"Taking A Seat At The Table"

Old School by alamosbasement

I recently read the article in the New Yorker about Sheryl Sandberg by Ken Auletta. One of the points that Sandberg makes is that women should "take a seat at the table" and be part of the conversation instead of just sitting in the background waiting for things to happen.

With the recent interrogation of school librarians by LAUSD, the cutting of school librarians jobs across the country, and the lack of awareness of that librarians do and are knowledgeable about, as well as my participation at Lab School @ Punahou, I have been thinking about that phrase.

There are only a few librarians participating in this conference. My self,  Dave Wee and sometimes Deb Peterson. The rest of the participants are subject specific teachers, a lot of whom are part of their technology integration teams. But, where are the librarians? They are discussion digital and media ethics, integrating technology into the curriculum, gamification, the filter bubble, and so many more topics, that we in the library profession have been talking about for years and have been implementing.

Whenever I go to these educator professional development programs, I always feel like the loner. I know, I am very lucky to be working at the school where I work at, have the Library Goddess as our advocate, but what about the other school librarians out there? How do we become more a part of the conversation at these conferences?

Yesterday, I actually gave a brief demo about searching for images for reuse because the copyright and fair use question came up.  I had questions about how to teach kids about how to attribute and cite images properly. And at one point, one of my colleagues commented, "Wow..our librarian never even talked about this with us." 

Our colleagues do not even know what it is we know!!! My eyes about popped out of my head.

We need to share, we need to be at less librarian-specific conferences, we need to get out there.

Library 101

I'm sure everyone else knows about this already...but I thought I would share it anyway.

clipped from http://www.libraryman.com/blog/essays-on-101/ Sarah Houghton-Jan Barack Obama David and Michael asked some widely known and respected folks in Libraryland to talk about what they see changing in libraries and what we need to be doing to ensure we remain relevant as technology and society evolve. And these folks have some VERY interesting things to say! Check out the essays below.

What's in a title? professionalism in the information studies & library field

When I started out in the library and information field, there was talk about the de-professionalism of departments within the field, like cataloging departments and at times, reference departments. I was cataloging even though I was not formally trained as a cataloger and that was my title, "Cataloger" not assistant cataloger.

After I graduated from UCLA, I would talk to my friend about titles. Her assistant was titled, "Librarian" not "Assistant Librarian." At the time, I could see her point, she worked hard for her degree and had a masters specifically in "Library and Information Studies." But then I wondered if she was being too sensitive. I am also trained as an archivist and while working in various archives, some of the archivists I met did not have degrees. But they had worked in the field for a long time and their experience made them "archivists."

Where am I heading to with this? Today I received an email from my sister-in-law (whom I love, she's amazing) but under her name was the title, "Librarian." She works at a professional college and she does work in the library. She is in charge of assisting professors with collection development, she is responsible for acquisitions, and basically, she does most of the work in that library. However, she has only worked there for a couple of months. She does not have a degree. Why am I feeling so sensitive about her using the title? Probably because I spent 2 years working on my Masters and also worked for 9 years in the field before I was accepted into graduate school. I am not sure if I am being too sensitive. Does it even matter?