More than just a pretty face....

and other observations on school libraries and teacher-librarianship

School Libraries in Canada, Vol. 13, No. 1, January 1986, p. 5.

On Catching Water

Defining the school library in Canada in 1993 is a little bit like trying to catch water. One could say that the field is very fluid. We have only 3 or 4 full-time teachers of teacher-librarianship in Canada. Few universities offer full time programs in the field providing only summer offerings for practicing teachers willing to engage in this area. There are large teacher-librarian associations connected to each Province usually through a teacher association. The Ontario School Library Association, however, is a division of the Ontario Library Association. There now two distinct national associations for teacher-librarians in Canada- one linked to librarianship, the other to education. All these groups are anxious to provide leadership to this fluid thing, but there are no real standards for the library in the school. All believe they have the mission necessary to move this concept into the mainstream of educational thinking.

We have not been able to settle on the best name for the baby. We have even determined that "teacher-librarian" means something different than "school librarian", but many among us are far from certain that our pervasive ideas are lost on our teacher colleagues. We often see ourselves as all things to the school, yet participate only peripherally in its direction, process and function.

Last month I participated in an interesting program with 30 other "educators" exploring the ideas and premises surrounding resource provision for learners and educators over a Friday afternoon. The discussions centred on rethinking the need for central libraries, for teacher-librarians, for catalogues and serials, for books and shelving and tables. The group attempted to find broader definitions for a learning resources program than might have come from a school library program. It was all very fluid and interesting, but it may have been just another exercise in trying hold on to water.

It's actually very easy to catch water. You simply need a vessel in which to catch it. The school library was always a convenient vessel to capture that program we hoped would move the school. There were, however, other realities, other vessels grabbing their part of the program as well. The computer is another learning resource that needs a program to make it sing. We were happy to miss catching the textbook when it was in vogue. We let the administration catch that program. Now that the textbook has diminished in several provinces, there is some unwillingness to give the new "learning resources" to the school library. The library is for kids. Learning resources are for teachers and learners. Think how we have long embraced the notion of the District Resources Centre for teachers and the school library for kids. Research skills are measurable outcomes of instruction. Teachers are the measurers of those outcomes.

Just before Christmas I participated in one of the annual rituals that West Coast people use to suggest to others who do not live here, that this part of the world is special. I went out on a Christmas "sail past". In layman's terms, I hung brightly colored bulbs (connected to a small generator) all over my boat and joined an incredible floating light show around a harbour and along a shore and back again. I did this with several relatives all of whom helped me do it with varying degrees of concern. I later discovered, to my shame, that the object was not just to hang bulbs on the boat, but to make it splendid-in fact, the real object was to make it more splendid than any of the other boats. And it turned out that mine was probably the least splendid of the 119 others amongst whom I found myself.

I learned a great many things that evening. I was pleased that I had not gone to a lot of trouble for I could not have competed with the floating rich for whom 30 or 40 strings of lights was only part of the poop deck. I was pleased that my engine functioned, that the wind did not rise to gale force and that it did not snow. While I was sorry that I missed the first approach to my own dock in the dark, I was pleased that I nor any other in my party fell in or otherwise disgraced the affair.

There came to me one disquieting realization as I twisted my wheel through the ocean waves following a perfect pink trawler towing a dazzling blue fish. I could not see the water! In fact, my navigation through the entire voyage (a grand word that for this trip!) was entirely based on watching the brilliant lights of my fellow travelers. I was at the mercy of their generators, and I suspect they of mine. We were all in a long line of light with great purpose, yet guilty of failing to see that we were all really out of our element and depth.

Now some of you think that you can see were this sermon is going. He is going to compare his silly little parade to the educational system with the black oily water representing the social order in which the schools belong. He is going to see his little craft with its meager lights, following and intermingling with other "little craft" and bigger boats each confident that they are on course yet all curiously dependent on each other. He is going to suggest that the school library is only one of the many brilliant lights on this sea of confusion. He is going to press further with points about the fragility of the connections, the apparent brilliance of a new player only to recognize that the light was only shadows. He is going to relate that water and those brilliant points of light to the essence of the school library.

I needn't say anything when you get sarcastic!

And yet I see so much to do. I cannot believe that it just never stops. There is so much to share with kids and colleagues. So many wonderful resources that keep flowing into the bookstores and libraries and video outlets and computer stores. It scares me sometimes to visit one of the larger children's bookstores and not see any (many) books I knew. It is terrible to think that so much of what I valued and respected and grew warm defending is not relevant anymore. And now we have the Internet and CD-ROM and the whole electronic highway opening up before us - long before we were satisfied with the old stuff. Is it any wonder that it all seems so fluid. For me the brilliance of this light is still significant. I think it is terribly important that we stay in that light show no matter how brilliant we are. Most of those other lights have nothing to support them!

We may be only caught in another restraint period and it will all get better. If it doesn't get better then we will have to find other ways to make a bigger difference.

George Washington can have the last word. "We must never despair; our situation has been compromises before, and it has changed for the better; so I trust it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must put forth new exertion and proportion our efforts to the exigency of the times."

Donald Hamilton