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As we start to get back to more normal times, our hybrid libraries are likely to grow and develop, so these are exciting times for school libraries.
INSIGHT
School Libraries Group
Chartership offers school librarians a chance to demonstrate our professionalism
S school librarians, we can feel somewhat cut off from the wider library profession, especially since many
of us are solo librarians, as well as facing the well-documented pressures around pay and professionalisation in our sector. But actually school librarians are uniquely placed in almost all aspects of librarianship. This was brought home to me recently at a recent CILIP SLG webinar for Chartership candidates during a presentation from Anne Welsh of the Metadata & Discovery Group (MDG). Although we may not recognise it, Anne showed us that we have real skills in cataloguing and classification. We might not do it every day, but we are on the front line, and we do have the autonomy and the expertise to make sure that we get the right books and the right information at the right time into the hands of our users.
I was reflecting further on this when looking through the new Professional Knowledge and Skills Base (PKSB) and realising just how many aspects of the library profession we are actively involved in. As school librarians we know what young people are reading, and we can track trends, so we understand the importance of reader development, of promoting reading for pleasure through library lessons, through running book groups and by taking part in shadowing the CILIP Carnegie Kate Greenaway awards. But we also have the ability to manage our budgets, to make evaluative decisions about what we stock and
July-August 2022
how we display those books on our shelves, and also through SLG and our colleagues in YLG we are up to date with the latest books being published. In a similar way, we are involved in promotion and marketing, through library displays, reading lists, through the VLE and via social media. We support information and media literacy by teaching research skills in the library, in project work and in supporting the Extended Project Qualification and the IB Extended Essay. We also deal with issues around the ethics of data use, teaching about referencing and plagiarism, as well as dealing with legal aspects around copyright and privacy, and of course that leads us on to our professional duty to make resources available and the need to ensure that our collections are diverse and inclusive, reflect the lives of our students, and that all students can see themselves represented in the books and resources, fiction and non-fiction, that we make available to them. These days we are no longer just talking about physical resources. Lockdown brought home the importance of online resources, ebooks and audiobooks, and the importance of making our library catalogues and resources available and accessible 24/7. As we start to get back to more normal times, our hybrid libraries are likely to grow and develop, so these are exciting times for school libraries. Personally, I am delighted that I have the opportunity to shadow Caroline Roche this year as Vice Chair of SLG, before stepping into her shoes in 2023. Caroline has done so much over her
Nick Cavender (he/him), the librarian and extended projects coordinator at Rickmansworth School, is Vice Chair of the Schools Library Group. He has been a school librarian for 15 years, having previously spent.
term in office to promote the need for all schools to have a fully funded library, staffed by a professional librarian, and she will carry on this mission as co-chair of the Great School Libraries campaign as it moves into Phase 2.
SLG has a number of projects that we have been working on over the past couple of years, and that will come to fruition this year. As well as our regular training programme, with three webinars this year, which will culminate in our first in-person conference for five years in April 2023. I myself am on the journey to Chartership, inspired by Caroline and the other members of the SLG committee. If you are a school librarian and would like some help and support from our informal network of Chartership candidates, please email
chair.slg@
cilip.org.uk or visit our blog at
slgconnect.org.uk to find out more about the work of SLG and how you can get involved. IP
INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL DIGITAL 35
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