Teachers will sometimes wonder why we � school librarians � bother to do what we are attempting to do with their students. Another librarian I know was recently told by one of her colleagues that she was wasting her � the teacher�s -- time by trying to teach her students how to use resources, and how to use the Internet. A teacher in my own school recently sent two special needs students to the library to begin a lengthy research project for another subject class with the directions: �Go to the library and look for something�. Their subject class was scheduled to come in later that day for instruction in exactly how to go about that research, but their morning teacher had no idea that instruction would be helpful to them. Why, I wonder?It was always my plan to be a teacher, ever since third grade. It wasn�t until many years later that I decided to be a school librarian. As far as I�m concerned and always have been, I�m a teacher, and this happens to be the subject I teach. Like all teachers, I�ve been schooled in methodology, curriculum, educational psychology. I know what I�m doing.
Yet I have worked with very few colleagues � very few � who had even the remotest idea of what it is I do. In all of my 28 years as librarian in the same high school, I have only once had a supervisor with a degree in my field, and that was just a coincidence. When I�m observed teaching a class, I�m observed by a vice-principal or an administrative assistant. One year the athletic director was assigned to evaluate me. He didn�t even come close to having a clue.
My work has certainly changed over the years. I cannot help but recall my advisor at the Rutgers library school in 1976 who suggested that I take a computer course as an elective, and my reply: �I�m going to be a school librarian. When will I ever go near a computer?� Now, of course, computers have changed the entire process of finding and using information. Who knew?
This information revolution seems to have snuck up on a lot of people, but, despite my flippant remark nearly thirty years ago, it did not sneak up on librarians. We know what we are doing on the Internet, which is more than I can say for a great many others I come into contact with every day. The insidious thing about the Internet is that anyone who can type a word into the Google search box thinks that he�s doing everything he can to find what he needs. It�s a much more complicated process, actually, especially if you�re doing academic research of any kind. Just as when we only had print sources available, school librarians are here to teach students this particular skill, how to find and use information intelligently and efficiently, regardless of the source. We still teach them how to evaluate the reliability of the source, how to determine if it�s appropriate for the assignment at hand. We still teach.
A teacher who thinks that his class doesn�t need instruction because they all �know how to use Google� is not only demeaning us as fellow teachers, he is denying his students the opportunity to learn a valuable skill. Don�t get me wrong; I�m as much a fan of the popular search engine as anyone else. But as far as I�m concerned, using information is a skill that more people need every day in life than they need trigonometry, but nobody questions trigonometry�s place in the curriculum. A colleague recently explained that her students didn�t need instruction in the library; when she brought them here to work she was only �renting the room� I wonder why, then, we don�t just turn students loose in the school bookroom to pick out something they like and then �rent� a little space in the cafeteria for them to pursue education on their own. Why bother with teachers or curriculum at all, if that�s the way we�re going to look at it?
Certainly I am tired of defending what I do, of explaining to people that yes, I went to college (graduate school, in fact, is required) and yes, I am a teacher. This very morning, a colleague asked if she could reserve the entire library for a workshop one day next month; it wouldn�t be disruptive, she was sure, because how many kids come into the library during the school day anyway? What, I wonder, does she think I do all day?
I�ve seen speculation that in the future, librarians will either be obsolete or will become the most essential, valued professionals in an information-based society. Since our work, especially our work in schools, is valued so little, it seems that the choice society is making is clear. Too bad. Google may be good, but it looks like it�s going to have to get a whole lot better if it�s going to take the place of librarians.
