Library specialists being shelved

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This was published 13 years ago

Library specialists being shelved

By Elisabeth Tarica

THEY wait, noses pressed up against smudged glass doors, long before the bell echoes across the playground to signal the start of lunchtime library.

Within minutes, a conga line of maroon uniforms files into the library — a group of boys dashing for a row of computers, others gathering around a book while some retreat to the lounges to read alone.

The warmth inside may be a welcome respite from the cold playground but a chance to thaw out is not what these Mount Waverley Primary School students are seeking.

This school library is a colourful and welcoming place — noisy and stocked with 22,000 books and spaces designed with students in mind.

Each day it is packed with activity from the moment the doors open at 8.30am.

"We have a really great reading culture at this school: our boys read, our grade 6s read, parents come in here to read to their kids before school, everybody reads, and one reason is because they've had someone in the library who feels as I do about this job," says teacher-librarian Jacqueline Griffeth.

For the past nine years she has been the school's only teacher-librarian — a role that brings her face-to-face with 690 students in 29 classes for a specialised program.

It is a role that allows her to foster a love of reading while helping to integrate technology and promote information skills at the school.

Students, she says, need to know how to navigate the digital world.

"Sometimes I don't tell people I am a teacher-librarian because they think you are standing behind a loans desk in a cardigan all day, and I would hate them to think that, because being a primary teacher-librarian is the best job in the world," she says.

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"If people really understood the job effective teacher-librarians do, then all government schools would enjoy the advantages of the kind of library we have here."

The reality is quite different. Many government primary schools are not as lucky as Mount Waverley.

Many school libraries are now staffed by library technicians or teacher aides, with some using parent volunteers to supervise the borrowing.

Research shows a strong link between academic success and independent reading, yet it is estimated only 13 per cent of Victorian primary school libraries are staffed by professional teacher-librarians — someone who holds a dual degree.

It is a problem highlighted during a federal government inquiry into the role and the resourcing of school libraries and teacher-librarians. Almost 400 submissions expressed concern that people like Ms Griffeth were in short supply.

With an estimated shortage of 3000 teacher-librarians throughout Australia, educators and library associations are asking who will staff the thousands of school libraries being built as part of the federal government's $16 billion school building stimulus package.

They warn that the long-running decline in the profession could leave many of the 3472 libraries funded under the program without qualified staff.

"The primary sector is a major area where there is a diminishing employment of teacher-librarians," says Australian School Library Association executive director Karen Bonanno. "We are now starting to see that filter through to the secondary public sector where they are being replaced with library technicians."

Such decisions mean that students miss out on learning vital literacy skills. Part of the problem, Ms Bonanno says, is that schools are being asked to do more with less.

Many principals now choose to hire extra classroom teachers rather than teacher-librarians.

"The problem is that some principals have a bit of a false sense that the internet will be the panacea for education," she says.

By contrast, in independent schools the teacher-librarian is highly valued and often part of the executive decision-making team.

In Victoria, about 700 libraries are being built with stimulus money, about 400 of them in government schools.

Since the 1990s, when principals were given greater autonomy to hire staff, Victoria has lost a third of its teacher-librarians, who are classed as specialist staff.

Official figures on the number of teacher-librarians in Victorian schools are not available but experts predict they will drop further as older, more experienced staff retire.

The ranks simply are not being replenished.

Reports of budget and staffing cutbacks in libraries have also affected enrolments in teacher-librarianship courses. Australia has only four specialist tertiary courses. Once there were 15.

Lyn Hay, a lecturer at the school of information studies at Charles Sturt University, says steps must be taken to attract younger people to the profession.

CSU trains most of Australia's teacher-librarians, producing about 100 graduates each year.

In a bid to tackle the problem, it will introduce a new pathway in 2012 for school-leavers who want to train as teacher-librarians.

"We see this as the best way to get young people trained as their first career choice rather than it being a person's second or third career," Ms Hay says.

In the digital age, she says, the school library is more than a warehouse of books.

"A school library is a unique learning space in a school. It is a flexible, dynamic, high-tech learning centre designed to prepare students to function effectively in an increasingly complex informational and technological world," she says.

This is why schools cannot afford to lose the intellectual rigour teacher-librarians bring to schools, says Fay Pattison, a teacher-librarian at Sacred Heart Girls College and a member of the Victorian Catholic Teacher-Librarian Network.

"The trend of principals employing non teacher-librarians to manage libraries needs to be stopped for the sake of quality of learning in our communities," Ms Pattison says. "We believe it is primarily a cost-saving action which reflects very short-term thinking."

She says country schools have been hardest hit and are struggling to attract teacher-librarians.

"It means these students are not getting the lifelong learning skills for research, and are not able to transfer those skills from one area to another."

Ms Pattison sees more students coming to secondary school lacking basic library skills.

"They don't have basic note-taking skills or know how to do the assignment in their own words, and they don't know how to do this because they are not getting these skills from teacher-librarians in primary schools, and when they get to secondary it is very difficult for them."

Mary Manning, executive officer of the School Libraries Association of Victoria, is often asked if school libraries are really needed now that schools have computers.

The answer, Ms Manning says, is yes.

Research points to strong links between access to school libraries and academic success.

"It indicates that a strong library program that integrates ICT (information and communications technology) and literacy skills leads to higher student achievement regardless of the socio-economic or educational levels of the adults in the community."

Ms Manning argues that evolving technology makes teacher-librarians vital in all schools.

"They don't just purchase a few books and put them on the shelves. They actually help students become effective users of information," she says.

"To be an effective user of information when you've got the internet is much harder than when you had books, so you need them much more."

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