And another one gone, and another one gone

In a sign of the times, Newport Beach is considering closing the city's original library and replacing it with a community center that would offer all the same features — except for the books.

Instead of a reference librarian, patrons would be greeted by a kiosk equipped with video-calling software that would allow them to speak with employees elsewhere. And books — when ordered — would be dropped off at a locker for pickup.

Tomes' time might be up at Newport Beach library

Are we numb to these stories? Locally the town of Greece, NY has announced the perceived necessity to eliminate half of its budget for libraries going into next year. The superintendent of Rochester city schools announced yesterday that his proposed budget eliminates 900 teaching positions.

Aside from the fact that I am in search of a job as a school librarian and enjoy my occasional service as a substitute at the public library, and aside from my role as the son and grandson of teachers and father of students, and aside from the fact that I now work as a technology assistant in a school library and visit our public library regularly with my children, aside from these facts, I am trying to figure out how I really feel about library closures and school program elimination.

In other words, how do these cuts affect citizens and students who may not have the love of books, knowledge, technology, collaboration and academic discussion, that I have? How do these cuts affect my neighbors who do not realize the opportunity they are passing up to read books and magazines and use computers for free?

Will it matter to them that there are 30 students or more in a class instead of 25. Will it matter that elementary students do not have stand-alone art or music lessons or a chance to enjoy reading without pressure in the library? Will it matter to them that elective classes at the secondary level are shaved to the bare minimum or eliminated. Will the lack of sports and club activities and related activity buses cause them frustration?

I believe in America and the ideals our country was founded upon. I believe that American pride, ingenuity, influence and strength to affect change still exists. I believe, however, that it can only be disturbed as we feel great pain as a national (or at least regional or local) community. I believe that we have within us the power to reverse this economic and social landslide but not unless the pain becomes unbearable and the urge to ease the pain unavoidable.

So, have we become numb to stories of cuts and eliminations of programs and facilities? I guess I am not sure. Are we sheep who will follow our leaders wherever they take us and agree to whatever cuts they impose? Are we, as a population, comfortable with our leaders and in agreement with most of the decisions they make? Or do we have the fortitude to cause our leaders to alter decisions to our will and to choose leaders who support our will?

The article quoted above ends:

Past attempts to change the traditional library model have not always worked out.

In 2008, Long Beach considered turning its main library into a depot of sorts that would fill book orders for neighborhood branch libraries. But residents rallied to save the stacks and the proposal was shelved.

In 2008 these citizens noticed, disagreed, and prevailed. What happens now?

What happens in Long Beach California? What happens in Greece, NY? What happens in the city of Rochester? What happens in cities and communities coast to coast to our schools and our libraries, and tangentially speaking, our healthcare and our infrastructure and our economy and society as a whole?

In a special, off-season, election to choose a new mayor for the city of Rochester, 26% of eligible voters showed up at the polls yesterday. This was up from 20% in 2009 but down from almost 40% in a hotly contested 2005 election. Fifty six percent of eligible voters participated in our last national election, the highest in any election since 1968. As the country has simmered during this presidency, 40.9% of voters turned out to shake up our legislative branches (highest off-year turn-out since 1970).

Do these statistics matter? I guess I can only answer, "I hope so."

Will the voters focus on the cuts to education and to library services? What is the future of education and of library service in our country in the near and long-term future? Sadly it is not the teachers or the librarians who will answer that question. It is our neighbors, our students, parents and patrons, and the large unknown masses who have forgotten or who never understood the value of programs, services and education that we offer.

The time to save your school or your library, your teacher or your librarian, or your job if you are in the profession is NOT after cuts have been announced or are being discussed. The time is NOW! Usage statistics, evidence of success, patron and student growth and satisfaction with services and teaching, and community support in advance of budget discussions are critical to continued funding. Converting a non-library user every day and developing strategies to remain relevant in our communities and schools into the 21st century should be among our many goals.

