Future Forward. Librarians as Leaders

I wanted to be a librarian for most of my life. When I was a teenager in the 1980s, I imagined my life as a librarian would entail working with smart, curious people who were looking for information and felt a connection to literature, history, culture, and facts. I looked forward to connecting people with perfect books that answered their questions. By the time I got to graduate school in the 1990s, I saw that the role of the librarian was evolving. I studied user-centered design and systems analysis, learned online research via CD-ROM, and worked on an artificial intelligence project connecting curious users with art texts. It wasn’t what I imagined, but the connections were exciting. I was optimistic about our future—and then the Internet went full-throttle. When I began working in school libraries in the 2000s, I replaced CD-ROMs with Internet subscriptions and introduced my users to Google. We delivered professional development on how to use email and search an online database. I was still connecting users with information and entertaining them with books they loved, but the environment was changing quickly. Today, my school is preparing for a one-to-one Chromebook initiative. I am providing students with ebooks and research guides for projects, and giving teachers professional development on implementing Google Classroom. My job has changed in ways I never could have imagined ten, twenty, and certainly thirty years ago. The one thing that hasn’t changed is my role as a leader in my organization.

Today, the major focus of my job is on leading in both technology and instruction. It’s not the easiest charge in the school. There are days when I’d prefer to sit and read to classes of students or spend my days organizing the shelves in silent meditation. Instead, I’m continually focused on curating digital resources for upcoming projects, empowering students to create in their library, and building collaborative relationships with my fellow teachers.

The Future Forward librarian is always looking for opportunities to serve as an instructional leader—and very few of us imagined this is what we would be doing when we decided to become librarians. But, as Hilda Weisburg said in her Distinguished Service Award acceptance speech, “There is no other option.” Leadership is a job requirement for school librarians today.

How can you become more of a leader? I believe this mindset can be cultivated through a daily practice of reflection and a willingness to increase your position as a leader within your school. Offer professional development training on a topic you are passionate about. Suggest to administration that a team be established to evaluate the information literacy skills continuum in your district and then offer to lead that team in data collection and planning. Sometimes leadership is about putting yourself in a position of vulnerability. Someone may disagree with you or people may look to you for more guidance! Either way, if you stay laser-focused on your students’ needs as you help them to prepare for college, career, and community readiness, you can defend any position you take. When you see a problem that needs to be addressed and nobody else is taking care of it, you step forward and resolve it. This may feel like unchartered territory for you and for your school. If we do not establish leadership on information literacy, student privacy, and intellectual freedom there is a strong possibility that these issues will not be addressed. It’s about solving problems for the students you represent, sometimes because nobody else is doing it.

How did you become more of a leader at your school?