Interview Reflection and Thinking Ahead

A couple of weeks ago I interviewed for the position of Head Librarian at a different high school. I didn't get the job, so now that I've had some time to think about it, I want to reflect on the questions I was asked and how I might change to answers (if I would).

1. What three qualities do you feel are most important to be a school leader and give examples of how you demonstrate those qualities.

I really liked this question. It gets right to the heart of what it means to be someone who matters in a school. A department head is, of course, a school leader, but one doesn't have to be a head to be a leader. This is the sort of question that can help anyone in a school be a leader. My response to the first part of the question was that I would say that a willingness and ability to collaborate, flexibility, and a desire to put students first were the three qualities that I feel are most important. I still like these responses. They clearly speak to my education philosophy and again, they are qualities that work whether I am a department head or not. If I were in a position to be asked this question again I might include consultation instead of collaboration, but I'm not sure. For me, consultation means something very specific, and I don't know if it's reasonable to expect a school community to view it the way I do. Collaboration is very clear, so perhaps I should stick with that. I don't ever want to be a leader who pretends that she cares what others think but then always does her own thing, and consultation is a way to deal with that. I will definitely have to think about this.

2. What rules would you institute in the __________________S.S. library?

I have to be honest, this question confused me. It is very hard to predict what is going to be necessary when you walk into a school for the first time. I looked at the library's website before the interview, but it was non-existent. It was only a link to the catalogue. Without knowing how the library works, I can't predict. I told them about the rules I had in place at MDHS, but I don't know if those are going to be necessary or not. Libraries are changing, and the librarian must be willing to change along with them. The days of an absolutely silent library are long gone. Students work in groups and need to be able to collaborate on their assignments. However, there are also students who do need quiet to concentrate on their work. We need to have a balance. It's difficult to have a hard and fast rule. The same thing goes for food - I have nothing against eating on principle, but when students grind muffin crumbs into the floor and leave wrappers and desiccated bananas around, it's hard to allow food in the library. I still don't know how I would answer this any differently. I need to see the library first and how the students relate to the library before I would know for sure. Perhaps that is all I need to say - I need to be in the library before I can know what rules would need to be instituted and what may just need to be guidelines. Also, I feel it is important to work with the students when it comes to the rules and guidelines. They need to know what the reason is for a rule. If there is no reason, there shouldn't be a rule. That is definitely important to me.

3. In this time of shrinking budgets, how will you spend your money?

Again, this was a difficult question to answer. The school is bilingual, but I don't know how much the students read in French outside of class. Would I be buying half French books and half English books? It's almost impossible to say. I do have a couple of things that are important to me - one is to buy far fewer magazines and to stop subscribing to newspapers. These things are available online, often at no cost, so why spend money unnecessarily? I also feel that it is important to stock up on fiction. Students use non-fiction books far more rarely then they used to because they do almost all their research on line. It seems to be a much better use of time and money to teach students HOW to research properly so that they can complete their assignments they way they want to but still with reputable information. That way, money can be saved, the students are still learning, and the fiction collection is expanded. I've read articles that say that students aren't reading e-books, so why invest in them? If they want to read books, we need to give them books. See, if I had been given time to prepare, this is what I would have said.

I think that is enough for one post. How would you answer these questions? What important aspects are there to consider?

Technology in the Library

I've been thinking a lot about the role of the librarian in bringing technology into the school. I am attempting to keep up with Web 2.0 tools that can help teachers and students with their learning. Right now I'm trying to teach myself and use Evernote and Pinterest. I think it is important to know what is out there and how it can be used to improve learning.

My best example of this is Easybib. When I was in school, I had to either memorize proper referencing styles for every paper I wrote. It was time consuming and I never did see the point of it. Easybib does the work for you. If you enter the ISBN, or scan the ISBN or enter the information, Easybib will format the bibliography for you. To me, this is a great step forward. Why spend time teaching students how to do referencing when we could be working on creating greater depth in the essay itself. I want the students to learn to think critically, and if I can exchange one or two classes on how to reference with how to think critically, that is an exchange I am happy to do.

