Information Specialists

As we shift into the digital age, the importance of also modifying our roles accordingly is becoming increasingly evident. While a common thought among many is that librarians are becoming irrelevant, if we consider ourselves to be information specialists (which we always have been), than it stands to reason that with exponentially more information available, our services are even more necessary. 

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This theme highlighted this idea well, that libraries are no longer a place to house books but as the Leading Learning article articulates, a learning commons to facilitate knowledge, collaboration and creativity. We as Teacher-Librarians need to adapt our practice to cultivate numerous ways of finding information, digitally, physically, peer to peer, rather than just pointing to shelves and providing catalog training. Rather than making status quo purchasing, we need to stop and ask ourselves what information our students need and how can we best provide that? For me, I think this theme has made me realize that my reference collection as such is not serving a purpose. It is not used, it is outdated and I have not “managed” it well in the sense that I have kept many resources for reasons other than student use or intrinsic value. If I see no use in promoting these materials, directing students or teachers to them, or using them myself then why are they there? 

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Which is not to say, our reference collection couldn’t accomplish my goals of being accessible and relevant for learning queries with a little work, we have a lot of great reference resources that are integrated into our non-fiction collection, but looking at the big picture our small reference “section” is in fact weighing us down and taking up space. Moving forward particularly with purchasing, I think I will constantly be asking myself, “What would I be excited or proud to promote to our students and staff?” I actually enjoy teaching our students how to use databases; so many of them provide such a great amount of information with excellent imagery, videos, articles and supporting links. They have such great features such as text to speech, citation support, and search features. If our whole resource collection were resources I looked forward to sharing (so in my case, NOT encyclopedia sets) I feel I would be doing my job as an information specialist and resource promoter and learning facilitator, and the resources would be doing there’s, providing usable, relevant, accessible information for student learning. 

Works Cited

Canadian Library Association. (2014). Leading learning: Standards of practice for school Library learning commons in canada 2014. Retrieved from http://llsop.canadianschoollibraries.ca/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.