My understanding of what the role of a teacher librarian is within the school has changed over the decades I have been involved in the education sector. These changes correspond to the role that I held in the sector at a particular point in time.

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When I started teaching in the 1990’s, in a primary school in Western Australia and then in expatriate schools overseas, a librarian was the person who made sure the students had a storybook to take home and taught them about the different parts of a book. They read a story to students, talked about that book, and encouraged them to read. They also promoted and ran Book Week. I was aware that they also supplied staff with resources and materials to teach. My understanding at this stage corresponds with that of Chrysanthos (2020, para. 12) when she describes the long-established role of the teacher librarian as that of ”'literature leaders', ensuring the right book goes onto the right hands, and students become engaged readers”.

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When my own children began school in NSW in the mid 2000’s, I became aware of other roles that the teacher librarian was responsible for, which included:

• cataloguing and covering books (the latter usually done by a team of parent volunteers),

• keeping track of the home readers that left the resource area every day,

• keeping the physical collection neat and tidy,

• making the library an attractive, welcoming, yet still functional place for all users,

• teaching students the basics of using computers,

• ordering books and resources for student enjoyment and teacher support, and

• running book club (in collaboration with a parent volunteer).

 

Around this time, I was vaguely aware of a part time administration staff person who also worked in the library. My view of the role was heading towards that put forward by the Australian School Library Association (ASLA) where four key aspects of the role of the teacher librarian are identified, namely, “learning and teaching, management, leadership as well as collaboration and community management” (ASLA, 2016, Statement section, para. 1).

 

Early in the 2010’s, I started volunteering in the school office and with greater exposure, my understanding grew again. When I became the ‘library admin lady’, a whole new world that the teacher librarian inhabited was revealed to me in which there was

• a program used to catalogue resources and track the borrowing and returning of library resources, the friendly OLIVER,

• a group dedicated to explaining why non-fiction books have the Dewey numbers they do, namely the Schools Catalogue Information Service (SCIS),

• an understanding by students of vocabulary such as ‘digital citizenship’ and ‘inquiry learning’.

 

Teacher librarians have a greater role than I previously thought in delivering the information technology aspects of the curriculum and the lessons they teach are more integrated with the class teachers programmes and are not stand-alone lessons.

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I now recognise that I am part of a collection and what I do is valued by others and as Godfree and Neilson (2018, p. 35) state, “to reach their full potential, school libraries must have a team of qualified staff.” I don’t know yet what that full potential looks like, but I certainly plan to be part of that team.