me, all had to do with either
observing someone helping someone else or me helping someone. I am so jazzed by
seeing a positive impact from the exchange of knowledge, a helping hand, a
simple tip, or a shared experience.
I’m
pretty sure this is how most of us ended up as librarians. We are experts at
connecting our patrons – students, teachers, administrators – with the
information or pleasure reading they need. And we gain satisfaction from doing
that well, every day. Don’t let the challenges get you too down. Remember that
you are making a difference, one student at a time. And it does matter.
So,
thank you for indulging my July pep talk. Be passionate about your day job - it makes it more fun! And check out past and future posts on
this blog, on Sarah’s and on others for further ideas and inspiration to help
you keep moving ahead to improve school libraries.
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