We have also added 10 iPads to the library collection. So far, they are not being used the way I had intended. I have downloaded a number of education apps that I thought would be really useful in a variety of courses. The students, however, are much more interested in playing the word games that are also on the iPads. Oh well, I will keep discussing the educational apps and see what happens.

There is so much potential out there for improving learning with technology, but there is still so much fear about it's use. I recently read an article about "who profits from school technology". The answer in the article was that it is the big companies, and not the students, who profit. This article was being used by friends of mine to laud the Waldorf system for not pushing technology. I'm sure that Apple is profiting from iPads in school, but if the students are also profiting, then I'm ok with it.

What are your thoughts? Should a school librarian be pushing technology or should we stick to books?

Weeding Woes.

Before I became a teacher-librarian, I hadn't thought much about weeding. My focus had been on bringing books into the library; not taking them out. It wasn't until I saw the state of an unweeded library that I realized how important weeding really is to a collection. Keeping up with weeding is equally important to bringing new materials into the library.

About two years ago, the school I'm at was torn down and we were moved into a beautiful new building. This meant that the entire library had to be packed up and moved. Actually, not the entire library - we had to weed the library in order to fit into the new space. It was a truly horrible experience on a number of levels.

The first layer of horribleness was actually going into the stacks and seeing what was there. The number of books from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was astounding, and the smell was equally astounding. What was most heart-breaking was to see the number of books that had been on the shelf for decades, but had never been taken out. It made me want to cry. In order to make the process doable in the time we had, we were given a date - 1998. Nothing before 1998 was to make the move to the new school. This gave a good starting point to revitalize the collection once we came to the new building.

The second layer of horribleness came from the reaction of the staff to this mass weeding. Instead of respecting the knowledge and experience of the librarians, and instead of appreciating how hard weeding is, many staff members were infuriated at the books being removed from the shelves. It seemed as though a number of staff members took it personally when we sent a book to storage. One comment in particular stands out - we were asked why we didn't value Plato any more. There is a difference between removing a copy of The Republic published in the 1950s and not valuing Plato. It really hurt when teachers said that we were committing a crime, and that we were as bad as the Nazis with their book burning (at least Godwin's Law holds true). I didn't realize that weeding was such a debatable topic. It's unreasonable to expect a library to continue to add to its collection without ever removing anything.

The comments didn't improve when we moved to the new building. Now we were being told how wonderful the old library was and how bare this library is. Don't we remember fondly what it was like in the old building? My general response is no. I don't remember the old library fondly. I remember over stuffed shelves where it was impossible to find anything; I remember the smell of old moldy paper and books; I remember students not wanting to take anything out. That's what I remember.

When I took over the library this year, one of the first things I did was a massive weed. We sent nearly 30 boxes of books to Library Surplus. Did it take a number of books off the shelves? Yes. Did it make the shelves look a little empty? Yes. However, it also opened up the space to properly display books. As a result, circulation has shot up. We have more than tripled our circulation over last year. How can this not be a good thing? There is now space to showcase some of the books. This gives students a chance to see them.

I am a complete fan of weeding. It revitalizes the library and allows the new purchases to be seen and circulated.

One last note, I read another blog about weeding about a week ago and was really struck by the similarities between me and this other librarian. I posted the blog in a Facebook group to which I belong as a way to show the other side of being a librarian. Again, I was roundly attacked. Hitler and the Nazis were mentioned again, I was told I didn't know what I was doing, and so on. I didn't realize that intelligent, passionate, educated, book loving people could be so ignorant about the importance of weeding.

When I commented on this on Twitter, another librarian told me that she always weeds quietly. She doesn't advertise the fact that she is doing it; it's like weeding must be done in secret. That bothers me. Weeding is an important aspect of librarianship, and if we are hiding it, we can never hope to change the attitudes of those who label us book haters. It is an act of great love to remove a book from the shelf to make room for something newer. I say we should stand up and proudly announce that we weed.