Gural 1 Kivette N. Gural Dr.

Shannon Oltmann LIS 603 Management in Library & Information Services 8 December 2013 Evolving Leadership Roles for K-12 Public School Librarians Accomplished library media specialists are visionary leaders in their schools and in the profession. ~ National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Americas twenty-first century economic rollercoaster, beginning with the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and reaching a new milestone with the sequestration of 2013, is hitting all federally funded programs and entities hard. As publically funded institutions, public schools wrestle with the economic woes and deal with annual budget cuts. School libraries including programs, resources, and personnel are targets for school boards, superintendents, and principals looking to trim expenses. Between the 2006-2007 and 2010-2011 academic years the number of employed school librarians declined by eight percent, more than any other school staff position except instructional coordinators/supervisors (American Library Association). Principals slash annual library budgets, making it more difficult to keep collections up to date and provide programming for students. In this kind of economic and political climate it is imperative that school librarians become leaders within the school. Strong school library programs, administered by trained and knowledgeable school librarians, are essential to Information Age students, who are bombarded with data but do not inherently possess the skills necessary to sift through information to determine reliability or synthesize the

Gural 2 information into meaningful knowledge. School librarians are experts in this area, along with being on the forefront of innovations in educational technology, collaborators in teaching and curriculum, and proponents of literacy and reading. School libraries are essential to the academic development of students, so it is critical that school librarians become strong leaders not just within the school library, but also within the larger school community to secure the continuance of their programs. In Library and Information Center Management, Moran points out that organizations and leaders in the twenty-first century have to handle more fluid environments than in the past (Moran, Stueart, and Morner 307). This evolving environment brings new challenges to public schools, both in the school settings generally and in school libraries specifically. The days of school librarians having lots of time to do traditional library work such as inventories, shelf reading, weeding, and cataloging are gone. Now librarians accomplish those activities in spare moments or not all because the higher priority is curriculum related activities (American Association of School Librarians). In the past four decades school librarians have transformed from just teaching library skills to teaching a host of other subjects such as research and information literacy skills, cyber safety, multimedia technology, journalism, and drama. School librarians are full educational partners now, with the potential to have collaborative input on curriculum at every phase from lesson design through evaluation. School librarians can not only advocate for the library program and its integral role in instruction, but also have influence on the direction of curriculum by attending meetings and joining curriculum committees at the building and district levels (Dees, et al 13). As schools across the nation adopt Common Core Standards, along with various other best

Gural 3 practice initiatives such as Thoughtful Education, Thinking Strategies, Response to Intervention, and Positive Behavior Intervention Strategies, school librarians have the opportunity to become leaders in curriculum by being on the forefront of the changes. Another area of librarianship that has changed dramatically in the past forty years is how libraries and librarians provide information to patrons. In the past, when a student needed information, he went to the library where he either asked the librarian for guidance or went directly to the card catalog to find the location of a book. Once found, he checked the book out for an allotted amount of time and then returned it. With the proliferation of computers and the Internet, twenty-first century students consume information in a completely different way. Now students expect to access not just a librarys catalog online, but also get the information online through digitized articles and ebooks. They want to interact with information in the form of social media, wikis, reviews, and tags. In an interview with University of Kentucky library and information science students, Gail Kennedy, past president of Library Leadership And Management Association, acknowledged that keeping up with technology, both financially and knowledgably, is one of the most challenging changes librarians face today (Kennedy). The challenge for school librarians is to not just keep up, but also stay on the cutting edge of technologies, particularly educational technologies. It is up to the school librarian to fit these technologies into ever-dwindling budgets, or where budgets do not exist, find free alternatives. Additionally, school librarians serve as technology leaders in the school by teaching students responsible use of technology and conducting professional developments to train teachers on emerging technologies. The opportunities for leadership roles in this area abound.

Gural 4 In my position as a high school librarian, I can hone my leadership skills in the technology area by being more involved with teacher professional development training. I already stay current with emerging technologies by attending conferences and by participating in educational technology personal learning networks via Twitter. I also teach students how to navigate and utilize educational technologies for research and learning. However, my contact with teachers tends to be one-on-one; when a teacher expresses a need, I give them ideas on what technologies can meet their desired learning outcomes. I then get them set up and started on using the technological resource. The school administration assigns all professional developments for the year, so I need to advocate for the teachers to have educational technology training and design the professional developments. I can also develop my leadership skills both inside and outside the library by getting more involved with teams and committees. On the school level, I am on the Program Review Committee, but I can also volunteer to attend Curriculum Coordinators and Department Heads meetings. Outside of the school I can get involved with Round Tables within the Kentucky Association of School Librarians, American Association of School Librarians, and the American Library Association. Closer to home, in the KASL Third District I can get more involved with meeting planning or seek official leadership positions. All of these opportunities will not only sharpen my leadership skills, but will also give me an opportunity to network and collaborate with my colleagues inside and outside my school building.

Gural 5 References "30 Second Thought Leadership: Insights from Leaders in the School Library Community." Interview. Knowledge Quest. American Association of School Librarians, Nov.-Dec. 2011. Web. <http://www.ala.org/aasl/kq/30second/NovDec11>. Dees, Dianne C., Kristi Alexander, Rachel Besara, Rob Cambisios, Teresa Kent, and Jodi P. Delgado. "Today's School Library Media Specialist Leader." Library Media Connection 25.4 (2007): 10-14. Print. "Gail Kennedy Interview." Interview by UK SLIS. YouTube. University of Kentucky, 13 June 2013. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. Moran, Barbara B., Robert D. Stueart, and Claudia J. Morner. Leadership. Library and Information Center Management. 8th ed. Santa Barbara, Calif: Libraries Unlimited, 2013. 291-314. Print. National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Library Media Standards. 2012. Candidate Handbook. San Antonio, TX. State of America's Libraries. Report. Chicago: American Library Association, 2013. American Libraries. American Library Association, 2013. Web. 4 Dec. 2013. <http://www.ala.org/news/sites/ala.org.news/files/content/2013-State-ofAmericas-Libraries-Report.pdf>.