More than just a pretty face....

and other observations on school libraries and teacher-librarianship

School Libraries in Canada, Vol. 7, No. 2, Winter 1987, pp. 5-6.

What do you do?

On the airplane the other day I told my unwitting neighbour in the seat next to me that I was a school librarian. I cannot state conclusively whether his response was the result of the altitude, the on-board food, the weather or my smile, but I think it was his attitude, The response was like a lukewarm bath, mice, perhaps useful, but hardly stimulating. The response was not a new one for me. I have often noticed a visible glazing of the eyes-a creeping lethargy in those who unwittingly discover my profession. Somehow the evocation wrought by "school librarian" is rather unexciting to those who don't really understand us. This time. my new friend was in a difficult position. He had asked and we did have a long way to go and he was in the middle seat and I had the aisle. I knew, and so did he, that he was in trouble when he innocently opened: "Well that must be very interesting". I honestly felt sorry for him. He was going to discover things he never knew he needed to know about the school library. His life was going to change from that moment.

"When I went to school we had this dinky little corner they called the school library..."

In thinking back, I realize that my captive represented that "public" to which we probably owe much of our livelihood and that we constantly refer to when we defend our place in the scheme of things. It is ironic that the public that we depend upon for our fiscal support (through all those complex formulas and taxation schemes) sees the parts of the educational program only in pieces rather as one would view a wardrobe - as specific identifiable garments rather than the whole outfit. The school library is an part to think about. Much easier that the language arts program. Even easier than reading or science. What is very difficult to relate to is the reality that very few members of the public are able to recall a "library" in their schooling that they can or want to remember.

The public is still (always?) caught up in the stereotypical view of the library as static. We have to remember that few of the public use the library in any of its current manifestations. If they attempt to think back to their elementary school experiences most will only vaguely recall some bookish place. If they recall their high school library it is usually with some amusement relating to the study hall mentality of the strict librarian. Few of the candidates for teaching certificates that I have met in my work remember their school libraries with much affection or enthusiasm. And they have only been out of school for four or five years. We are still lumped together with a fairly general attitude that suggests that the library is worthwhile and necessary but not very exciting. The library clerks that serve the public admirably in my own library are constantly referred to by students and faculty as "librarians". We are caught up in "motherhood" - that strange state of being that defies logic and rationalism, but is defended with passion as obvious and beautiful.

If I described myself to my friend as a "teacher" or a "reading consultant" his eyes might have not betrayed his lack of interest so quickly. But it would not take long for him to have discovered that the semantics only covered up the stereotype. I think that image problem is acute and still affects our actions and our progress.

But the lack of a public image is hurting us. We need stuff and stuff requires money and money is much harder to find for motherhood these days. We have evidence galore. I am sure that all the Canadian jobbers and publishers could tell us about the effect of restraint on the purchasing power of the libraries in the schools. Over the past few years huge sums of money that might have come into the school library have been diverted in to teacher's salaries, but trips and the micro-computer, even when those sums are dwindling. There is not much left for us. The micro-computer has become more entrenched while the school library has lost any sense of expansion. I wonder how much more excited my airplane companion would have been if I had described myself as a "computer consultant"?

I do not fault the public's romance with the computer. The pressure to get on that bandwagon has been simply overwhelming. Look at any daily newspaper and you will sense the power of the whole technological pressure play. Almost every page will have some computer related point whether it is on the financial or the travel page. The advertisements are everywhere making the computer a fundamental part of business and life and through obvious association - school! In contrast, how often do we feel the power of the children's picture book in the life of the child? How can we relate the need to teach children all the literacies in a society bent on making everything into a machine-readable image?

We school librarians, by whatever name we choose to hide behind, have not recognized that politics is part of every game in town, that politics is not a dirty word, that politics is what makes the world go round, Have we always believed that motherhood was enough of a source to maintain our position? Who would dare to challenge something as obviously good as the library in the school? Considering the fact that the library in the "elementary school" is a reasonably new phenomenon and the secondary school library probably owes its initial establishment to the notion that the high school library would be a useful precedent for work in the big university, we are on very shaky ground to pretend that the order has a vested interest in us. We are largely on our own. It is we who shall make the differences. It is we who will have of convince the administrators and the politicians (yes, the school board) that we have and important place in the scheme of things. It is we who will have to make certain that the public acquires a healthy interest in the school library.

I am confident that I made a small political action 8,000 metres up in the air that day. Certainly my new friend discovered more than he thought he would. He did promise that he was going to find out about the quality of the library program that served the elementary school his child attended. I think he will.

Odd, I can't remember what it was that he did.



Donald Hamilton