I apologize for blending the lines between school and library budgets in this discussion and know the answers and even the questions are not the same for each and yet they do share many commonalities. I know of no consolidated resource that identifies cuts to education, but want to share and ask all lovers of libraries to help keep your town off of these maps.

• A Nation without School Librarians

View A Nation without School Librarians in a larger map

• Losing Libraries

Student learning is our priority

Alison Zmuda opened her day-long conference, Librarians as Learning Specialists, with the statement, "Without a curriculum and a robust assessment system school librarians cease to exist."  I was invigorated to hear the repetition throughout the day that, "Student learning is our priority."  She focused on ways to re-design our lessons and align our standards with content curriculum areas and standards.

Two weeks later I had the opportunity to attend a conference hosted by Dr. Ross Todd on the topic of Evidence Based Practice and School Libraries.  He spent the early morning describing our "invisible evidence syndrome," and the afternoon focusing us on "learning outcomes" verified by "evidence based practices."  His message and Alison's mirrored and complemented each other.  They both agree, and write and speak about ways to alter the image and, in fact, the reality of what school librarians do and how we do it.

Alison offered more suggestions for effective teaching opportunities, while Dr. Todd filled in the blanks with more concrete examples of learning-focused, lesson-based feedback and assessment collectibles.  Talking with other conference attendees I discovered that my comfort level with this dialogue of true curricular collaboration and measurement of outcome extends from my business background.  Two other librarians at my table, responding throughout the day with nods and smiles, also came from previous business experience.  The two career librarians at the table generally agreed with what they heard, but did so with trepidation.  

Four years ago in the first paper I ever wrote about school librarians, a literature review based upon current school and library journals including quotes from Dr. Todd, I lamented the need for librarians to map their curriculum to blend with content areas, to find ways to assure progressive information literacy development from year to year and to find ways to document progress and achievement.  I am not sure what topics my classmates chose but even as an outsider I saw the need for this change in focus.  My advocacy has continued in verbal and written reflections for LIS classes and in my job as a high school library teaching assistant.

Working in a school population nearing 1500 students, this knowledge has been a painful load to carry as I have had difficulty figuring out any consistent ways to measure student achievement or growth across the information literacy continuum.  Collaborative opportunities are frequent, but convincing all teachers in a given content area / grade level to approach a project in the same way to allow us to give similar lessons and collect uniform data has proven virtually impossible.  As if a symbol of the failure, much to frequently, we are asked to do a "quick, basic database intro," or worse, teachers with low expectations assign information-driven  projects without library support.

Coinciding with the conferences I attended, however, I had the opportunity, as part of a required practicum, to work for five weeks each in two different smaller schools, a middle school and an elementary school, both with populations of closer to 500.  Suddenly the lights are coming on.  When all teachers for a subject / grade level can be counted on one hand (sometimes one or two fingers) the needs and opportunities are easier to identify.  As both Zmuda and Todd and other authors I have read admit, the process is still not easy or quick but I am beginning to see light in the woods that may indicate a path.

The beginning of the path lies in continued movement away from "the database lesson" and toward true collaboration with teachers to design lessons, deliverable products, and grading criteria.  As teacher-librarians, even as "information specialists," we need to step away from the role of information, material, space and student managers and aggressively into the role of information literacy teaching specialists.  It goes without saying that we must be comfortable with the AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner, but to achieve success we must think simultaneously about core content area standards and how to blend the curricula to achieve success.

I still find humor in the sign in the back office of one school library I visited that says, "If it's not barcoded, it doesn't exist," but as I see our budgets crunching and librarians losing clerks or losing their jobs to clerks, and as I see librarians taking over book-rooms and managing study halls, I am increasingly concerned that we must pursue education over management if we are to survive.  I certainly do not have all of the answers; in fact I believe I still have more questions than answers but I am agressively seeking ways to make an impact, even one student or one teacher at a time.