Advocacy for school libraries
– everyone’s responsibility by Karen Bonanno, Director, KB
Enterprises (Aust) Pty Ltd
What is advocacy?
The Canadian Association of Public Libraries has developed a definition
that is well worth considering.
"Advocacy is a planned, deliberate, sustained effort to raise awareness
of an issue. It’s an ongoing process in which support and understanding
are built incrementally over an extended period of time and using a wide
variety of marketing and public relations tools" (Canadian Association
of Public Libraries 2001, para. 1).
Advocacy is more than just lobbying for extra funding, or stating the
importance of the role of the information professional within a school
community, or seeking school-based support for an information skills /
literacy program. It involves advocating for excellent school library
services, appropriate staffing and facilities in the context of
advancing the educational opportunities of a school community.
Over the years teacher librarians have used the terms of
promotion, public relations, marketing, and advocacy
interchangeably, but there are some distinct differences attached to
each of the terms. A general reading of business management literature
provides insight into the activities associated with each term. The
following attempts to place these terms within the context of school
libraries.
Promotion is about saying who you are, what you do, for
whom, when and how. It tends to be a one-way communication much like
public relations, which includes activities to promote the school
library and teacher librarian to the school community members.
Informational brochures, bookmarks, posters, newsletters, library
signage, presenting a report at a staff meeting, hosting Book Week and
storytelling activities, presenting at a conference, lobbying a
government agent, or writing an article, tend to tell the target
audience rather than engage them in collaborative exchange.
Marketing, on the other hand, attempts to find out what
the school community needs and wants through mini surveys, market
research, needs assessment, questionnaires, focus groups and studying
demographics. The school library then focuses its attention on providing
the information and/or service to meet those identified needs. The same
tools used for public relations are applied, but the emphasis is on
providing a response that will leverage the gained understanding the
teacher librarian has of the school community.
Advocacy uses promotion, public relations and marketing to
indicate that what is currently being done within the school community
will be greatly enhanced by what the school library and teacher
librarian can offer. Advocacy attempts to influence the perceptions of
the target audience by connecting with their agenda to demonstrate how
the school library and the services of the teacher librarian can advance
the position of the school as an information literate learning
community. Planned and deliberate advocacy activities will work towards
building effective partnerships, influential relationships, interactive
decision-making, and collaborative activity.
Ross Todd, cited in Hartzell (2002, para. 3), suggests when teacher
librarians advocate on behalf of the school library emphasis should be
on ‘connections, not collections’. The school library and its services
need to connect administrators, teachers and students to the information
they need to realise an information literate learning community.
It is someone else’s job!
Teacher librarians, in general, are probably very good at promoting
their school library and its services to the staff and students of their
respective schools. In the busy-ness of a teacher librarian’s day,
marketing may be something they would like to get around to, but do not
have the time. Unfortunately, advocacy is often viewed as the job of the
state/territory and/or national teacher librarian associations. This
perception is quite reasonable, but we need to factor in that there is a
role for everyone in advocacy.
For example, advocacy tools developed at a national level are only
effective when skilfully used by the practitioner. Handing the principal
a copy of the
Standards of Professional Excellence for Teacher Librarians (ALIA &
ASLA 2004) and indicating how it was applied to oneself, or the school
library team, to identify the skills and expertise that benefit the
school community in areas of pedagogical practice, curriculum
development, information provision and service, student learning and
performance, lifelong learning, and professional commitment would be a
productive exercise.
A useful approach
Recently, I had the opportunity to work with a group of teacher
librarians on implementing the Learning for the future: a professional
development kit. . The presentation incorporated a workshop activity
that combined the ‘Strategic planning’ workshop in the kit with the
Standards of Professional Excellence for Teacher Librarians. Each person
used the ‘Strategic planning template’ to initially identify their
strengths within one section of the standards, that is, either
‘professional knowledge’ or ‘professional practice’ or ‘ professional
commitment’. They were encouraged to link their identified strengths
with potential opportunities to make a connection within their school
community. The ‘situational analysis’ also includes identifying
weaknesses and threats. Positive approaches were adopted to consider how
one could move a weakness to a strength position, and also move threats
to potential opportunities. This is certainly a challenging exercise and
most revealing.
References
ALIA & ASLA 2004, Standards of Professional Excellence for Teacher
Librarians, Australian Library and Information Association and
Australian School Library Association, viewed 11 December 2004, <http://www.asla.org.au/docs/TLstandards.pdf>.
Canadian Association of Public Libraries 2001, Library Advocacy NOW!,
Canadian Library Association, viewed 20 January 2005, <http://cla.ca/divisions/capl/advocacy/index.htm>.
Hartzell G 2002, ‘The hole truth’, School Library Journal, viewed 21
January 2005, <http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA225242.html>.
Mitchell P 2005, ‘Workshops to raise awareness’, Access, vol. 19, no. 1,
pp. 29-30.
© 2005 |