By Felicity Sly

ACCESS, Vol. 20, issue 4, 2006, pp. 5-6.

(The views expressed in articles are those of the author(s) concerned and do not necessarily represent the views of ASLA.)

I have been a teacher librarian, practising in schools throughout the west and north-west coast of Tasmania, since the 1980s. In this time, I have worked mainly for the Education Department in primary schools (kindergarten to year 6). A few years ago, I accepted the opportunity to work in the private sector (years 7 to 12) for one term and then I worked in a senior secondary (years 11 and 12), again with the Education Department.

During this time, I have seen various changes, taken on various roles (not necessarily library-related) and seen the Tasmanian curriculum structure go through huge changes. As a new teacher librarian working in an isolated town in the early 1980s, I felt overwhelmed by the isolation of the job. I had timetabled classes to provide teacher release time, so there was no collaboration. I taught my program in isolation from the classroom situation, and because no one really understood what I did when I did not have a class, I felt I had to justify my role by being all things to all people. I only knew what was happening in classrooms through requests for materials and from conversations with teachers who became friends outside school. I struggled to meet the resource needs of my colleagues and always felt like I had not quite provided the necessary support (unless they were doing dinosaurs or planets). I did have the luxury of being full-time in one school. And, of course, the typewriter, card catalogue (all original or SCIS in those days), borrower’s card trays (Newark or Browne was the major decision) and publisher’s catalogues were my tools of trade.

During the late 1980s, more emphasis was placed on how students learn not what students learn and, for the first time, I felt I was involved with my colleagues in planning the educational program for the school. We still had not managed to integrate the skills being taught at the time of current need, but students were more aware of the tools that they could use to find accurate information quickly: ‘Please Mrs Sly, I know how to use the catalogue, but can you just tell me the number – I’m in a hurry.’ And, yes – card catalogues, etc. were still my tools of trade.

In the first half of the 1990s, I produced some of the next generation of students, then returned to the workforce to find libraries and computers were companions in the information retrieval process. This period also marked the demise of full-time teacher librarians in most of the schools in my region (in fact, the demise of teacher librarians at all in some schools in my region). We now have para-professionals (library technicians), who are trained to do most of the jobs a librarian does, are cheaper to employ, and are seen by many number-crunchers as a cost-effective replacement for teacher librarians, rather than providing a skilled supplement to the administration of the library (as intended). But what is the real cost of these changes?

The teacher librarian provides a unique environment in any school. They have the skills of a classroom teacher to interpret the needs of the curriculum; the skills of a teacher to select resources that will best meet the information needs of the students; the skills of a teacher to guide students to understand the requirements of an assignment; the skills of a teacher to use the need for information as an opportunity to teach the skills of information retrieval and location; and the skills of the librarian to make these resources locatable and accessible. Students who develop these skills have the opportunity to meet their information needs not only in the present, but for the rest of their lives, to fulfil our educational plan to create lifelong learners.

I am currently in the interesting position of being able to revisit the quality and retention of student learning as a result of the information program I offered in primary schools. Having jumped sectors from primary to senior secondary, I now see students whose information skills had my influence, and will continue to do so until 2009. I also have some knowledge of which students have come through schools that have had a teacher librarian at primary level and/or at secondary level and, in some cases, students who have had a teacher with no librarianship qualifications in charge of the library. Most of this observation occurs at the beginning of the academic year, when we encourage teachers to timetable a session in the library so that we can outline the tools that students can use for information retrieval. This session is based around the curriculum area in which they are enrolled. As teacher librarians, we tailor the session to highlight the tools that can be used in generic information retrieval, with specific tools for the curriculum area. At these sessions I can quickly see which students have had experience in using the various tools (or similar ones).

A benefit of the catalogue management tool in our state is that our State Library and many government school libraries use the same tool. This enables a seamless transfer of learning in the use of catalogues through primary, secondary, senior secondary and community libraries. This enables the reinforcement and worth of learning, as students know that they can use the skills learned beyond the sector in which they are currently involved.

Although the evidence is anecdotal, it is quickly apparent which students have been exposed to advanced search strategies when accessing catalogues, databases and the Internet. Although this skill is not limited to students who have had quality information retrieval instruction in the past from a teacher librarian, it indicates that there has been some instruction, and that that instruction has been retained.

Throughout the course of the year, it is also evident which students are used to having an authoritative source of assistance in their informational needs at their disposal. These are the students who, unsolicited, approach the help desk with their queries. These students are aware of the diversity of the information process, that not all answers can be achieved by Google-ing, and that there are other ways to locate information. Even if they are not aware of what sources to use, they are aware of who to use.

A teacher librarian also has the skills to know which information, in a book to be catalogued, is needed for retrieval. Unlike the teacher, the teacher librarian knows how to manipulate the catalogue record, so that the student has the best chance of retrieving that item. A para-professional in the library has the skill to create the record, but perhaps not the understanding of the information needs required in variant curriculum areas. The complexity of the catalogue records I now create, particularly for materials to support the more obscure curriculum content, reflects this.

In a world where fewer and fewer students have access to a teacher librarian before they approach pre-tertiary and tertiary studies, increasing amounts of unauthenticated information is freely available; I have to wonder if, as providers of education, we can justify our premise that we are creating lifelong learners or whether we are allowing the students to drown in information. As professionals, we have a duty to protect our learners and take a stand – a duty to speak out about the failure across all educational sectors to staff libraries with properly qualified and skilled professionals who are capable of making a difference to the quality of the education our lifelong learners receive.

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